Coonardoo by Katharine Prichard (First Published in 1925. These page references are to the A&R Classic Edition - 1994)
This page contains:
Ideas for Coonardoo for creative response or views and values
Some Questions to Begin Your Considerations
Biographical Notes on Katharine Prichard
Ideas for Coonardoo for CAT1 and CAT2
This could be a wonderful choice of text for CAT1 or CAT2. For CAT1 you could look at:
- Katharine Prichard's portrayal of outback Australia.
What kind of society do we see? What kind of structure and values does the society have? What role do the Aborigines have in outback station life? 'Coonardoo is detailed in its account of station life, the daily routine, the stores, the kitchen, the stockyard, the mustering, the Aborginal camp, the homestead verandah. (vii) You could almost call this a novel 'from the verandah'. Prichard seems sometimes an excited observer, watching it all with eager eyes. She seems to relish the exotic kind of life she's seeing and wants to record it accurately for us. Almost as an anthropological study at times, Prichard describes the strange rituals and dances in some detail, especially the rituals regarding sexual initiation. Mrs Bessie seems to think there is an element of crudity, cruelty and even sadism to some of these rituals. Does Prichard endorse this suspicion?
Prichard describes a harsh but beautiful landscape; perhaps she was ahead of her time in this kind of realization. It is a hierarchical society with a strong sense of order and routine, mostly tied to the seasons. The whites are unquestionably in charge and the blacks are located in the margins; still in a limbo between being part of the white society and retaining their own customs and traditions. Already we can see some of their traditional ways being eroded and already it seems that change seems irrevocable. In this way Prichard is describing a society which has two main racial groups, sometimes in conflict. She describes the exploitation of black women by white men ('black velvet') and seems to disapprove of it. She portrays a society than can accept sex beween a white man and a black woman, but was shocked by love. 'Cripes . . . A man doesn't love a gin, not a white man'. (223) She describes a society where gender roles are very set, but seems to approve and applaud Mrs Bessie's breaking of this mould. Mrs Bessie is strong, capable, adaptable, full of common-sense. But does she hav to become like a man to survive?
- What this text reveals about Katharine Prichard's own value system.
Drusilla Modjeska's introduction, which reveals her disquiet at this novel; 'Sixty years later, Coonardoo continues to make uncomfortable reading' (vi) But to what extent is this disquiet at Prichard's portrayal of 'forbidden love' and to what extent is it disquiet at Prichard's own assumptions and lack of questioning of the society she writes of with such fascination.
Prichard's own attitudes are complex and interesting. While you might approve of her approving view of the role of women. A woman running an outback station in the 1920s? An Aboriginal woman as the central character for a novel in the 1920s? These seem interesting and progressive ideas. Prichard values common sense and someone with a practical approach perhaps; their head screwed on properly. She seems to approve of a 'level-headed' approach and might be seen as endorsing Mrs Bessie's disapproval of the flighty, melancholy Jessica. She values strong, independent women and might be seen as valuing experience over 'book-learning'.
But what of Prichard's racial views? How closely do you see her views aligning with Mrs Bessie? What makes this text interesting in this way is the unstated assumptions about race could be questioned by us. Mrs Bessie will 'give' her Coonardoo away when it's time. Is Prichard surprised, but accepting of that attitude? And what of her attitude to sex. Is it the same strange mixture of fascinated revulsion, of disgust and also an awareness of some kind of semi-mystical beauty that Mrs Bessie has? We talked about washing in class too. How Hugh is first seen freshly showered. How Coonardoo washes herself before entering the white world. Is this a novel from the safety of the verandah?, looking down on the outback life, but separate, above it, detached. The ending is anything but detached, you cold argue. Kindness to blacks is good, she might be saying, but don't interfere. But does she realise the extent of interferance that the mere presence of the outback station provides? Or does she accept that without question?
- How do we react to this novel?
Reading any novel years after it has been published poses problems and challenges; how can we understand what that author meant? How are our reactions likely to be different from the kind of reactions the text engendered at the time? Prichard's book was, at the time, proressive, even radical. Society has changed a lot since then; is it fair to apply 1990s judgements to a book written in the 1920s?
Some sample contentions for CAT 1 that have proved effective in the past have been:
1. 'She had lived and worked like a man, so long in the Nor'West, without the least respect for the conventional ideas which hampered her in anything she wanted to do'Through the strength and instinctive natures of Mrs Bessie and Phyllis, Katharine Prichard endorses the idea that white women are just as capable of living in the outback as white men. In fact, the outward looking and self-reliant women have perhaps a greater ability to survive than the introverted and combative males.
2. In 'Coondardoo' it is possible to see an author who was, for her era, progressive and open minded towards the Aboriginal people. However, seventy years later, we are more likely to find fault in the racial values she accepts to unquestioningly and we become aware of her unconscious prejudices.
3. Strength, determination and will power, living unencumbered by weak and pathetic trivialities, relishing in the harsh, but magnificent Australian outback. Through the white female characters of Mrs Bessie, Phyllis and Jessica, Prichard expresses her approval of the independent over the flighty and the sentimental.
4. Set on the edge of the desert, on the fringe of white civilization, 'Coonardoo' is a powerful portrayal of the Aboriginal conditions in early 20th Century Australia. However, the assumptions Prichard makes in reference to the Aboriginal race, both conscious and unconscious, reveal atitudes that we, as modern day readers, are compelled to question.
5. Despite the relatively progressive nature of Prichard's attitudes for the time, what 'Coonardoo' reveals for the modern reader are her, perhaps unconscious, views that women and black are inferior to men and whites.
6. Through the events and characters of 'Coonardoo' Prichard powerfully illustrates the divided and hierarachical nature of 1920's outback society.
Click HERE for an Inspiration diagram illustrating some approaches to 'Coonardoo' for CAT 1.
For CAT2 one of the obvious approaches might be to fill in some of the gaps in the narrative. Coonardoo's own voice is missing as are many of the other Aboriginals. What might they be thinking at the white presence in their midst? What about the way the whites interfere in their customs or lives? The way Coonardoo herself is taken into the staion and enters a kind of twilight world between cultures. Other approaches are also possible. You might try to write down where the gaps are. Not just the gaps in the story, but the unspoken voices that don't get to have their say in this version.
[Thanks Natalia for providing me with your note here]
Some questions to begin your considerations:
- What do you think of Prichard's style? How would you describe her writing (don't just say 'detailed'!)
- Describe the character of Coonardoo; what qualities does Prichard give her that differentiate her from the rest of the 'blacks'?
- Highlight all the references to colour in the opening chapter; Prichard might be termed a visual writer and this novel has certain 'filmic' qualities that are worth making notes about.
- Do some research about Australian policies regarding Aborigines in the 1920s. Are such policies questioned or endorsed by this novel?
- Why might I call this a novel from the 'verandah'?
- What do you think Prichard's attitudes are to all 'that sexual business'?
Biographical Notes on Katharine Prichard
Katharine Susannah Prichard was born in Levuka, Fiji in 1883, the daughter of Tom Prichard, Editor of the Fiji Times. She grew up in Tasmania and then Melbourne, matriculating from South Melbourne College. After working as a governess in South Gippsland and the far west of New South Wales, she returned to Melbourne to teach. During this time she attended night lectures in English literature where she was taught by Walter Murdoch.
In 1908 she travelled to London, working as a freelance journalist for the Melbourne Herald and, on her return, worked as the social editor of the Herald's women's page. In 1912 she again left for England to pursue a career as a writer. During her four years in England she published two novels, The Pioneers (1915) and Windlestraws (1916), and met the Australian Victoria Cross winner, Captain Hugo Throssell. In 1919 she married Throssell and moved to Western Australia. By then she was a committed Communist and, in 1920, she became a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia. In 1922 she gave birth to her only son Ric Throssell. While she was on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1933 her husband committed suicide.
From the 1920s until her death in 1969 she lived at Greenmount, Western Australia, earning her living as a writer of novels, short stories and plays. Her novels include Black Opal, 1921; Working Bullocks, 1926; The Wild Oats of Han, 1928; Coonardoo, 1928; Haxby's Circus, 1929; Intimate Stangers, 1939; and the goldfields trilogy The Roaring Nineties, 1946; Golden Miles, 1948; and Winged Seeds, 1950. Prichard remained a member of the Communist Party of Australia until her death, with her political concerns being reflected in most of her published work. Her novels were published throughout the world and translated into numerous languages. In 1951 her international stature was recognised when she was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
References:
PRICHARD, K.S., Child of the hurricane [autobiography], Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1963.
THROSSELL, Ric, Wild weeds and wind flowers: the life and letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard, Sydney, A & R, 1975.
BEASLEY, Jack, The Rage for life: the work of Katharine Susannah Prichard, Sydney, 1964.
DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Henrietta, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1967.
MODJESKA, Drusilla, Exiles at home: Australian women writers, 1925-1945, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1981.
This information from: http://www.nla.gov.au/1/ms/find_aids/6201.html#bio National LIbrary holdings - Portrait of Katharine Prichard from the National Library image archive.
Coonardoo atUniversity Perspective
Coonardoo is often studied at university level, most often in terms of its attitudes regarding gender or race. Here's how one academic, Dr Susan Hosking, set the context for her course called 'CONTACT': ABORIGINAL/EUROPEAN ENCOUNTER IN AUSTRALIAN LITERARY AND CULTURAL TEXTS. It might help you in your own thinking about this text.
This subject will explore texts from what Mary Louise Pratt (Imperial Eyes, Routledge, 1992) calls "the contact zone" where peoples from previously separate cultures (in this case Australian Aboriginal and Western European cultures) come into contact and establish on-going relations. Texts studied will invite consideration of, for example, changing representations of Aboriginal people and their culture by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers and film makers, Aboriginal women's autobiography, detective fiction with Aboriginal themes, writing by Aboriginal authors in forms taken from Western literary traditions, literary revisions by Aboriginal writers of Australian history since Europ ean settlement, attempts by non-Aboriginal Australian writers to produce something equivalent to Aboriginal Dreaming or to express forms of spiritual attachment to the land, etc. While the subject inevitably will investigate conditions of radical inequality and conflict in the "contact zone", particular attention will also be paid to the emergence of literary hybrids or texts which occupy (often controversially) the interesting spaces between cultures. Questions of ownership and authenticity inevitably will be addressed, as will the problematics of defining "Aboriginality". Texts will include fiction, film and personal narratives.
The subject will be taught in weekly two-hour seminars and assessed on the basis of either an extended essay or a take-home examination paper.
