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This article examines Elizabeth O'Conner's seven books, published between 1958 and 1980, as works which functioned ideologically to implement a desire in post-World War II Australia to reformulate and reaffirm the conservative values of the frontier era. Used as exemplifications of national discourses in their era, O'Conner's books focus on representations of the homestead and reveal a number of common parameters, such as hierarchical middle-class structures, concentration on the solidity of marriage and on feminised, domesticated spaces contextualised within an outdoor masculine world of work, and an assumption of Aboriginal inferiority. Thus homesteads in these popular books serve as sites for preserving class and racial distinctions.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 23 May 2003 16:24:51
20-31
Gender and Race Relations in Elizabeth O'Conner's Northern Homesteads
Australian Literary Studies
Subjects:
- Steak for Breakfast 1958 single work autobiography
- Spirit Man 1980 single work novel
- The Chinee Bird 1966 single work children's fiction
- The Irishman : A Novel of Northern Australia 1960 single work novel
- A Second Helping 1969 single work autobiography
- The Winds of Fate 1977 single work novel
- Find a Woman 1963 single work novel
- ca. 1950-1980
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