What are the major themes of women’s writing in Australia? Discuss with examples

The male writers of this period showed an inclination to portray men as heroic, hardworking, and thus responsible for Australia’s growth and development. The women were, as a result, often depicted as subordinate, weak and dependent upon the men for protection and their livelihood. In some of the plays, poems or novels of this period the Aborigines were presented as “half human, stupid, amoral, and unworthy of consideration”.

Later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we see women writers such as Judith Wright, Beverly Kingston, Ruth Teale, Kay Daniels, Barbara Baynton, Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner, Kylie Tenant, Christina Stead, Katherine Susannah Prichard, Sally Morgan and Glenyse Ward narrating their experiences in the Australian society. In his review of women’s writing in Australia. Hawthorne (1 14-122) critically looks at their place in the larger Australian society and argues for its consideration as central rather than ‘marginal’ in the understanding of an emerging culture in Australia.