Colonial feminism and Australian literary culture in Ethel and Lilian Turner's the Parthenon (1889–92)

The Parthenon is a unique example of a colonial Australian magazine published for girl readers by two aspirant writers, Ethel and Lilian Turner. In addition to its domestic content, typical of women's magazines, it also sought to contribute to nascent Australian literary culture. This article locates the Parthenon within the history of colonial women's publishing and literary culture, and situates its content within the context of the Woman Movement of the period. It reads the Parthenon's telling picture of young women's perceptions of colonial literary culture and of the need to balance literary aspirations with domestic responsibilities through the lens of the “expediency feminism” advocated by the Dawn, a women's magazine published by Louisa Lawson from 1888. The article argues that the Parthenon's superficially conservative opinion of women's supreme calling being in the home rather than the newspaper office or university library was in alignment with the arguments made by the Woman Movement to advocate for women's greater participation in the public sphere. The comparison of these contemporaneous monthly publications written and produced by women enables an understanding of the ways in which late nineteenth-century attempts to encourage women's careers and independence were grounded in domesticity.

Furphy as (metafictive) Aboriginal ethnographer

This paper investigates Furphy’s ethnographical writings on Aborigines in the short essays and paragraphs he wrote for the Bulletin and in one of his short stories. It also examines his representation of Toby, a part Aboriginal stockman in Such is Life, and concludes by examining one of the most difficult passages in a colonial era novel, his account of a Palmer River Aboriginal attack, cannibalism, and settler murder in The Buln-buln and the Brolga. These Aboriginal-focussed narratives are told as part of a suite of realistic tales by Barefooted Bob and Tom Collins, by way of counter-narrative to Fred Falkland Pritchard’s fantastical romance/action tales which belong to the ripping yarns/Boy’s Own tradition. The paper argues that, although the narrative method, in its refusal to editorialise, is uncharacteristically and unnervingly oblique, there is more than a little of Lilian Pritchard, the Lady Novelist, in Furphy himself and that the questions he puts into the mouth of the Lady Journalist about Aboriginal culture are probing and pungent.

Education and work in service of the nation: Canadian and Australian girls' fiction, 1908-1921

This chapter compares early twentieth-century Australian novels by Ethel Turner, Mary Grant Bruce, and Lilian Turner to Canadian novels by Nellie McClung and L.M. Montgomery to demonstrate important differences in attitudes towards education and work. Girls’ fiction in these white settler colonies has many similarities, containing strong ideals related to domesticity, education, employment, and femininity. In the Canadian fiction, attitudes towards women’s higher education and employement are generally much more positive. Although both Australian and Canadian girls’ fiction typically conclude with marriage, Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Nellie McClung’s Pearlie Watson are offered the opportunity to pursue higher education and use this education to teach others. In contrast, Lilian Turner’s Paradise and the Perrys, Ethel Turner’s Fair Ines, and Mary Grant Bruce’s ’Possum emphasise the importance of domesticity while also showing how girls sought to earn income without leaving home. Through our comparison of these Canadian and Australian novels, all published between 1908 and 1921, we demonstrate how the different feminine ideals embodied through these heroines are inevitably intertwined with the needs of the nation