A Post-colonial View Of The Aboriginal Roles In Coonardoo And Cloudstreet

Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969) and Tim Winton (1960-) are both Australian writers living in and mostly writing about Western Australia. Prichard's Coonardoo (1929) is regarded as a breakthrough in dealing with Black-White relations, especially in the treatment of the taboo subject of Black-White sexual relations, while Tim Winton's Cloudstreet (1991) is turning out to be a modern Australian classic. Both novelists in their novels show their sympathy and admiration for Aboriginal values and express their wish for the two Australian races to peacefully co-exist with each other. It is conceded that they are progressive and well-meaning in their attitude towards the Australian Aborigines in their different times.This thesis attempts to introduce the two famous Western Australian writers and their works to Chinese readers. In addition to that, through a Post-colonial perspective, the writer intends to uncover the real-life exploited condition of the Australian Aborigines in the early colonial time in Coonardoo and its far-reaching influences on the Aborigines in the period after World Warâ…¡until the 1960s in Cloudstreet in the way of racial discrimination towards the Aborigines, the dispossession of their ancestral land and displacement, and sexual exploitation. Also, this thesis attempts to demonstrate that the two novelists, progressive as they are, are not exempt from the sense of supremacy the White generally held towards the Aborigines in the way of showing their racial discrimination against them and the inclination to stereotype them.