'The One Jarring Note'
Race and Gender in Queensland Women's Writing to 1939
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S132181660000235XKeywords:
Queensland women's writing, literary production, colonial life and Australian nationhood, race and genderAbstract
The literary production of women in Queensland from Separation to World War II records and reflects on various aspects of colonial life and Australian nationhood in a period when white women's participation in public life and letters was steadily increasing. Unease with the colonial experience underpins many of the key themes of this body of work: the difficulty of finding a literary voice in a new land, a conflicted sense ofplace, the linking of masculinity with violence, and the promotion of racial purity. This chapter will explore how white women writers – for there were no published Indigenous women writers in this era – responded to the conditions of living and writing in Queensland prior to the social and cultural changes initiated by World War II.
References
The Lands Act of 1860 aimed to promote rapid white settlement by making fourteen year leases available to those who stocked their runs. The continuing anxiety and sense of grievance which these land tenure arrangements caused in Queensland led to the Bjelke-Petersen government's massive conversion of pastoral leases to freehold title. At the root of the anxiety were fears of native title claims, as well as of government and mining company interventions.
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