A “Bay of Whispers”: Seascape in Simone Lazaroo’s <em>The Australian Fiancé</em>

Abstract

THE OCEAN AS A BORDER IN AUSTRALIA HAS BEEN GAINING INCREASING ATTENTION, NOT only with the arrival of asylum seekers by boat and the relentless government policies to prevent this, but also the connections with Asia that Australia's part of oceania suggests. Recent scholarship by critics such as elizabeth deLoughrey, suvendrini perera, and elizabeth McMahon explore the way representations of oceans can evoke, on the one hand, this doubled sense of insularity and threat, but on the other possibility and connection. However, while some of this analysis may be new and specifically addressing recent events, depictions of the sea that utilize such a doubled sense of intimacy and conflict have a significant history in Australian literature. one such example is simone Lazaroo's The Australian Fiance, a book that deals overtly with the White Australia policy and the aftermath of WWii. existing scholarship has tended to focus on the significant discussions around racism, exclusion, and gender in the novel, but as of yet there has been no sustained discussion of the representation of the sea and its relevance to such debates. Rather than being a simple backdrop, the depiction of the sea in Lazaroo's novel manifests the doubled threat and connection discussed by deLoughrey, perera, and McMahon. Representation of the ocean comes to exhibit the conf lict and desire for intimacy between the three main characters: an unnamed eurasian woman, an unnamed Australian man, and the unnamed eurasian woman's child. Lazaroo's diasporic novel reflects vital contemporary debates around the sea, connection, and insularity in Australia, even as the novel was published in 2000 and is set in 1949, demonstrating the way these issues are not only pressing but also ongoing.Scholarship on The Australian Fiance has frequently focused on the way the novel deals with racism in Australia via the eurasian woman's experience of the White Australia policy. For deborah Madsen, these discussions are conducted with references to what she terms unAustralia and the unheimlich (the exception) as well as a discussion of hospitality ('no place Like Home'). Robyn Morris and eleni pavlides both draw attention to way photography works as a form of viewing in the novel, with Morris explicitly linking this to the male gaze and whiteness. olivia Khoo's extensive discussion of in The Australian Fiance sees it as operating as a form of ornamentation in the novel and related to multiculturalism in Australia where whiteness is also visibilised as an ornamental detail since in popular representations is often equated to the 'ordinary' and the 'everyday' in Australian society, with ethnicity supplementing an 'ordinary' white Australian nationhood (68). Khoo also discusses Audrey Yue and Gay Hawkin's idea of south in relation to the position of Asian Australia and renegotiates this with her idea of vertigo (74-5). Alison Broinowski examines the book market between Australia and singapore, noting that singaporean Australian poets ee tiang Hong, Bronwyn Lim, Felix Chong, and essayist/poet Kim Cheng Boey are well known among literary singaporeans, but others who have published fiction only since they emigrated to Australia, like simone Lazaroo, Ang Chin Geok, and teo Hsu-ming, are unfamiliar names (41). sunitha Byrappa also discusses singapore, noting its proximity to Broome, as well as looking at aspects of gender, desire, and colonialism in the novel. Lyn Jacobs, too, examines colonialism and gender while pam Allen discusses othering in the work as well as the power of the imagination and memory, and debra dudek argues that blood can be read as a form of diasporic poetics, which she links to representations of the body in the novel.However, in all this scholarship, there are only brief discussions of the depiction of the sea in The Australian Fiance, despite the ocean's dominant presence and the way it frames conflict and intimate moments. …