AustLit

Lever examines Joseph Furphy's attitude towards the plots and narrative techniques of nineteenth century lady novelists in Such is Life, and finds that the subversive nature of the narrative creates a text more feminist than critics have acknowledged. Employing Ada Cambridge's novels for comparison, Lever demonstrates that this feminism is produced by Furphy's destablizing use of romantic and realist modes. Lever concludes that, while Cambridge appears quite conservative in this comparison, her narratives tested the restrictive form of the newspaper serial and, therefore, must be reconsidered in this context because Furphy wrote with no such restrictions.

Lever argues that Maurice Guest provides a "shrewd analysis of the cultural myths surrounding sexual behaviour, and that [Richardson's] dissection of romance reveals the relationship between such myths and power". In Maurice Guest women do not play the role of the submissive femme fatale. Richardson's adoption of a naturalist narrative reveals the complications of such constructions. Lever stresses that in Maurice Guest women are not "mere ciphers of masculine art" but are active participants in the world of the imagination.