AustLit

The article explores an aspect of Australian colonialism through a reading of Ruhen's 1957 novel. The novel, 'a sophisticated text that critiques colonialism (as violent, illegitimate and destructive to indigenous cultures)', is, however, also seen as producing 'a story that legitimates, reinforces and justifies the process of colonisation'. Concentrating on two particular scenes at the beginning and the end of the novel respectively, the article is 'an analysis of how colonisation and dispossession are ultimately legitimated in this novel through gendered representations of assimilation and elimination' (135).