Hell for white men: masculinity and race in The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.
As an historical work, Henry Handel Richardson's trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, is embedded in the invocation, production and dissemination of cultural memory. Drawing on Peter Burke's discussion of social amnesia as the 'adjustment of the past to the present', this reading of a canonical...
| Published in: | Postcolonial Studies Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 71 - 91 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Mar2010
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=47992404&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 47992404 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13688790 56Z jtl: Postcolonial Studies issn: 13688790 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2010 vid: 13 iid: 1 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 47992404 10.1080/13688790903490884 ppf: 71 ppct: 20 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 460KB tig: atl: Hell for white men: masculinity and race in The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. aug: au: Elleray, Michelle su: Caucasian race Masculinity Racism Collective memory Mahony, Richard Richardson, Henry Handel, 1870-1946 sug: subj: Caucasian race Masculinity Racism Collective memory Mahony, Richard Richardson, Henry Handel, 1870-1946 ab: As an historical work, Henry Handel Richardson's trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, is embedded in the invocation, production and dissemination of cultural memory. Drawing on Peter Burke's discussion of social amnesia as the 'adjustment of the past to the present', this reading of a canonical Australian text points to the necessity of an active re-engagement with historical context in order to tease out suppressed or neglected narratives that run counter to, or intersect uneasily with, a later audience's assumptions about the past. The reading of the trilogy offered here examines cultural texts—both the trilogy and the texts from the period in which it is set—that allow us to understand the role of Chinese immigrants in the formation of white Australian narratives of settlement. Although the overt presence of Chinese in the trilogy is minimal, this reading will suggest that the debates their presence raised for white settlers, particularly when viewed through acclimatization theory and the cultural positioning of white women, are central to understanding Richardson's portrayal of Richard Mahony, a white settler who fails to adjust to settler life in Australia. An attention to the historical circumstances invoked by references to the Chinese in Richardson's trilogy sheds new light on the instability of Mahony's identification with Australia, which is so often read as inherent in Mahony alone, rather than as inherent in the historical and cultural conditions of the white settler in nineteenth-century Australia. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Postcolonial Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Postcolonial Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2010 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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