The Making And Unmaking Of Radical Feminism

Kate Grenville is a famous contemporary Australian writer once described as one of the eight feminist voices of the eighties in Australian literature. Her first book of fiction was a collection of 13 short stories Bearded Ladies; Lilian's story, her first published novel, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1985; In 1988, she was commissioned to write and publish her third novel Joan Makes History; In the 1990s, two other novels, Dark Places and The Idea of Perfection, were published. The former was short-listed for Australia's most prestigious Miles Franklin Award and the latter won for her the British Orange Prize for fiction in 2001.The last 25 years or so in Grenville's creative career witnessed her development as a writer and her fictions published during this time reflect her changing perceptions of the feminist movement in which she has been so profoundly involved. In this thesis, I retrace her evolution as a feminist writer through an examination of two decades of her fiction.The thesis consists of four parts. Chapter One introduces Kate Grenville as a writer in relation to the Australian women's liberation movement since the 1970s and briefly describes the formation of her radical feminist vision in her early book of short stories. Chapter Two analyzes Grenville's two novels published in the 1980s, Lilian's Story and Joan Makes History, where Grenville exposes Australian patriarchal oppression on women both inside the family and in Australian history. The two novels present Grenville as an implacable radical feminist writer angrily critiquing male domination. Chapter Three examines Grenville's two novels published in the 1990s, Dark Places and The Idea of Perfection, where one encounters a discernible revisionist turn away from radicalism. In Dark Places, Grenville retells a large part of Lilian's Story, but employs the man's perspective. Such a change of narrative perspective shows the author moving toward a sympathetic understanding of the hidden darkness in the heart of the villainous patriarch. The Idea of Perfection is more obvious in revealing the change against radicalism, for in the novel she revisions...