Amy Shang

The Drover’s Wife and The Chosen Vessel: Question 3

Literature has proved instrumental in the foundation of the shared Australian identity that audiences are
familiar with today. However, differing portrayals of the Australian mythos from earlier times are
interesting to analyse in order to further understanding. Despite sharing a common premise and exploring
similar themes, different ways of thinking about Australia, specifically concerning women and Australian
identity, are conveyed in The Drover’s Wife (1892) and The Chosen Vessel (1896) through the
manipulation of language and generic features. The former, by esteemed “bush poet” Henry Lawson,
adopts a thoroughly nationalistic way of thinking, whilst concurrently pioneering the inclusion of
Australian women in literature. In The Drover’s Wife, he establishes a place in the Australian legend for a
uniquely Australian female character, exploring the “bushwoman” who is strengthened by antagonistic
forces of nature. Conversely, Baynton confronts previously held notions about women’s experiences in
the outback, presenting a feminist way of thinking diverging markedly from her contemporaries. Her
Australian woman exists within a bleak narrative intended to reveal the lesser-known dangers of outback
living that women encounter, the Australian people, and specifically, the patriarchal nature of the
Australian identity they subscribe to. Both texts manipulate generic devices to achieve the
aforementioned results, elements characteristic of the Australian realism genre in The Drover’s Wife, and
gothic elements at the forefront of The Chosen Vessel, specifically those of the female and Australian
gothic genres. Language features are also utilised to achieve these effects including patterns of symbolism,
imagery, figurative and descriptive language to achieve the desired effects.

In The Drover’s Wife, an unnamed woman is left in isolation with her children to face the countless trials
of Australian outback living. The Drover’s Wife conveys his nationalistic way of thinking about women and
Australian identity, through the manipulation of language features including patterns of symbolism and
detailed imagery via figurative and descriptive language. The bushwoman is characterised as tenacious
when she recounts an incident in which she “fought a bushfire … while her husband was away”. She
recalls that the “grass was long…and the fire threatened to burn her out”. The personification of the
“bushfire” “threatening” her as well as the reference to the “long, and very dry” grass emphasises the
Australian bush as the adversary she must combat, the pattern of man versus nature conflict reoccurring.
“[Putting] on a pair of her husband’s trousers,” she “[beat out the flames… [until] great drops of sooty
perspiration ran in streaks down her blackened arms”. Her donning her husband’s clothing symbolising
her readiness to defy traditional gender expectations, as well as her determination and resilience, made
evident in the visual imagery of the “sooty perspiration” detailing her sweat and toil. This passage is also
symbolic of the bushwoman assuming her place in the Australian canon, as equally tenacious and capable
as her male counterparts. However, this adoption of traditionally masculine traits runs concurrent with
Amy Shang
her frequent focus on her children during the incident, her maternal instincts evident as she described
her “baby [howling] lustily for his ‘mummy’”, while Tommy “worked … by her side”. The woman is
characterised as multi-faceted as she does not strictly, or solely, adhere to either sets of expected gender
behaviours, instead, having a more complex relationship with gender. The last line of the fire-fighting
sequence recapitulates the incident as “a glorious time…to look back to, and talk about…for many years”,
celebrating this victory as it is described using the adjective “glorious”. The woman is characterised
through the language features of symbolism, personification, and imagery as multi-faceted, resourceful
and resilient amongst other things, and able to survive the outback, and ultimately worth nationalistic
celebration. In a subversive take on Australian literature, the trope of man versus nature is applied to an
Australian woman’s experiences, ultimately pioneeringly the inclusion of women in the Australian legend,
displaying his nationalistic way of thinking, strong enough to extend to both sexes.

The Drover’s Wife is a stellar example of Australian realism, in which Australian living is approached in a
“true-to-life” manner, depicting seemingly ordinary, often bordering on banal, situations in order to
comment on Australian people and society. Challenges, aside from the bushfire are detailed, correlating
the celebrated and uniquely Australian characterisation of the woman with the Australian setting,
Lawson’s nationalistic way of thinking towards Australian women evident as he portrays the drover’s wife
as multi-dimensional, resourceful, resilient and ultimately worth celebrating as part of the Australian
canon. Generic features of Australian realism present in the text include understatement, a focus on
portraying quotidian tasks or other events in distinctly detailed manners, favouring realistic depictions in
lieu of glamorised ones, and a lack of embellishment via literary devices, instead favouring simple, direct,
and often understated language. Despite her adoption of traditionally masculine roles and traits in the
aforementioned passages, Lawson does not maintain that the singular way to survive and thrive in the
outback is to do this, as he also celebrates more feminine aspects of the woman. Aside from the bushfire,
and other obstacles mentioned in the text, “she also fights crows and eagles that have designs on her
chickens”, a quotidian task of Australian life, seemingly ordinary, that is described in detail in order to
comment on the woman’s character, as well as the Australian women she represents. To combat the
animals, yet another set of natural foes, she develops a successful plan to trick them. The description of
her methods to “fight” the crows are described in realist detail, the specifics of her “very original” plan
comprehensively outlined, “the children [crying] ‘Crows, mother!’”, notifying her before “she rushes
out…[aiming] the broomstick at the birds as though it were a gun…[saying] ‘Bung!’”. This information is
seemingly superfluous, the simple language use, also characteristic of realism, not furthering the
technical aspects of the text. However, this realism is significant as it serves the deeper purpose of
shedding light on the woman’s character in an authentic, believable manner. The omniscient narrator of
the text state that “they”, referring to the crows, “are cunning, but a woman’s cunning is greater.” The
Amy Shang
diction of “cunning” connotes negative portrayals of women in literature, in which the perception is
generally not of intelligence, but rather deceit or trickery. Lawson, however, seems to reclaim this term
of disparagement. Instead, empowering and celebrating the woman as her “cunning” is positively
portrayed as “[great]”. Despite this, her plan is still never glamorised or romanticised, it is simply
described as it is, differing from the more sensationalised portrayals present in earlier romantic Australian
texts. The woman is characterised as multi-dimensional with a complex relationship with gender
expectations, Lawson pioneering the view that strict adherence to either role is insufficient for outback
survival. This realism can at times be bleak, the death of the woman’s child being one of those as she
recounts that “she [had ridden] nineteen miles for assistance, carrying the dead child”. She presents this
in an understated, matter-of-fact fashion, rather stoic in her choice not to dwell upon emotional aspects,
characteristic of Australian realism. This conveys a sense of reality as excessive embellishments prove
unnecessary in conveying this aspect of outback living. The setting is established as the isolated outback,
having had to “ride nineteen miles”, further correlating celebrated values within Australian identity,
determination and stoicism from riding for so long, with the nature of the Australian setting. Manipulating
Australian realism generic features, Lawson presents a nationalistic way of thinking about Australia and
women in the Australian legend.

Rather than adhering to accepted visions of Australian living, Baynton’s feminist perspective, perhaps
informed by her own experiences as an Australian woman, is evident as she draws a focus on antagonistic
forces distinct from the, at the time, more popular environmental ones. A feminist way of thinking,
highlighting the patriarchy within Australian identity, is conveyed as Australian women are depicted as
destined to suffer at the hands of the men around them, specifically due to the misogynistic,
hypermasculine aspects of Australian identity. Decidedly less nationalistic than Lawson’s portrayal, this is
achieved in The Chosen Vessel through the manipulation of gothic generic features including the presence
of a sense of paranoia and anxiety, terror in the familiar, and generic elements of the female gothic
subgenre of female gothic, primarily, the prominence of patriarchal antagonists against a “pursued
protagonist”. The protagonist of The Chosen Vessel is an unnamed woman in a superficially similar
situation as the woman of The Drover’s Wife, as she is also left in isolation with her child, falling prey to
the various threats present in outback Australia. Rather than homing in on environmental forces similar
to The Drover’s Wife, however, Baynton’s female protagonist is not strengthened, but killed, not by the
environment, but by the men around her. Readers have likened Baynton’s text to the formerly mentioned,
describing it as “a version of The Drover’s Wife in which the swagman doesn’t leave. As in other female
gothics, the protagonist of The Chosen Vessel can be read as a variation of the “pursued protagonist”
trope in which a woman is pursued and terrorised by patriarchal forces. These patriarchal forces manifest
in the characters of the woman’s husband, the swagman, and Peter Hennessy, who either directly lead
Amy Shang
to, or are complicit in, her demise when she is raped and murdered. In contrast to the drover’s wife, the
unnamed woman of Baynton’s text lacks thorough characterisation, as she is instead simply a vessel to
portray the sinister aspects of Australian society and identity: a woman to direct his domestic abuse
towards for the husband, a sexual object to project his desires onto for the swagman, and a mere religious
apparition and symbol for Hennessey. At the beginning of the text, she is forced by her husband to tame
a cow, despite her being “afraid of the cow”. In response to her wariness the husband verbally abuses
her, “angrily” calling her “a cur”, connoting hypermasculinity through the utilisation of aggressive diction.
She states that “in many [ways] he was worse than the cow”, establishing the magnitude of terror sourced
from the people around her, which vastly outweighs whatever other natural threats she may face as the
cow she must tame symbolises the natural obstacles of outback living. The emphasis on her husband’s
patriarchal antagonism is especially gothic in the fact that the text finds a source of terror in something –
family and domestic life – that is typically portrayed as familiar and comforting. While the woman of this
text represents the women of Australia, her husband is a hypermasculine representation of the domestic
patriarchy ingrained within Australian identity. When she expresses her fears as he leaves her in isolation,
another gothic recurring theme, leaving her alone, “fifteen miles separating [them]”, the husband
“[taunts]” and “[sneers]” at her fear of being raped, degrading her sexual value, implying that she is
undesirable as he represents the misogyny within Australian society whilst also leaving her alone at the
hands of the swagman, and indirectly contributing to her death. Opposite the female protagonist, the
husband is a patriarchal antagonist characteristic of female gothic texts, furthering Baynton’s feminist
point that the Australian people and the hypermasculine misogynism ingrained within their identity
through the manipulation of generic and language features.

Furthermore, in The Chosen Vessel, alongside aforementioned elements of female gothic, features of the
gothic subgenre, Australian gothic, including the subversion of archetypal Australian characters and
settings, use of religious irony, are manipulated in order to convey Baynton’s feminist way of thinking.
Through this, Baynton further implicitly emphasises the fact that hypermasculinity and the Australian
identity are inherently linked, conveying her distinctive, feminist, way of thinking about Australia. The
swagman, another patriarchal antagonist typical of female gothic texts, is an example of this Australian
gothic subversion as he represents another facet of patriarchy in the Australian identity. The historically
celebrated Australian character trope, a symbol of the Australian mythos, is characterised instead as a
predatory character through visual imagery, her paranoia or “fear” of “the look in his eyes” and “gleam
of his teeth”, alluding to what he is capable of doing to her, even more so than his weapon, establishes
the sexual nature of the swagman’s threat. An ever-present atmosphere of suspense, tension, and anxiety,
a gothic generic device, further establishes the swagman’s antagonism. Patterns of imagery in the
auditory imagery of the swagman’s “jerked breathing as it kept in time with the cuts of the knife”, the
Amy Shang
tactile imagery in the “brush of his clothes as he rubbed the wall”, coupled with the assonance in “brush”
and “rubbed”, create a vivid image of events through descriptive language which generates an
atmosphere of suspense and terror. A sense of anxiety is created throughout the story, one such example
when the “uncertainty of what he was doing became unendurable” to the woman, the assonance in the
“uncertainty” and “unendurable” emphasising the anxiety. Additionally, the “knife”, repeatedly
mentioned, is a phallic symbol. Used by the swagman to intrude into the woman’s hut and her space, it
is symbolic of his desire and intention to sexually violate her. Eventually, he succeeds, raping and
murdering her, Baynton making a feminist point of emphasising the damaging ramifications of the
proliferation of sexual objectification, and thus confronting the sexual aspect of hypermasculine
patriarchal Australian identity. A distinction is made when it is revealed that “[the woman is] not afraid
of horsemen, but swagmen”, the more “Australian” of the two pointedly more fearsome. Her belief in
Australian civilians, the “horsemen”, is highlighted, yet when Hennessey ironically proves partially
responsible for her death, abandoning her due to his religious beliefs. Baynton implicitly suggests that
part of her demise was due to this accepted trust. Hennessey views the woman as a religious symbol,
disregarding her as “not [of] flesh and blood”, instead mistaking her “for the Virgin and Child of his
mother's prayers”, seeing her as a religious symbol and apparition, essentially objectifying her. As he
“[gallops]… away”, in the same sentence, he is described as once again a “good Catholic”. Characteristic
of Australian gothic texts and distinct from traditional gothic texts, the generic and language feature of
religious irony is employed heavily in this passage. The irony of the situation lies in Hennessy believing
that he is acting morally as a “good Christian”, whilst in reality being complicit in the clearly immoral
murder of a woman. Baynton, through the manipulation of Australian gothic generic devices, makes a
point of highlighting both the explicit faults in the hypermasculine aspects of the Australian identity and
the societies that subscribe to it, as well as the greater proportion of seemingly innocent people who
indirectly contribute to the patriarchy in their complicity, conveying her feminist way of thinking about
Australia through the manipulation of Australian realism generic features.

Through the manipulation of language features including symbolism and imagery, as well as generic
features of Australian realism, female gothic, and Australian gothic, differing ways of thinking about
Australia, specifically women in conjunction with the Australian identity are conveyed, a nationalistic way
of thinking present in The Drover’s Wife by Henry Lawson and a feminist way of thinking present in
Barbara Baynton’s The Chosen Vessel. Parallels can be drawn as the women of both texts are shaped by
the Australia around them, be it strengthened by the Australian environment and the dangers it holds or
destroyed by the Australian people and the unique terrors they elicit. Drastically different in their
portrayals of Australian living despite surface similarities, both works have proven highly influential with
time, to this day still able to evoke questions from readers about Australia and the Australian identity.
Amy Shang