THE ENGLISH

NOVEL
 syllabus
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)

• Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)

• Richard Flanagan, Wanting (2008)

• Peter Carey, Jack Maggs (1997)

The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force
people to love life in all its innumerable, inexhaustible manifestations. If I
were told I could write a novel in which I should set forth the apparently
correct attitudes towards all social questions, I would not devote even
two hours of work to such a novel, but if I were told that what I shall
write will be read in twenty years by the children of today and that they
will weep and smile over it and will fall in love with life, I would devote all
my life and all my strength to it.

(Tolstoy, Letters)
Lo scopo dell’arte non è quello di risolvere i problemi, ma di
costringere la gente ad amare la vita. Se mi dicessero che posso
scrivere un libro in cui mi sarà dato di dimostrare per vero il mio
punto di vista su tutti i problemi sociali, non perderei un’ora per
un’opera del genere. Ma se mi dicessero che quello che scrivo sarà
letto tra vent’anni da quelli che ora sono bambini, e che essi
rideranno, piangeranno e s’innamoreranno della vita sulle mie
pagine, allora dedicherei a quest’opera tutte le mie forze.

(L. Tolstoj, Lettere)
“When future generations look back upon the Great Derangement they
will certainly blame the leaders and politicians of this time for their
failure to address the climate crisis. But they may well hold artists and
writers equally culpable—for the imagining of possibilities is not, after
all, the job of politicians and bureaucrats”.

Amitav Ghosh (The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the

Unthinkable)  
“Quando le generazioni future si volgeranno a guardare la Grande
Cecità, certo biasimeranno i leader e i politici della nostra epoca per la
loro incapacità di affrontare la crisi climatica. Ma potrebbero giudicare
altrettanto colpevoli gli artisti e gli scrittori, perché dopotutto non
spetta ai politici e ai burocrati immaginare altre possibilità.”

(Amitav Ghosh. La grande cecità: Il cambiamento climatico e

l'impensabile)
 Victorian age

Queen Vittoria (1819-1901)

Queen Victoria’s reign 1837-1901

- increasing the number of colonies

- implementing free trade policies that contribute to the creation of the

capitalist model on a global scale,

- and consolidating the wealth which follows the industrial revolution.

Steam
 SS Great Britain
(1843)

Isambard Kindgom Brunel

(1806-1859)
 Charles Dickens
(1812-1870)

The Pickwick Papers

(published in 19 installments between
1836 e 1837)
 Hard Times [Tempi Difficili]
published in1854
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that
would have been red if the smoke and ashes
had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a
town of unnatural red and black like the
painted face of a savage. It was a town of
machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed
themselves for ever and ever, and never got
uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river
that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast
piles of building full of windows where there
was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and
where the piston of the steam-engine worked
monotonously up and down, like the head of
an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.
Era una città di mattoni rossi, o meglio, di mattoni
che sarebbero stati rossi, se fumo e cenere lo
avessero consentito. Così come stavano le cose,
era una città di un rosso e di un nero innaturale,
come la faccia dipinta di un selvaggio; una città
piena di macchinari e di alte ciminiere dalle quali
uscivano, snodandosi ininterrottamente,
interminabili serpenti di fumo. C’era un canale
nero e c’era un fiume violaceo per le tinture
maleodoranti che vi si riversavano. Vasti
agglomerati di edifici pieni di finestre che
tintinnavano e tremavano tutto il giorno; a
Coketown gli stantuffi delle macchine a vapore si
alzavano e si abbassavano con moto regolare e
incessante come la testa di un elefante in preda a
una follia malinconica.
Queen Victoria -- 1837

- Monarchy in decline
- Rich / poor
- Tory / Whig
- Social conflicts
social conflicts, tensions

- 1838, beginning of the Chartist movement (English social-political movement. It

took its name from the People’s Charter in which the Chartists called for universal
male suffrage, voting by secret ballot, annual Parliament, benefits for members of
Parliament, numerically equal constituencies, and the abolition of the census)

- the anti-corn laws league

 the sun never set on the British Empire

Queen Victoria → Empress of the Indies

(1876)
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg
and Gotha
(1819-1861)

1840-1861
Great Exhibition -- 1851
 civilizing mission

• Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859)

• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
 Thomas Macaulay
“Minute on Indian education”
(1835)

«[…] formare una classe che possa
fungere da interprete tra noi [il
potere coloniale] e i milioni di
individui sui quali governiamo;
una classe di individui indiani nel
sangue e nel colore della pelle, ma
inglesi nei gusti, nelle opinioni,
nella morale e nell’intelletto».
«[…] to form a class who may be
interpreters between us and the
millions whom we govern,  --a
class of persons Indian in blood
and colour, but English in tastes, in
opinions, in morals and in
intellect».
“How and when did
Australia begin?”

Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia

Settlement
or
invasion?
One version of the country’s origins
→ at the end of the eighteenth century when the English naval
lieutenant James Cook
sailed (with his famous Endeavour)
the eastern coast in 1770, named it

New South Wales

and claimed possession in the name of his monarch, King

George III
On 26 January 1788,
Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, comprising 11 ships and around
1050 people (about 700 convicts), arrived at Botany Bay.
crowded and unhealthy gaols

particularly those in
the old hulks of
vessels
moored on the
Thames.
The convicts were transported to the antipodes
“for the term of their natural life”
(never to return to Britain)

Between 1788 and 1850 the English sent

over 162,000 convicts to Australia in 806
ships.
So for a long time the origins of the Australian nation
had been considered as dating back to the end of the
eighteenth century when the Europeans arrived on the
continent and found a thriving expanse which appeared
to the first colonizers a terra nullius, an empty space
with no trace of human occupation.
TERRA NULLIUS ??!
The second version of Australian history
is the one that begins not in 1788 but at least 40,000
and possibly 60,000 or more years ago when the
Australian Aborigines arrived there.

It is reasonable to assume that they left south-eastern

Asia and travelled to Australia through the Indonesian
and Melanesian Islands
There were approximately 300,000 Aborigines living in
Australia in 1788 when the Europeans arrived,
• divided into over 500 tribes,
each with their own distinct territory, history, dialect and
culture.

There were also some 500 distinct languages, including

dialects, spoken by Aborigines at the time of European
contact.
Pidgin has become the lingua franca (a language
adopted as a common language between speakers
whose native languages are different. A system for
mutual understanding) among most Aboriginal tribes,
resulting in a subsequent decline in intellectual insights,
due to the reduced number of words available.
 Pidgin
is essentially a practical language devised for communication with
their European overlords.
It has none of the linguistic subtlety of indigenous language, and so is
a poor vehicle for expressing the old myths with which earlier
generations were so familiar.
 Aborigines
All Aboriginal communities were semi-nomadic hunters and
gatherers.
The equipment of the Aborigines was particularly limited.

This material poverty has led to the mistaken impression that, as the
white man uses so many, and the Aborigines so few tools with
which to gain a livelihood, the Aborigines must have the lesser
intelligence.
 Aborigines

•Dreamtime

•Land
Soon after the first fleet arrived intermittent conflict
with the Aborigines began. With their superior
weapons the Europeans were easily able to
dispossess the Aborigines.
 ‘Stolen Generation’
a phenomenon which characterized relationships between the
government and Aborigines in Australia for much of the 20th century.

→ Aboriginal children being taken from their families as the

authorities believed it was ‘for their own good’
In fact as far back as 1814 New South Wales Governor Lachlan
Macquarie had established a “Native Institution” at
Parramatta and began forcibly removing children, placing
them in this “Institution” in order to educate them, teach
them vocational skills and Christianize them.

By the 1890s, in New South Wales, the Aboriginal Protection

Board developed a policy of segregation.

But the idea, behind these actions aimed at guaranteeing the

welfare and the future of the Aboriginal communities, was in
reality linked to the suppression of their culture in order to
facilitate their assimilation into British culture.
A.O. Neville, Chief Protect in Western Australia from 1915
to 1936
believed very strongly in the removal of part Aboriginal children as a
means of benefiting the whole community:

the chief hope … of doing our human duty by the outcast is to take the
children young and bring them up in a way that will establish their
self-respect, make them useful units in the community and fit to live in
it, according to its standards.

A.O. Neville, The West Australian, 1938.

 …they cannot be left as they are, I want to give
these children a chance, I want to make them fit
and able to work on stations. Unless these
children are removed, social conditions in those
places would go from bad to worse. I want to
teach them right from wrong.

A.O. Neville
In 1909 in New South Wales with the Aboriginal
Protection Act the reserves were abolished and a
policy of assimilation was started.
Peter Read in his report on Stolen Generations
states that only in New South Wales more than
5000 children were removed from their families
and granted to Australian institutions between
1883 and 1969.
This practice continued until the early 1970s, and
was only fully brought to public attention with the
release of the Bringing Them Home report in 1997,
a report on the two year National Inquiry into the
Separation of Indigenous Children from Their
Families.

The inquiry started after the 1994 Going Home

Conference which took place in Darwin and which
represents a key turning point.
• Thousands of Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their
families or their families were ‘tricked’ into giving them up.

• The policy was definitely aimed at ‘breeding out’ Aboriginality,

because only half and quarter caste children were taken.

• Whilst some gained opportunities, education and a materially

better life, the vast majority went to missions, orphanages or
children’s homes where they were poorly treated and suffered
identity crises and mental anguish.

• Many of the Aboriginal people who today are alcoholics, drug

addicts, psychologically damaged or imprisoned were ‘stolen’
children, and continue to suffer the effects of the destruction of
their identity, family life and culture.
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Rabbit-Proof Fence is a
powerful film based on the
true story and experiences of
three young Aboriginal girls,
Molly, Gracie and Daisy, who
were forcibly taken from their
families in Jigalong, Western
Australia in 1931. The film is
based on the book, Follow the
Rabbit-Proof Fence written by
Doris Pilkington Garimara,
Molly’s daughter.
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Breeding blackness out
 “history wars”
one version which emphasises a successful
European settlement versus
another which has been decried as a “Black
Armband” view, a view much more inclined to tell
the wrongs of the past.
• the origin of the nation as a penal colony and its
consequences in the formative process of
Australianness
• the modality of appropriation of the land, the
consequent conflict with the Aboriginal peoples
and the relationship of both settlers and
Indigenous Australians with that land
• the creation of a founding national mythology
• the retrieval of the Aboriginal voice and the
‘restoration’ of Aboriginal people’s place within
Australian history
1) the origin of the nation as a penal colony and its consequences in the formative
process of Australianness

Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish

Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) (2001)
2) the modality of appropriation of the land, the consequent conflict with the
Aboriginal peoples and the relationship of both settlers and Indigenous Australians
with that land
Remembering Babylon
by David Malouf (1993)
 Kate Grenville
trilogy about early Australia

The Secret River (2005) The Lieutenant (2008) Sarah Thornhill (2011)
3) the creation of a founding national mythology
Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)

Sidney Nolan - Ned Kelly, 1946National Gallery of

Australia, Canberra.
4) the retrieval of the Aboriginal voice and the ‘restoration’ of Aboriginal people’s
place within Australian history

Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance (2010) Larissa Behrendt’s Home (2004)
Australia’s bicentenary years
(1988)

the Mabo Judgement (1992)

200th anniversary of British settlement
1988
 W.E.H. Stanner
“The Great Australian Silence”
(Boyer Lectures, 1968)

150 year gap in Aboriginal history

“a melancholy anthropological footnote”

(La Nauze, 1959: 11)
 Manning Clark
“Now we are beginning to take the blinkers off our eyes. Now we are
ready to face the truth about our past, to acknowledge that the coming
of the British was the occasion of three great evils: the violence against
the original inhabitants of the country, the Aborigines; the violence
against the first European Labor force in Australia, the convicts; and the
violence done to the land itself.” (Clark, 1988: 12).
 Geoffrey Blainey

“largely the story of violence, exploitation, repression, racism, sexism,

capitalism, colonialism and a few other isms”
(Blainey in 2003: 110).
 ‘black armband view of history’

“the swing of the pendulum from a position that had

been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an
opposite extreme that is even more unreal and
decidedly jaundiced” (Blainey, 1993: 10).
• Blainey (Howard Government (1996-2007)

• Clark (Keating Government (1991- 1996)

Land Rights
Mabo Judgement – 1992

Eddie Mabo (Meriam Aboriginal

community of the Murray Islands,
on Torres Strait)
Mabo, 2012
Justices Deane and Gaudron

“a national legacy of unutterable shame”

(Deane and Gaudron in Blainey, 1997: 22)

 Paul Keating
“We took the traditional lands and smashed the original way of life. We
brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We
took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and
exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice.”

(Keating in Ryan, 1995: 228)

 John Howard
I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic
achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which
we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed. In saying that I do
not exclude or ignore specific aspects of our past where we are rightly
held to account. Injustices were done in Australia and no-one should
obscure or minimise them. But in understanding these realities our
priority should not be to apportion blame and guilt for historic wrongs but
to commit to a practical program of action that will remove the enduring
legacies of disadvantage (Howard, 1996: 9).
 Kevin Rudd
“There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must
become fully reconciled to their past, if they are to go forward with
confidence to embrace their future. Our nation, Australia, has reached
such a time. That is why the parliament is today here assembled: to deal
with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from
the nation’s soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new
chapter in the history of this great land, Australia. [...] It is time to say
sorry. It is time to move forward together.”
 Stolen Generations
Such a practice involved a three-step process, the aim of which
was to absorb and dilute Aboriginal blood and color into the white
population:
•the forced removal of “mixed-descent” children from their
families,
•the regulation of marriage among “half-castes,”
•and the encouragement of intermarriage with the white
community (Huggan 97).
 Mark McKenna
Since Stanner’s Boyer lectures in ’68 we’ve had almost 40 years of
a considerable and still growing body of historical scholarship
devoted to understanding the history of the frontier. The time for
speaking of this history as one that’s been kept silent has past.
Aboriginal history is no longer the silent place in Australian history.
It is now a very real presence in our social and political fabric, it’s
an uncomfortable presence but it is nonetheless a presence and
not a silence (McKenna, 2005).