A reading strategy for Henry Handel Richardson's fiction

Abstract

Critical reception to the writings of Henry Handel Richardson has been curiously divided. A transcript of it might even read like a courtroom drama, with the prosecution and defence lining up witnesses, from the texts or the Academy, to prove that she was or was not: imaginative, self-centred, a realist, a naturalist, a writer in the Australian tradition, literal-minded, a genius, second rate. Thus one approaches her work gingerly, feeling the need to take sides in a long-running debate that has, at times, served to obscure rather than enlighten. On the frontispiece of the 1948 issue of Southerly is a striking photo of a middle-aged woman, dark-haired, long-nosed, thin-lipped, with heavy eyelids and fashionably thin eyebrows, a manly face, one might say if one were to ascribe to the feminine those traditional attributes of the feminine, dainty features, small nose, full lips: Johanna and Ephie, Laura and Pin, Polly and— who but the Mary she becomes, the ugly duckling turned swan. One doesn't have to look far to find the source of these contrasting figures. In Myself When Young Richardson goes on at length about her sister suddenly gaining the limelight, becoming the centre of attention on the ship to Europe: 'E. [Ettie, short for Ethel] is very well, but Lil is a beauty' their Irish relatives tell them when they land (82). It is interesting to note the images Richardson transported from life to art, and how many came straight out of her troubled childhood. This is certainly of interest. She had a fascinating childhoodemigrant parents who took part in the colonizing of Australia, a brilliant father who went mad, a proper Victorian mother who broke with her class to become a postmistress, and the girls themselves, Ethel and Lillian, musical prodigies who went to Leipzig to study, returning to Australia only once, and then briefly. It is ripe material for literature and Richardson used it again and again in her fiction as source material. But knowing the biographical source of Richardson's preoccupations tells us about her life, and helps us guess her intentions. It places the focus on biography and leads us away from her texts. The same can be said for another major approach to Richardson's work, the