AustLit

Discusses the representation of contemporary Sydney and its harbour in Dark's novel Waterway. It argues that the novel sits poised between Dark's 'popular/modernist 1930s novels and her historical trilogy, between her more commercial early work ... and her growing commitment to social responsibility', and that it was written at a time when the writer was learning 'to look back at history to find answers for the present' (16).

Discusses the treatment of female sexuality, reproduction, birth control, abortion and maternity in Dark's fiction. Focuses on the dilemma of the 'rational woman': a 'problematic created by modernity', the conflict between 'the authority of the natural ... and the searching eye of the modern rationalist epistemologies of science'. 'In attempting to provide access to the rationalism of science for her women characters, Dark's texts set up this contest between nature and science as an unresolved or even impossible dilemma haunted by the inevitable spectre of madness' (29).

Discusses the way in which Dark negotiated the tensions of freedom versus control in her writing while she was subjected both to national surveillance and local right-wing intimidation in the 1940s and 1950s. Examines to what extend Dark's relationship with the security forces, and local political pressures, influenced her writing, and what Dark's experience tells us about the intellectual and cultural pressures of the period. Argues that the pressures assisted in steering Dark away from writing about contemporary issues, and made her retreat into the genre of the historical novel.

'The purpose of this article is to explore the responses of a small number of male and female radicals to some of the ideas associated with the mainstream Australian women's movement int the period 1890-1918. It is not a comprehensive survey but, rather, a set of case studies that seeks to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between the women's movement and other versions of political radicalism, especially the intersections of feminism, socialism and the broader impulse towards sex reform' (44).