engleski

Dancing in Red Shoes Barbara Baynton and the Australian Myth

The main argument of this book is that Australian tradition – the Australian formative nationalist narration – is, in fact, a myth, as it perfectly fits the definition of the myth given by Barthes in Myth Today, and the Myth, thus produced by a social group which undertook a nation-founding effort, was in Austaralia so strong that it filtered out women's fiction, or as Anne Summers would say, committed cultural apartheid over female content. In spite of social circumstances not favourable for a female writer, Banyton decided to write, and in her writing formulate an alternative, female, a mother's vision of Australia. The relationship between the two discourses of Australia can be compared with the metanarrative vs. little narrative as interpreted by Lyotard. Namely, since Barbara Baynton wrote in the 1890s, an extremely important time in both, national and literary history, a decade in which Henry Lawson, as the main proponent of the Myth wrote his most representative work, Baynton’s stories can be considered as an alternative women’s text. The study of Baynton’s work will not only prove the literary merit of her oeuvre, but also reveal how by contributing to the formulation of the little narrative of the Australia’s female experience, Baynton contributed to the articulation of the Australian Myth, and consequently of the Australian national identity, as well. While Lawson is proverbially referred to as Australia’s storyteller, this analysis of how Baynton was discursively formulated, a process which should be recognized and deconstructed, reveals Baynton as a storyteller, too, as the “anthill of the savannah” whose stories formulate a niche in the pedagogical, as well as the performative of the nation, thus contributing to the “narration of a nation” (Bhabha).

Barbara Baynton, Australian Myth, subversion

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