Abstract
Christina Stead was one of the great Australian writers of the twentieth century. After a revived interest in her work in the 70s and 80s, Hazel Rowley’s Biography (1993) and Chris William’s Christina Stead: A Life of Letters (1989), as well as an issue of Southerly in 2003, Stead is in danger of being once again forgotten. Many of her texts, however, are relevant today as they express attitudes dominant in social media. It is perhaps fitting now in the twenty-first century that we evaluate how relevant her work still is in an age of transculturalism and globalization. We see in some of her texts the same dissatisfaction with politicians, politics and social life expressed in current political events such as Brexit and the Trump phenomenon.
Highlights
Today we live in a world that in the course of a couple of decades has become dominated by a digital revolution
Issues which Christina Stead took up in her many novels and short stories written throughout the twentieth century are paramount in social media today; the young girl and her behaviour including social expectations and peer pressure; and questions of ethnicity, discrimination, stereotyping, and xenophobia
As Stead herself stated: “I confess that the study of personality is a private passion, with me” (Sage 1986: ix), and personality is always connected in some way to the social setting in which we live
Summary
There are many ways in which we can interpret and look at Stead’s texts, whether as a satirical comment on people and stereotypes in the many places she lived and worked, or as an ironical and critical eye on politics, love, and women’s position in society Looking at her texts through transcultural lens gives us a new understanding of her narrative skill in portraying these different environments and understanding of other people’s culture and way of life. Stead’s manuscripts confirm this, as well as Rowley’s biography, both showing the extent to which Christina Stead used real-life people, often friends, as models for her characters
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