AustLit
Adaptation of
The Drover's Wife
1892
single work
short story
Issue Details:
First known date:
1968...
1968
The Drover's Wife
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'It is a simple story about a drover's wife, left alone with her four children for months on end while her husband is droving.
'Her only protection is her stout spirit and her cattle dog, Alligator.
'The story opens when, late one day, she sees a venomous snake disappear under the hut's bedroom floor. She goes into the kitchen, where there is a dirt floor–the bedroom has a slab floor with cracks a snake could slide through.
'The wife beds the children down on the table, builds up the fire in the stove, and with Alligator, a snake-killing cattle dog, keeps vigil through the night, waiting for the snake.
'As she sits by the fire she thinks, in filmed flashbacks, of what her life has been since she married.
'Eventually, in the early morning, the snake appears, she kills it, and life goes on again without drama.'
Source:
'Killing a Snake with Conviction', Australian Women's Weekly, 18 September 1968
Notes
-
Television play.
-
Entered by the ABC in the documentary section of Ireland's Golden Harp Festival (see article above).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
From Stage to Page to Screen : The Traumatic Returns of Leah Purcell's 'the Drover's Wife'
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , November vol. 41 no. 3 2022; (p. 30-36) 'In an interview with Harcourt, the American short story writer and novelist George Singleton uses a spatial analogy to compare the process of writing long- and short-form fiction. Singleton (2006) says, ‘Writing a novel is a walk across a bridge, while writing a short story is a walk across a tightrope.’ Singleton’s analogy captures the experiential differences of writing long and short prose and alludes to the characteristics that distinguish the short story as an enduring form: narrative economy, unity of effect or impression, and importantly, the compression of the story’s temporal setting and characters. In fact, while both the novel and the short story share the same formal characteristics (plot, point of view, dialogue, setting), the novel depends on expansion, the short story on compression. The process of adaptation is a complex project of reconfiguration: one that is not only governed by ethical issues and aesthetic tensions but by the various social, cultural, and political issues that arise in the calibration of old stories for new times, new audiences, and new medias. As Demelza Hall (2019) explains, ‘Works of adaptation are renowned for “talking back” to a text, while, at the same time, opening up new spaces and establishing new dialogues.’ In this context, it is interesting to consider the process of adapting the short story to the longer form, or as Singleton suggests, transitioning from tightrope to bridge. Since the past can be either contested or conserved, rewritten or reinstated, the act of retelling always necessitates thinking about the relationship between the story and history itself.' (Introduction) -
Forgotten Australian TV Plays : The Drover’s Wife
2021
single work
essay
— Appears in: FilmInk , 28 June 2021;
-
Forgotten Australian TV Plays : The Drover’s Wife
2021
single work
essay
— Appears in: FilmInk , 28 June 2021; -
From Stage to Page to Screen : The Traumatic Returns of Leah Purcell's 'the Drover's Wife'
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , November vol. 41 no. 3 2022; (p. 30-36) 'In an interview with Harcourt, the American short story writer and novelist George Singleton uses a spatial analogy to compare the process of writing long- and short-form fiction. Singleton (2006) says, ‘Writing a novel is a walk across a bridge, while writing a short story is a walk across a tightrope.’ Singleton’s analogy captures the experiential differences of writing long and short prose and alludes to the characteristics that distinguish the short story as an enduring form: narrative economy, unity of effect or impression, and importantly, the compression of the story’s temporal setting and characters. In fact, while both the novel and the short story share the same formal characteristics (plot, point of view, dialogue, setting), the novel depends on expansion, the short story on compression. The process of adaptation is a complex project of reconfiguration: one that is not only governed by ethical issues and aesthetic tensions but by the various social, cultural, and political issues that arise in the calibration of old stories for new times, new audiences, and new medias. As Demelza Hall (2019) explains, ‘Works of adaptation are renowned for “talking back” to a text, while, at the same time, opening up new spaces and establishing new dialogues.’ In this context, it is interesting to consider the process of adapting the short story to the longer form, or as Singleton suggests, transitioning from tightrope to bridge. Since the past can be either contested or conserved, rewritten or reinstated, the act of retelling always necessitates thinking about the relationship between the story and history itself.' (Introduction)
Last amended 28 Nov 2014 14:13:47
