The fence in Australian short fiction: ‘a constant crossing of boundaries’?

Abstract

This article contributes to discussions about the significance of fences in the Australian social imaginary. It undertakes a historical and intertextual reading of eight short stories that take the fence as their titular symbol, and explores how the fence story is rewritten at various moments of change in twentieth-century Australia. Developments in narrative form and representation are related to changes in the cultural and political contexts, through a critical engagement with Iser's argument that the institution of literature works through a ‘constant crossing of the boundary between the real and the imaginary’. As an Australian icon, the fence image illustrates the continuing power of settler discourse; however, the literary reworkings of the fence story disclose new visions of identity and otherness.