The Drover’s Wife Speaks: A Literary and Cultural History of Maternal Citizenship in Australia, 1890–2020

Abstract

This thesis interrogates the specific construction of the maternal citizen in Australia. While the patriarchal construction of motherhood is not an Australian phenomenon, the maternal has in a settler-colonial context been inextricable from nation-building projects. Through the study of a selection of Australian texts, published from the 1890s to the decade just past, demonstrated is how Australian women’s citizenship has been constructed in relation to their maternality—actual, potential, or presumed. Apparent, moreover, is the mutual implication of maternality and citizenship which has underpinned the regulation of all Australian women, with different consequences contingent on the desirability of varying maternalities according to the dominant culture. Where “good” motherhood has been attainable, it has been regulated in such a way as to uphold dominant national interests, including the perpetuation of colonialism. The representations I consider represent the maternal as a site both of hegemony and resistance. Argued, therefore, is that Australian women have across divisions of race and class been regulated by the dominant construct of maternal citizenship against their own interests, albeit with varying consequences. Explored, however, is the potential for an autonomous maternal citizenship to challenge the oppressive structures structuring the nation. Accordingly traced is the maternal citizen’s emergence as literary subject, in response to her objectification by dominant national narratives.