“The Drover’s Wife” is the most popular and well-known Australian short story. Published in 1892, it tells the struggles and the hardships of a woman, alone with four children and a dog, in an isolated hut in the bush. The protagonist has become the epitome of the Australian bush women of the late XIXth century, whose daily life was a battle against nature, savage animals and men that were even more savage. In 1945, one of the most celebrated Australian artists, the painter Russell Drysdale, translated the story, which is an example of unadorned realism, into an almost naïf picture, where a stout woman occupies the whole foreground, reducing her husband, the drover of the title, almost to a speck in the background. Inspired by the Drysdale’s painting, thirty years later Murray Bail rewrote the story from the point of view of a man who recognizes his wife in the woman of the picture. It is a hilarious re-writing, always on the verge of parody. In 1980, Frank Moorhouse wrote another short story by the same title, which is both an iconoclastic homage to Lawson and an outrageous satire against the academic myth of the bush. Even though at least other two rewritings of Lawson’s story have appeared later (Barbara Jeffries feminist viewpoint in 1980 and Damien Broderick’s tale from the point of view of the dog, in 1991), and it has been adapted for TV (1968) and theatre (2016), I will concentrate on Bail’s and Moorhouse’s works. While analyzing how their relation with Lawson’s classic masterpiece has been influenced and mediated by Drysdale’s visual rendering, on the Bail’s case, and by the interpretations of generations of critics, on the other, I stress the peculiarity of these two absolutely funny re-writings of a hugely dramatic story.

Silvia Albertazzi (2019). Tre mogli nel bush (per tacer del cane). Milano-Udine : Mimesis.

Tre mogli nel bush (per tacer del cane)

Silvia Albertazzi
2019

Abstract

“The Drover’s Wife” is the most popular and well-known Australian short story. Published in 1892, it tells the struggles and the hardships of a woman, alone with four children and a dog, in an isolated hut in the bush. The protagonist has become the epitome of the Australian bush women of the late XIXth century, whose daily life was a battle against nature, savage animals and men that were even more savage. In 1945, one of the most celebrated Australian artists, the painter Russell Drysdale, translated the story, which is an example of unadorned realism, into an almost naïf picture, where a stout woman occupies the whole foreground, reducing her husband, the drover of the title, almost to a speck in the background. Inspired by the Drysdale’s painting, thirty years later Murray Bail rewrote the story from the point of view of a man who recognizes his wife in the woman of the picture. It is a hilarious re-writing, always on the verge of parody. In 1980, Frank Moorhouse wrote another short story by the same title, which is both an iconoclastic homage to Lawson and an outrageous satire against the academic myth of the bush. Even though at least other two rewritings of Lawson’s story have appeared later (Barbara Jeffries feminist viewpoint in 1980 and Damien Broderick’s tale from the point of view of the dog, in 1991), and it has been adapted for TV (1968) and theatre (2016), I will concentrate on Bail’s and Moorhouse’s works. While analyzing how their relation with Lawson’s classic masterpiece has been influenced and mediated by Drysdale’s visual rendering, on the Bail’s case, and by the interpretations of generations of critics, on the other, I stress the peculiarity of these two absolutely funny re-writings of a hugely dramatic story.
2019
Interartes. Diegesi migranti
353
368
Silvia Albertazzi (2019). Tre mogli nel bush (per tacer del cane). Milano-Udine : Mimesis.
Silvia Albertazzi
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/702161
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