AustLit
About Leontine Cooper
Leontine // Onyx
Leontine Cooper (1837-1903) was a leading literary figure and suffragette of the late nineteenth-century in Queensland, yet today her life and writing are largely the preserve of old microfilms, obscure to most Australians. This exhibition seeks to highlight not only her role as an advocate for women's suffrage in Queensland, but to examine her writing and stories as a dynamic and prolific body of work that is part of Australia's complex literary tradition, specifically belonging to a flourishing and vibrant community of Australian female writers of the time (Sheridan viii). Building on the research of Deborah Jordan's Hecate article on Cooper's suffrage involvement, this exhibition aims to demonstrate how Cooper's literary work represent the everyday realities of women in Queensland at the turn of the century. Utilising her pen to illustrate the realities of settler life for both men and women in Australia, Cooper worked to subvert and critique the built-in oppressive attitudes and inequalities regarding women's lives, often symbolised in the Gothic landscape of the 'isolated' Queensland bush.
Leontine Mary Jane Buisson was born in England on 22 April, 1837, to French merchant Jean Francois Buisson and his English wife Dorothea (nee Smithers). Much of her childhood was spent in the inner-London area of Battersea, and afterwards at seaside Brighton. In 1869 at the age of thirty-two, she married Edward Cooper, a surveyor and poet, at Highgate in London. She emigrated to Australia aboard the 'Royal Dane', arriving in Brisbane in November 1871, and was employed as a government teacher at Chinaman's Creek. Over the following two years, Cooper taught at the Brisbane Girls' Grammar School, as a French teacher.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Cooper emerged as a prominent Brisbane literary figure who advocated, through her journalistic writing and fiction, for women's suffrage and for social justice. Her short stories and articles on women's rights appeared in newspapers such as William Lane's The Boomerang, and The Queenslander (1866-1939) often under the nom de plume of L.C. and Onyx. She was editor of the only women's suffrage newspaper in Queensland, Star, and wrote 'Queensland Notes' for Louisa Lawson's feminist magazine, The Dawn. In 1894, Cooper resided as president of the Women's Franchise League in Queensland, but died in March 1903, two years before women gained the vote in Queensland. Though largely unrecognised by later critics and historians, she played a significant role in championing progressive change in politics and critiquing the social conditions of women in Australia (Jordan 81).
Discover her biography on AustLit: Leontine Cooper
About Leontine Cooper
Unearthing Cooper (Onyx)
Leontine Mary Jane Buisson was born in England on 22 April, 1837, the eldest child to French merchant Jean Francois Buisson and his English wife Dorothea (nee Smithers). Much of her childhood was spent in the inner-London area of Battersea, and afterwards at seaside Brighton. Little is known of her life in England as a young woman, though she may well have begun writing fiction early in her life (Jordan_). In 1869 at the age of thirty-two, she married Edward Cooper, a surveyor and poet, at Highgate in London. Emigrating to Australia aboard the 'Royal Dane', Cooper arrived in Brisbane in November 1871, and was employed the first few years in Queensland as a government teacher at Chinaman's Creek, followed by over two years in the Brisbane Girls' Grammar School, as a French teacher.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Cooper emerged as a prominent Brisbane literary figure who advocated strongly through her journalistic writing and her fiction for women's suffrage and more broadly for social justice. Her short stories and articles on women's rights appeared regularly in newspapers such as The Boomerang and The Queenslander (often under the nom de plumes of L.C. and Onyx), where she gave voice to the wrongs of women, women's work and the unions, and the failure of the law to often protect them. She was editor of the only women's suffrage newspaper in Queensland, the Star, and for a time wrote 'Queensland Notes' for Louisa Lawson's feminist magazine, The Dawn. In 1894, Cooper resided as president of the Women's Franchise League in Queensland, but died in March 1903 at the age of sixty-six soon after her husband's death, failing to witness women gaining the vote in Queensland just two years later. Though largely unrecognised by later critics and historians, she played a significant role in championing progressive change in politics and critiquing the social conditions of women in Australia (Jordan 81).
Discover her biography on Austlit: Leontine Cooper
Though she was a well-regarded literary figure during her lifetime, Cooper's status mirrors many influential women writers of the late nineteenth-century who have survived merely as names within Australia's literary memory. Many of them have few details of their lives left available. With little to none of their fiction published in book form, the voices of Miles Franklin and Mary Gilmore have often been viewed as isolated exceptions, reinforcing the notion of women as "the silenced outsiders" within the Australian cultural landscape (Sheridan viii). However, extending the range of scholarship to include these largely forgotten women, there appears "a flourishing cultural scene in which significant numbers of women participated" of which Cooper was a part (viii). This is evident in the extensive body of writing—literary as well as radical journalism—published by these women in magazines and newspapers of the time. In a period when they remained excluded from parliament, the unions and other public professions, middle-class colonial women found in the press a powerful avenue for debate and a public expression of political questions that concerned them and the nation at large (Sheridan 73).
Being what Sheridan describes as a 'woman comrade', Cooper exercised agency within a patriarchal society, claiming possession of the platforms available to her by taking up her pen to write (x). As part of this upsurge in the women's movement, she believed the responsibility for the vote lay "in the hands of the women of Queensland themselves" who had endured generations of hardship (Jordan 82). Her intellectual insight and eloquence radiate through her essays and articles voicing her support for suffrage, with titles such as "Women's Wrongs" and "Women's Work", highlighting the discrimination and prejudice experienced by Australian women. Her fiction, ranging over thirty short-stories and six novellas published in various newspapers, similarly reflect her feminism, exploring the place of women within the shifting scenes of the Queensland landscape (Jordan 84).
"Women's Wrongs", The Boomerang, Dec 8, 1888, p. 18
Unearthing Cooper and her writing have been in part the work of previous research and indexing-projects. Many of her stories published in The Queenslander have been digitised and are accessible through the National Library of Australia's Trove database. But, at the beginning of this project none of The Boomerang issues had been digitised, excluding over twenty articles and stories Cooper published under her own name. An aim of this exhibition was to trace down the holdings of the issues containing her stories, with the view of highlighting and making more her body of work. The acquisition process included scanning microfilms from The Boomerang of the years Cooper's articles and stories were published, and digitising them. This was invaluable in gaining a full perspective on her writing both as Cooper and as Onyx, and to make them available for republication, as was achieved with "The Taming of the Shrew: Australian Fashion" and "A Bad Night's Camp"
- Leontine Cooper, "Women's Wrongs"
Through her journalism, Cooper showed zeal in her commentary on the lived experiences of Queensland women, arguing that their right to vote lay at the heart of their fight (Jordan 85). Her article, Women's Wrongs (1888), articulates the urgent sentiment of the ordinary woman, who once 'considered only in the character of wife... now demand that she should be considered as an individual'. Cooper critiqued the oppression of the law that failed to protect a woman against violence and abuse, emphasising how lack of property rights and exclusion from higher education cut her off from an 'absolute right to the fruit of her own labour' (Cooper qtd. by Jordan 85).
front cover of Dawn, May 15, 1888
Cooper's story, "Only a Woman" (1889), is raw and poignant as it tackles the evils of alcoholism and domestic violence faced by an "outraged wife". Abandoned by a violent and irresponsible husband, Selma Goddard manages through her industry to provide a home for herself and her children, but is threatened by his return and demands for her to sell her property to pay off his debts. Cooper infuses the scenes with the weight of the woman’s oppression: "Selina felt as if some horrible incubus had been taken off her when he went out” (16). The tone of the story is uncomplicated by metaphors, reaching instead to a simple realism of what Cooper describes as "a true story... [that] illustrates hundreds of other cases where the misery and injustice is borne in silence" (16). Selma is rescued by a public servant who, witnessing her plight, appeals for the law to be applied in her benefit. While her story’s character finds relief, Cooper is conscious in her writing that the "law remains as it is", realising that many "women themselves are ignorant of the rights which the law already grants them" (16).
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Though a fierce activist, Cooper wielded her pen with a literary depth and skill that would not be reduced merely to polemical fiction. Her stories are often raw and serious, resisting the urge in colonial romances to submit to a "happy ending" in favour of realism, in much the same vein as Barbara Baynton (Bennett 69). Characters such as Selma, Peter, Harriet and Damaris reveal interiority that reflect Cooper's experience and depth of thought. While the stories depict a social realism attuned with her feminism, her writing also contains a thread of mysticism and the Gothic in her depictions of the bush and isolated rural scenes. In those spaces, she captures "the impotent struggle of the human with infinity" (Jordan 85).
Front cover from The Queenslander, August 16, 1934.
Much of Cooper's fiction is occupied with this relationship between society and nature, delving into the wild wilderness found in the Australian landscape, and how it penetrates human experience. Her stories situate her female characters in spaces of Gothic isolation if not outright danger connected to the Australian bush. In stories like "A Bad Night's Camp" and "The Taming of the Shrew: Australian Fashion", nature takes on a narrative function that transcends setting, and works "as a source of meaning, offering a… significance that is explicitly absent from society" (Turner 29). Cooper's participation in this genre is built on a national myth, one that imagines Australia "as a grotesque space" of transgression and exile (Turcotte 1). This preoccupation with the Gothic has its echoes in other writings of the period, such as Henry Lawson's "The Drover's Wife" (1892), and Barbara Baynton's "Bush Studies" (1902), that used the Gothic not only to express this tradition, but particularly to embody female fear and vulnerability (Turcotte 6). Situating her stories in the language of the Gothic bush, Cooper's writing draws on this myth of beauty and desolation, to articulate the fear and exhilaration of the colonial experience, particularly for women (3).
"A Bad Night at Camp" (1886), published under Cooper's pen name Onyx, foregrounds the fear of isolation, madness and death lurking in the bush, and is a grim tale about two stockmen who take refuge in an abandoned Queensland house. As the men seek rest from their travels, they are drawn to a site the stockman, Peter, believes is haunted by the ghost of his friend, Lilian Falconer, and that of her little dog. The story conveys in its tone and pace a sense of dread and fear of what cannot be materially explained within nature.
The narrative reveals Peter's Freudian fears are not just part of his psychological experiences as a bushman, but that there is some something truly "wild and weird" in the "sounds of the night". Alongside the women, Cooper's use of the Gothic inspires a psychological look at the character of the "undaunted" bushman alone and isolated by nature. Differing from Baynton's portrayal of bushmen as brutal and vulgar, her depiction of the rough stockman is full of humanity and vulnerability as she positions him face-to-face with "a scene which [inspires] him with horror”.
Preserving Cooper's Stories
The story presents a chilling commentary on the conditions faced by rural Queensland women, refusing to delineate a romanticised view of the Australian bush (Turcotte 6). Lillian's character is provided with little agency or independence in her choices, her manner described being "as soft and gentle as her face was lovely". Peter's tender vision of her, "white as a lily", positions her as an object of beauty and domesticity, who is likewise seen as "weak, weak as water". Lillian's choice of marrying Mr. Howard over her lover Mr. Mark signals her lack of autonomy in defining her future. Through the narrative, Lillian's dog takes on a symbolic role that mirrors Lillian herself, and is representative of her affections and her silent resistance against her husband's control. Cross at his wife for the attention she gives the dog, Mr. Howards kicks him. The dog tears "round the yard quite wild like", but is put down by the husband who deems it "mad", even against the pleas of his wife.
In the following horror-filled events, as the rabies madness that infects her dog seizes Lillian, the hazards of dwelling in Queensland's rural scenes is emphasised. Individuals, especially women, are left vulnerable as they are distanced from help or medical care: "it took us pretty nearly three weeks to get down to town, for the rains had begun early, and the rivers and creeks were swollen". Here, Cooper's Gothic parallels Baynton's realist mode, where "the specificities of outback life—the arid and desolate land" and "women besieged by nature and by men"—is vividly presented (Turcotte 6). The description of Lillian's raving madness and Peter’s 'mercy killing' is terrifying and graphic, embodying metaphors of the oppressed woman as the men "[hold] her down by main force" and she is muffled into silence.
In the following horror-filled events, as the rabies madness that infects her dog seizes Lillian, the hazards of dwelling in Queensland's rural scenes is emphasised. Individuals, especially women, are left vulnerable as they are distanced from help or medical care: "it took us pretty nearly three weeks to get down to town, for the rains had begun early, and the rivers and creeks were swollen". Here, Cooper's Gothic parallels Baynton's realist mode, where "the specificities of outback life—the arid and desolate land" and "women besieged by nature and by men"—is vividly presented (Turcotte 6). The description of Lillian's raving madness and Peter’s 'mercy killing' is terrifying and graphic, embodying metaphors of the oppressed woman as the men "[hold] her down by main force" and she is muffled into silence.
Frederick McCubbin
Interestingly, Cooper frames the story of Lilian's tragic life through the gaze and memory of the men around her, as she does in many of her other narratives. In the construction of Australian identities, the bush is seen as a harsh and cruel space that is "no place for a woman", and women who inhabit the bush are rarely the subjects in their own right, but rather appear and are defined in relationship to the men (Schaffer 62). Lilian as a female subject is reduced to a ghostly and disembodied figure whose cries haunt the men who enter the house she died in, and whose story must be told through their discourse. Yet despite this, the indomitable spirit of the oppressed woman of the bush can be heard in Lillian's "wild shrill cry".
Cooper frames the story of Lilian's tragic life through the memory of a man, as she does in many of her other narratives. In the construction of identities, the bush is seen as a harsh and cruel space that is "no place for a woman", and women who inhabit it are rarely subjects in their own right, but defined in relationship to men (Schaffer 62). Lilian as a female subject is reduced to a ghostly figure whose cries haunt the men who enter the house she died in, and whose story must be told through their discourse. Like other depictions of women, she embodies "man's fears of… despair and madness in his confrontation with the bush" (149). Yet despite this, the indomitable spirit of the oppressed woman can be heard in Lillian's "wild shrill cry", one that challenges her subordinate place in the Australian landscape.
"The Letter", Frederick McCubbin, 1884
In "The Taming of the Shrew: Australian Fashion", (1888) Cooper combines her message on behalf of women with literary satire, highlighting women’s subjection in rural Australia. Toying with the title of Shakespeare's play, the story relates the “taming” of a spirited woman, when Mr. Dan Steve, a stockman, strikes a bargain with a Mr. Dick Green to exchange his young "daredevil" wife, Nell, for a dray. Though it is unlikely that Cooper drew on Thomas Hardy’s plot in The Mayor of Casterbridge, the historical reality of “wife-selling” occurring in the rural English scene has parallels in the Australian outback.
Nell rebels against the constructed role of a domestic wife, the “angel” figure or “God’s police”, but rather she is seen as the “damned whore” in the eyes of the men (Schaffer 69). In its satirical use of language, the narrative implies the couple’s isolation from society is Mr Dan’s attempt to “tame” his flirtatious wife. Comparing Nell to a horse that needs breaking, Dick tells Mr. Dan his wife needs a “tight whip-hand”. The narrator’s voice is ironic and even humorous in recounting “a classic idyl enacted in the Australian bush” that likens a “cockatoo farmer” to “Jupiter himself”. But the reality of violence and abuse is underpinned by Mr. Dan attempting to strike Nell’s face, and in the ignorance in which she is kept regarding her husband’s transaction.
Robert Waghorn from Pixably
Throughout, the mare becomes a metaphor for the woman, as Dick gives “the high-spirited beast a cut across the flanks, a thing she hated” and steals off with Nell. Embodying Queensland women’s resilient spirit, Nell subverts the imagery of the mare by identifying herself with it, jeering at Dick, “Ah, she’s too much for you!” and rides “as if she and her horse were one”. Even though she continues to resist, Nell is brought to submission by her need for survival, and at the end her husband finds her at home “established” in her proper domestic sphere. The final line presents the satirical image of a domesticated and tamed bush-wife, whose greatest pleasure arises from “making arrack from treacle…for her husband’s sake”.
"The White Parasol" Ried Robert Louis, 1907
A unique quality of Cooper’s writing is her exploration of female interiority, and her portrayal of women’s flaws. She rarely casts her characters, women most of all, into categories of good or evil, but rather allows them to reveal their complexity, shaped by their relationship to nature. In the novella, "Off the Beaten Track" (1887), Damaris in desperation seeks the aid of her brothers-in-law, when her husband is accused of fraud and abandons her and her children. Living in the brothers' bush-house near Moreton Bay and isolated from society for years, Damaris's battle with loneliness and jealousy is portrayed with a depth that allow the reader to be privy to all her inward struggles and vulnerabilities. Throughout the text, nature plays a significant part in Damaris's psychological experience, gained from her walks by the shore. Conversely, in "A Domestic Fracas" (1889), a young wife's enclosure in the domestic sphere threatens to overwhelm her, building up a passion of jealousy that drives her to the banks of the river in attempted suicide.
The themes drawn from Cooper's writing are limited to specific articles and stories selected in this exhibition. Indeed, the extent of her writing alone invites deeper scholarly work. Nonetheless, these stories epitomise the kinds of issues Cooper was fervent about, and permits a compelling glimpse into Cooper's deeply human representation of the realities of ordinary women's lives at the end of the nineteenth-century. Through the use of satire and the Gothic, she described the dichotomous image of the Queensland woman being on the one hand seen as the vulnerable and docile wife, and on the other as a tempestuous and resilient fighter, situated within the wild and "uncivilised" space of the Australian bush.
"Lost", Frederick McCubbin, 1886
Pictures:
Streeton, Arthur. Autumn, 1889, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Wikimedia Commons.
The Brisbane Girls Grammar School, Gregory Terrace, Brisbane c 1890, Queensland State Archives.
"Mrs. Leontine Cooper’s Resignation", Australian Star, 12 March 1894, pg. 3
"Women's Wrongs by Leontine Cooper", The Boomerang, 8 December 1888, pg. 18
Front cover from The Queenslander, August 16, 1934. Wikimedia Commons.
"Women at the first state election Comparing Notes", Brisbane, 1907, State Library of Queensland.
Front cover from The Dawn, issue 1, 15 May 1888, Wikimedia Commons.
Illustration from “Only a Woman”, The Boomerang, 26 January 1889, p. 15
McCubbin, Frederick. Violet and Gold, 1911, National Gallery of Australia. Wikimedia Commons.
Bunny, Rupert. Français: Portrait of Jeanne, the artist's wife, 1902, Wikimedia Commons.
Frederick McCubbin. The Letter, 1884, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. Wikimedia Commons.
Illustration "December Memos" ad from an issue of The Boomerang (date unknown).
Victorian Woman, Robert Waghorn artwork from Pixabay
Louis, Ried Robert Louis. The White Parasol, ca 1907, Wikimedia Commons.
McCubbin, Frederick. On the wallaby track, 1896, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Wikimedia Commons.
McCubbin, Frederick. Lost, 1886, National Gallery of Victoria. Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Bennett, Bruce. Australian Short Fiction: A History, University of Queensland Press, 2002.
Cooper, Leontine. “A Domestic Fracas.” The Boomerang (Christmas Issue), 1889, pp. 36-39
Cooper, Leontine. Austlit Author Biography: https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A14128
Cooper, Leontine. “Only a Woman.” The Boomerang, 26 January 1889, pp. 15
Cooper, Leontine. “The Taming of the Shrew: Australian Fashion.” The Boomerang, 22 December 1888, pp. 7
Cooper, Leontine. “Women’s Work.” The Boomerang, 9 February 1889, pp. 7
Cooper, Leontine. “Women’s Wrongs.” The Boomerang, 8 December 1888, pp. 12
Jordan, Deborah. “Leontine Cooper and the Queensland Suffrage Movement, 1888-1903.” Hecate, 30, 2, 2004, pp. 81-102
Onyx. “A Bad Night’s Camp.” The Australian Town and Country Journal, 34, 884, December 1886, pp. 1262.
Onyx. “Off the Beaten Track.” Serialised in eight weekly instalments in the Queenslander between 8 January 1887 and 26 February 1887.
Schaffer, Kay. Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Cultural Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Sheridan, Susan. Along the Faultlines: Sex, Race and Nation in Australian Women’s Writing 1880s-1930s, Allen and Unwin, 1995.
Turcotte, G. “Australian Gothic.” Research Online, 1998, pp. 1-11
Turner, Graeme. National Fictions: Literature, film and the Construction of Australian Narrative Second Edition, Allen and Unwin, 1993.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Cooper emerged as a prominent Brisbane literary figure who advocated strongly through her journalistic writing and her fiction for women's suffrage and more broadly for social justice. Her short stories and articles on women's rights appeared regularly in newspapers such as The Boomerang, Courier and The Queenslander (often under the nom de plumes of L.C. and Onyx), where she analysed the wrongs of women, women's work and unions, and the failure of the law to often protect them (_). Though largely unrecognised by later critics and historians, she played a significant role in championing progressive change in politics and critiquing the social conditions of women in Australia (Jordan 81).
Read her biography on Austlit: Leontine Cooper