The Importance of Ideals of Australian Male Marriage - Essay Example

?Mateship Mateship has often been regarded as primary value of Australia and epitome of Australian national identity. The term emerged in the second half of the 19th century “it derives from the word 'mate`, used in Australian English as a synonym for 'cobber`, which denotes a habitual companion, associate, friend or partner” (Wilde, 1994). Mateship, which implies strong bonds between equal friends or partners, has been embedded to the Australian legend and associated with comradeship, egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism. It denotes exclusively male partnership and excludes women. However, in the 1890’s the term was used in several contexts and linked with the bush and Australiannes. Henry Lawson has often been celebrated as one of the pioneering figures of the Australian male “mateship” ideal. Meanwhile, women writers of the late 19th century like Barbara Baynton, Miles Franklin and to some extent Rosa Praed, have been recognized as subversive or ambivalent figures with regard to the mateship. The aim of this paper is to compare the ways in which ‘mateship’ figures in the Works of Miles Franklin, Henry Lawson, Barbara Baynton, Rosa Praed. Australians embraced the notion of mateship to an extent that it was recently suggested to add a specific reference to the mateship within Australian constitution, as it has become a part of the national ideology (Page, 2002, 193). The writings of Henry Lawson heavily contributed to the formulation of mateship ideal in the late 19th century. The defining characteristic of his mateship notion underscored helping your mate in times of adversity and hardship. Unconditional solidarity exists between mates. The fraternity between mates has a vital importance for men who struggle to survive in the Australian bush. Lawson’s short story, “A Sketch of Mateship”, delineates his understanding of mateship. In this story Bill and Jim, professional shearers are two mates, who are heading to Bourke in order to sell their horses. They make an agreement, Bill goes back to fetch Jim’s horse and Jim, who is better in business deals, sells Bill’s horse. However, he loses Bill’s money in gambling. Bill, despite Jim’s utter failing, do not get angry with him and even lends him money. The story ends with the narrator’s following note: “Now it strikes me that if this had happened in a civilized country (like England) Bill would have had Jim arrested and jailed for larceny as a bailee, or embezzlement, or whatever it was. And would Bill or Jim or the world have been any better for it?” (Lawson, 1902, “The Skecth of Mateship”). Nevertheless, the story gives ambivalent and paradoxical messages about the nature of mateship. On the one hand, you stand by your mate whatever happens even when he does not fulfil his obligations; on the other hand it shows that your mate may not back you up. From this story, it is difficult to understand how mateship is egalitarian when your mate can easily sell you out. It is also not clear that, how you can trust your mate in times of adversity, when you cannot trust him even with your money. In this story, it seems like mateship is a one-sided bond, in which you support your mate unconditionally while he can easily bail you out. In Lawson’s exclusively male stories of mateship, women are excluded. Lawson excludes females from the world of mateship and treats them as wives or burdens. Marriage and family responsibilities drain men’s freedom. In his stories, there is no place for women in the difficult conditions of the bush. For him, females are weaker and cannot survive in the bush. “The Drover’s Wife” exemplifies his one of the rare heroines and an Australian bush girl. Although she is strong and survives many hardships, she is still not allowed into the bush. She only makes small walks by the bush, while waiting his husband who struggles in the bush. While Lawson excluded women from the bush and the world of masculine mateship, women writers of the late 19th century (Baynton, Franklin and Praed) sought to include woman into the bush and the world of masculine mateship. In her story “Squeaker’s Mate”, Barbara Baynton, points out the paradoxical nature of mateship with her ironical treatment of the subject. Similar to Lawson’s “The Sketch of Mateship”, “ Squeaker’s Mate” tells the story of two mates, in which one mate bails the other one out. However, the basic difference between Lawson’s and Baynton’s stories is that one of the mates is a woman in Baynton’s story. Baynton radically alters the notion of mateship between two males and incorporates women into the non-idealized version of mateship. Furthermore, the squeaker’s mate suffers a much bigger tragedy than Lawson’s hero Bill, who had only lost his money. In Baynton’s story her mate leaves him with a broken spine. Her story shows that the relationship between two mates was far from being egalitarian, as she was the one doing the entire job. Baynton begins her story with a hint showing the non-egalitarian nature of their mateship. While she carries the much heavier tools, he only had the lighter and cleaner stuff: “The woman carried the bag with the axe and maul and wedges; the man had the billy and clean tucker-bags; the cross-cut saw linked them” (Baynton, “Squeaker’s Mate, 1902). The cross-cut saw links them, symbolizes the precarious nature of their bond. The extreme tolerance that she shows him with regard to his failings comes with a big price: a broken spine. He lets her down in every opportunity. Even after she’s paralyzed, he smokes his pipe and eats his lunch as if nothing happened. Later on he sells her sheep and makes her live in a small hut with a dog. In both Lawson and Baynton stories, one mate is weaker than the other, and the weaker one bails out the stronger one. However, different than Lawson’s story, the stronger mate is a woman in Baynton’s story. In Banyton’s story, mateship seems more like a system of colonial exploitation, in which one mate exploits the other in the name of friendship. Furthermore, after reading this story, one might think that if the definition of mateship could be extended to man/woman bonds. Nevertheless, it seems that women might be regarded as mates only at the expense of their womanhood and feminine traits. Indeed, “squeaker’s mate” never displays any feminine qualities; she even acts manlier than his male counterpart, she’s also stronger and tougher than her mate. Thus, it could be said that women might be considered as mates only if they perform masculine gender roles. No femininity is allowed in the Australian bush. Baynton’s ironical story also reveals man’s inhumanity to his woman mate even if they acted more like a man than woman. Similar to Barbara Baynton, In My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin also shows ambivalent feelings towards the idea of mateship developed by Lawson. Both Baynton and Franklin treats Lawson’s mateship ideal ironically. Like Baynton, Franklin portrays the world of mateship, which excludes women and prizes masculine values as it is espoused by Lawson. Sybylla’s companionship with her father might be considered within the category of mateship. Her father addresses Sybylla as his “little mate” at the very beginning of her book and says “Daddy's little mate isn't going to turn Turk like that, is she?” (Franklin, 1901). This memory constitutes the first recollection of Sybylla and implies her future struggle with the stereotypical gender roles. Indeed, while her mother worries that she will be a tomboy; her father supports her unconventional ways: "let her alone. The rubbishing conventionalities which are the curse of her sex will bother her soon enough. Let her alone!” (Franklin, 1901). His father seems to be an unconventional man, who criticizes stereotypical gender roles and extend the definition of mateship to women, if not to females. She needs to act like a tomboy in order to be considered as an equal “mate”. Miles Franklin’s heroine, Sybylla, is also a mannish character like Baynton’s unnamed “Squeaker’s mate”; however, she is more active and talkative than Baynton’s silent character. In the late 19th century, women seem to have faced a difficult to dilemma: act like a man in order to be considered as an equal and sacrifice your femininity or embrace your femininity at the expense of being treated as inferior. Miles Franklin chooses the first option and embraces herself as a tomboy. She is even surprised when Harold Beecham proposes marriage to her: “I was nothing but a tomboy—and, cardinal disqualification, I was ugly. Why, then, had he proposed matrimony to me?” (Franklin, 1901). She rejects his offer and even whips the guy knowing that she did a very “unwomanly thing”. However, her actions are rather ambivalent towards him, until her final rejection. She also seems ambivalent with regard to her gender. She sometimes calls herself as a poor woman and sometimes as a person who earns bread like men. Sometimes she defines herself as a “proud Australian” and sometimes as a “little bush commoner” and “only a woman”. Finally, she rejects his proposal for good on the grounds that she is not good enough to be his wife. Furthermore, while “squeker’s mate” is almost like a man, Sybylla is just a tomboy. However, in both Franklin’s and Bayton’s works heroines compensates some of their feminine qualities in order to be included in Lawson’s mateship ideal. In Baynton’s story, her heroine is almost turned into a man, while in Franklin’s account she is a tomboy who regrets that she is not a man. Both women writers sacrifices a degree of their heroines’ femininity in order to be included in Lawson’s world of mateship, designed exclusively for men. Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career has often been celebrated as one of the champions of bush realism and proto-nationalist ideology. Even Lawson in the preface of the book appraised “descriptions of bush life and scenery” that made the book, according to him, “true to Australia—the truest I have ever read” and his conviction is shared by many contemporary commentators (Franklin, 1901). Nevertheless, the plot of My Brilliant Career seems rather romantic than realistic. Her few bush descriptions are followed by her encounters with Harold Beecham. She refers to the bush for the first time rather metaphorically; she says that her ambition “was as boundless as the mighty bush” than descriptively. The second time she alludes to bush is also in a figurative fashion as she calls “the weird witchery of mighty bush”. The third time, bush is referred rather symbolically as Mr. Grey feels pity for her wasted artistic talents in the bush. Fourth reference is the same. It is difficult to find genuine bush descriptions in the book. While she is ambivalent towards her own gender and feels sorry for being a woman, she praises and idealizes the bushmen constantly, at least, she is consistent with their descriptions. She describes farmer bushmen as “honest, good-natured, respectable”. Harold was also described as an “experienced bushman”, yet she eventually rejects him. She ends her rather twisted plot with the idealizations of Australian men and women. She praises Australian men for being courageous, good-natured, strong, hard-working, strong in the face of hardships, yet still cheerful. While she resents that she is only a woman, excluded from the exclusively male world; she idealizes the bushmen. Similar to Baynton, she represents the tragedy of women in the late 19th century struggling to find a place in the masculine public sphere. The very struggle makes Franklin to question her own gender and sexuality and throws her out of balance both psychologically and sexually. She can neither be a truly man and a mate nor a woman and wife. In a sense, she lives in a purgatory, stuck between two worlds. Her tragic account also shows the difficulty of incorporating women into the world of male mateship. Even though she quits performing the feminine gender role, she still feels “only a woman” in the world which belongs to the tall, big, independent and sun-burnt bushmen and “the world was made for men” (Franklin, My Brilliant Career). Both women writers, Franklin and Baynton, reveal the difficulties of women who wanted to be part of the men’s world in the late 19th century and still their writings challenge Lawson’s ideal of mateship. In contrast to Franklin and Baynton, Rosa Praed creates a truly feminine character who survives in the men’s world. Rosa Praed’ s heroine in Fugitive Anne: A Romance of the Unexplored Bush offers a stark contrast to the heroines of both Barbara Baynton and Miles Franklin. Mrs. Anne Bedo is neither a tomboy like Sybylla nor she tries to be a man like Squeaker’s mate. She is both strong and feminine. She seems very content with her womanhood and feminine qualities, yet she is still a Bush girl and celebrates it: “Oh! It's good to be back in the old country; and the whiff of the gum--trees makes a woman of me once more. No, not all the musical academies of London and Paris could change me from what I am, a Bush girl to the bones of me” (Praed, 1902)). Different than Franklin’s Sybylla, who hates the fact that she is a woman; Praed’s heroine is even happy that she feels like a woman again. However, similar to both Franklin and Baynton’s characters, Anne still exemplifies the concept of “the Australian Girl” which emerged in the late 19th century as a response to the masculine mateship culture. The figure of Australian girl offers a contrast to the colonialist middle class English girls. As Tanya Dalziell notes : “the Australian Girl was attractive and young, and she entertained a healthy resistance to Victorian prescriptions for white feminine propriety” (2003, 20). Anne, like Sybylla and Squeaker’s mate, is also resistant to the stereotypical gender roles; she escapes from his royal but brutal husband and embarks upon a dangerous journey to the bush. Yet, different from Sybylla and Squeaker’s mate, she still celebrates her womanhood. In Chapter IV, “The Black Boy and Lascar”, the narrator disguises Anne as a lascar. She dresses like a young lascar and the narrator refers to Anne as “he” at the beginning of the chapter, then discloses that the young lascar is actually the heroine, who is crossdressed. Praed makes her dress like a man so that she could seem like a mate. She and Kombo, her aboriginal servant, travels in the bush and they seem like “mates”. It is clear that Anne assumes a masculine persona in order to escape from his husband and travel in the bush. Anne dresses like a man in or her clothes in order to be considered as a mate and survive in the bush, which represents men’s world. Although she is dressed like a man and underneath the cover she still has feminine clothes, albeit soiled and dirty. Still, the narrator highlights her feminine qualities: “She contemplated ruefully the scratches on her ankles, over which the blood had dried and caked with the dust of the Bush, and gave a very feminine shudder.” (Praed, 1902). She is weary, dirty and her clothes were torn; but she is still very feminine, even her shudder is feminine. She combs her hair and washes her face and is sensitive to the feminine appurtenances even in the bush. Anne’s feminine traits as a mate and companion of a man in the bush, offer stark contrast to the predominantly masculine female characters of Baynton and Franklin. Still, Anne, similar to other female characters acts like a man in order to be considered as a mate and covers up her femininity so that she could survive in the bush. Kombo and Anne travels together in the bush, they seem like mates at first sight. However, their mateship differs from Lawson’s ideal of mateship. Nevertheless, their “mateship”, if it is a mateship at all, is far from being an egalitarian one. While Lawson’s ideal of mateship is egalitarian and non-authoritarian, Anne and Kombo’s companionship seems to be based on authoritarian configuration. Anne makes Kombo do the most of the work. The narrator also refers to her as the “leader of the expedition”. The narrator’s comment reveals the authoritarian nature of their relationship, which is different than Lawson’s formulation. Even in the bush, they still keep the roles of master and slave. However, they have a strong bond, which puzzles Anne and the bushmen: It had been a puzzle to Anne herself; it was a puzzle also to the bushmen who knew of it, and who had no experience of so deep an attachment between black boy and white woman.” In Fugitive Anne, Rosa Praed transforms the male to male bond between mates into a white woman-black boy bond, without making her heroine sacrifice femininity. Nevertheless, she compensates the gender inequality by making her male mate inferior and subordinate in terms of class and race, which is unthinkable in the case of Lawson, who considered mates as equals. In Praed, it is not a mateship bond between two equal individuals. While Kombo is actually a free man, he still attaches himself to her former mistress. Anne is more calculating than him; she hides a pistol from Kombo. The pistol symbolizes her superiority over the boy. It also shows how she synthesizes feminine cunning with the masculine power. She also knows very well how to use a pistol. Feminine and masculine qualities go hand in hand in Anne’s character. Different from Franklin and Baynton, Praed manages to create a feminine character , who can still subvert the gender roles and exist in the world of masculine mateship. Nevertheless, different than Baynton and Franklin, her work is not realistic and seems like a fairy tale rather than a realistic account of the bush. Lastly, different from Lawson, the mateship bond she created between Anne and Kombo is not equal. To sum up, while Henry Lawson contributed to the creation of the Australian Legend, exclusively male tradition of mateship, which means solid solidarity between males struggling in the bush; the women writers of the 19th century, namely Baynton, Franklin and Praed, challenged his notion and tried to include Australian bush girl into the mateship ideal, written and imagined by men. However, mateship seems more like an ideal-type or a myth rather than a realistic account. Barbara Baynton’s and Miles Franklin’s ironical treatment of the subject illustrates both the difficulty of incorporating a female character into a male legend, and the illusion of mateship ideal. In My Brilliant Career and “Squeaker’s Mate”, we see how difficult for a woman to be included in the man’s world of mateship, even if she acts like a male. Different than Franklin and Baynton, In Fugitive Anne, Rosa Praed seems to have created a truly feminine character who survives in the bush and who still acts like a mate to Kombo, but at the expense of realism. In her fairy tale, Anne is a romantic character who combines the best qualities of males and females, her cunning disguise allows her to be accepted as a mate. Furthermore, in contrast to Lawson’s ideal of mateship, Praed presents an unequal bond between man/woman mates. Hence, it is difficult to conceive an equal man/woman mateship, unless a woman sacrifices her feminine qualities or without making a lower class boy subordinate to a woman. References Baynton, B. (1902) “Squeker’s Mate”.Retrieved from http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100141.txt. Dalziell, T. (2003) “As Unconscious and Gay as a Trout in a Stream?: Turning the Trope of the Australian Girl” Feminist Review, No. 74, 17-34. Franklin, M. (1901). My Brilliant Career. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11620/pg11620.html Lawson, H. (1902) “A Sketch of Mateship”. Retrieved from http://www.telelib.com/authors/L/LawsonHenry/prose/sendroundthehat/sketchmateship.html. Page, James S. (2002). ‘Is Mateship a Virtue?’ Australian Journal of Social Issues. 37(2), 193-200. Praed, R.C. (1902). Fugitive Anne: A Romance of the Unexplored Bush. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0607221h.html. Wilde H., Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews (1994) “'Mateship”  The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature.Oxford University Press . Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.   References Read More