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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Madness, cruelty and sexuality permeate the house where she grew up, but Lilian's sights are set on education, love and - finally - her own transcendent forms of independence. Lilian Singer, who starts life at the beginning of the twentieth century as the daughter of a prosperous middle-class Australian family and ends it as a cheerfully eccentric bag-lady living on the streets, quoting Shakespeare for a living.
Adaptations
-
form
y
Lilian's Story
( dir. Jerzy Domaradzki
)
Australia
:
CML Productions
,
1995
Z1038867
1995
single work
film/TV
For forty years, Lilian Singer has been locked up in a mental hospital by her father. Her release is eventually secured and she walks out to a world unfamiliar to her in every way, seeking the love and affection she never got. Her story is told through a series of three flashbacks that reveal a beautiful and spirited young woman who was anything but insane. Old Lilian comes to terms with her life, quoting Shakespeare, stalking sexy bank tellers, buddying with prostitutes, and ultimately meeting her long-lost love.
Reading Australia
This work has Reading Australia teaching resources.
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 10 (NSW Stage 5)
Themes
desire, identity, independence, mental illness, post-Federation, sexuality, societal constraints
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Intercultural understanding, Literacy
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- braille
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
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Disability in Three Australian Gothic Novels : The Well, Sing Fox to Me and Lilian’s Story
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 37 no. 1 2022;'The Gothic lends itself to critical examinations of disabled embodiment, yet this genre has ‘hitherto been largely ignored’ by disability studies scholars (Gregory 291). This essay redresses this omission by exploring disability in three Australian Gothic novels: Elizabeth Jolley's The Well (1986), Sarah Kanake's Sing Fox to Me (2016), and Kate Grenville's Lilian’s Story (1985). On initial glance, The Well and Lilian’s Story conform to the use of disability in the Gothic as a metaphor for social and psychological deviance. However, closer inspection of these novels and Sing Fox to Me demonstrates their resistance to the Gothic’s typical use of disability in phobic ways. Hester’s disability in The Well enables her to transcend the gender prescriptions of her patriarchal Australian community, even if it is initially constructed as a physiological sign of her disturbing possessiveness over Katherine. Against the ‘dramatic and unforgiving natural settings’ of the Tasmanian Gothic (Bullock 72), Sing Fox to Me interweaves Samson’s experience of Down syndrome with perennial themes of the genre including familial haunting and the intersection of past and present. Similar to The Well, Lilian’s Story shows the politically transformative nature of disabled embodiment, wherein the titular character’s fatness and ‘madness’ allow her to achieve self-realisation while defying the gender norms of her time. Ultimately, the three novels suggest that the use of disabled characters in some contemporary Australian Gothic narratives is clearing space for less-stereotypical portrayals of corporeal and psychological variation in this genre.' (Publication abstract)
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Wild Thing
2021
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 March 2021; (p. 14) -
Cannibalism and Colonialism : Lilian's Story and (White) Women's Belonging
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 3 2014;'In 1985, when Kate Grenville’s novel about a fat, unlovely bag lady appeared on the Australian literary landscape, Lilian’s Story was celebrated as a feminist and postcolonial text. By locating Lilian as ex-centric to the nation, to inhabit the abjected zones of the colony—the bush, the asylum, the streets of post-Federation Sydney—Grenville is commonly read as a feminist writer intervening into the gender politics that shaped Australia. Feminists celebrate the ways in which she carves out discursive spaces for women who have existed largely in the interstices between public memory and official history. Postcolonial critical interpretations of Lilian being ‘colonised’ by her father, provoked by the rape narrative, have tended to reproduce the postcolonial trope of Australia’s shift from a colonial relationship to a national structure. Such readings largely neglect the colonial violence of Australian patriarchy, and the skewed gender norms that result when a host culture is transplanted to an imperial outpost. Taking up the colonial metaphor structuring the relationship between Lilian and her father, I read Lilian’s ‘madness’ as a response to discourses of ‘race’ and gender that circulate in the colonial Imaginary to position women as the site for racial anxiety about colonial ‘dirt’, contamination and disorder. While Lilian approaches the rebellious female grotesque celebrated in postcolonial feminist theorising, her obese body also signifies the devouring nature of colonialism. This paper engages with the white politics of women’s ‘belonging’ inscribed in Lilian’s Story to disinter the schizoid nature of white women’s relationship to colonial patriarchy.' (Publication abstract)
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[Essay] : Lilian’s Story
2013
single work
essay
— Appears in: Reading Australia 2013-;'Kate Grenville’s Lilian’s Story is one of the great Australian novels of the last thirty years. When it was first published in 1985, it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. The original cover carried a recommendation by Patrick White, Nobel laureate and the greatest writer of any kind Australia has produced. White said that in Lilian’s Story Kate Grenville had ‘transformed an Australian myth into a dazzling fiction of universal appeal’, and hailed her as a true novelist.' (Introduction)
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Animal Handlers : Australian Women Writers on Sexuality and the Female Body
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Outskirts : Feminisms along the Edge , May vol. 26 no. 2012; 'The year 2011 saw the igniting of mass protest around the issue of sexual double standards for women with numerous marches worldwide called 'SlutWalks'. Thousands of women across a range of countries including America, Europe, Britain and Australia took to the streets to defend the right of women to dress and behave freely without stigmatisation and violence. The 'SlutWalks' started in reaction to a local policeman in Toronto telling a class of college students to avoid dressing like 'sluts' if they did not wish to be victimised (SlutWalk Toronto site). The public protest in response to this incident demonstrates resistance to historically embedded discourses that demean women's sexuality and blame women for abuse and rape they suffer. Terms such as 'slut' perpetuate a virgin/whore dichotomy fundamental to the oppression of female sexual self-expression. These marches are a recent example that follows on from a tradition of mass protests for women's sexual equality and right to safety such as 'Reclaim the Night'. Drawing on writing and conversations with poets Dorothy Porter and Gig Ryan, novelists Drusilla Modjeska, Kate Grenville, Carmel Bird and Melissa Lucashenko and playwright, Leah Purcell, this article offers insights into individual creative women's responses to this theme of women's sexuality. I argue that the work and ideas of these women are examples of the unique and powerful dialogue that can happen through a focus on creativity and female stories in Australia.' (Author's introduction)
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Books Read Recently
1996
single work
review
— Appears in: Scratch Pad 18 , July 1996; (p. 4-6)
— Review of Distress 1995 single work novel ; The Memory Cathedral : A Secret History of Leonardo da Vinci 1995 single work novel ; Permutation City 1994 single work novel ; Eccentrics : The Scientific Investigation 1988 single work essay ; Old School Tie 1994 single work novel ; Lilian's Story 1985 single work novel ; Dark Places 1994 single work novel -
Paperbacks
1991
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 30-31 March 1991; (p. rev 6)
— Review of The Search for Harry Allway 1985 single work novel ; The Great World 1990 single work novel ; Lilian's Story 1985 single work novel -
Comic and Cruel
1989
single work
review
— Appears in: American Book Review , January-February vol. 10 no. 6 1989; (p. 11-12)
— Review of Bearded Ladies : Stories 1984 selected work short story poetry ; Lilian's Story 1985 single work novel ; Dreamhouse 1986 single work novel -
Special Women : And Superb Storytelling
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 76 1985; (p. 25-28)
— Review of Lilian's Story 1985 single work novel -
Absurdity, the Hidden Part of Normalcy
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 23 July vol. 108 no. 5477 1985; (p. 78,80)
— Review of Lilian's Story 1985 single work novel -
The Body and the Text : Extra and Infra Textual Scars
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , vol. 25 no. 1 2002; (p. 15-25) Author's abstract : In the autobiographical text, the madwoman articulates a space from which to speak. The writing of madness is neither about introspection nor about escapism but is much more concerned with translating inner states. Autobiography functions like a mirror in which we see a Gestalt, a global image of our selves. - y The Construction of Femininity and Female Sexuality in Contemporary Australian Fiction : A Reading of Four Novels 1990 Z1053323 1990 single work thesis
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The Return of the Oppressed : Re-Writing the Female Self in Lilian's Story and Joan Makes History
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Interfaces 2004; (p. 100-106) Examining the female protagonists in two of Grenville's novels, Jose concludes that 'Storytelling is one of the strongest strategies used by Grenville. The story replaces what happens, and having control over the story provides control over the truth. It is the one who tells the story, who is made immortal. Grenville has control, very much like her protagonists Lilian and Joan. It is in the act of "telling" and "voicing" their stories, that Grenville is able to avenge those who have tradtionally been rendered voiceless.' -
Psychotic Fictions and Terrible Truths: Reading Madness, Femininity and Excessive Speech
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antithesis , vol. 15 no. 2005; (p. 74-90) -
First Voice
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Age , 3 December 2005; (p. 29)
Awards
- 2012 shortlisted The National Year of Reading 2012 Our Story Collection — New South Wales
- 1986 winner 3M Talking Book of the Year Award
- 1984 winner The Australian / Vogel National Literary Award (for an unpublished manuscript)
- Kings Cross, Kings Cross area, Inner Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,
- 1900-1999