LA LITERATURA AUSTRALIANA DE PRINCIPIOS DE SIGLO: 'SO FAR AND THO' SO CLOSE'

Abstract

Australian women writing during the time that Europeans cal1 'Modernism' had to face circumstances very different in outlook to those European writers were depicting. Australian women had been doomed from the beginning of their national history with polarized archetypes that left very little room for individuality - the settlement of the country by male convicts allowed women to be only whores or respectable wives. To this should be added the hard conditions imposed by the taming of the bush and the toll it exacted on women still by the beginning of [he 20th century. Tossed between freedom and respectability, hard work and natural life, Australian women writers differ notably in topics and style from their European counterparts. Nevertheless, once outward appearances are difused, the core of the problems discussed in the t m s remain common to al1 women through rime and space: they are silenced, exploited and loved and revered beyond their own individual feelings.