Identity And Belonging

The Secret River is a fascinating novel mainly focusing on benefit conflicts and cultural clash between the white settlers and the Aboriginals. In this novel, Kate Grenville, an Australian woman writer, giving up her previously feminist mode of writing, is concerned more with the past of Australia, taking the readers back to her native Australia at the beginning of the 19th century when the only residents were either Aboriginals or convicts. Exiled to an exotic land, the white settlers were anxious to get rid of their stigma of convictism and at the same time eager to change their living environment. Land figured prominently in the fortunes of men as it meant a solid place in the world and promised a decent life. As the colonizers divided the land among themselves at will, conflicts over ownership escalated into bloody fights. Caused by the benefit conflicts and cultural clash, identity crisis plagues both the white settlers and the Aboriginals.Post-colonialism, a relatively new theory that was formulated not long ago, denotes a collection of "theoretical and critical strategies used to examine the culture of the former colonies of the European empires, and their relation to the rest of the world". Cultural identity or national identity is an important issue in post-colonialism. The novel, depicting the tough encounters and experiences of the white settlers exiled from Britain to Australia, is a special story about identity, belonging, opportunity and possession. Employing a transported convict as the leading character, Kate Grenville has claimed that this novel is a reassessment of what it means to a white Australian. During the process of transportation and settlement, the transformation of the protagonist, William Thornhill, from a victim and convict to a landowner and colonizer, has led to his ambiguous identity. On one hand, he is permanently expelled from the circle of the white mainstream society and finally deserted by the British Empire as "rubbish". On the other hand, he is not accepted nor understood by the natives. Averse to the suzerain’s inhumane colonization, Thornhill, as a white, has no choice but to participate in it and struggles to quest for a sense of identity and belonging in the colony. The Aboriginals, regarded as the other whether to the white mainstream society or to the white convicts, are the truly marginalized people. It is the sense of otherness and insecurity that causes their identity problems.By dedicating this novel to "the Aboriginal people of Australia: past, present and future", Grenville desires to promote a reconciliation between the white settlers and the Aboriginals. This thesis applies the theory of post-colonialism as an approach to analyze the identities of the characters in this novel, attempting to uncover the reasons of the identity and belonging crisis. Through an in-depth exploration into such issues as "subaltern", "hybridity" and the "other", it reveals that the reconciliation can be achieved by the elimination of cultural hegemony and an excessive indulgence in one’s identity.