The pursuit of self and story

Abstract

The pursuit of self and story Venus Fultz A Room Made of Leaves. Kate Grenville. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2020. 322 pp. ISBN: 9781922330024 And now, scrambling down between the bushes, we came to a halt in a space enclosed on three sides by greenery. The fourth, facing the harbour, was obscured but not closed in by more branches, forming a private space: a room made of leaves. (217). It takes Mrs. Elizabeth MacArthur over two hundred pages to find the room of leaves. This space, carved for herself and her lover, is a physical space of safety and authenticity, but throughout the novel, Elizabeth pursues her authentic self through moments of feeling. We first see Elizabeth comfortable with herself as a child helping her grandfather with sheep and in the winks of queerness between her and her friend Bridie—which, as a queer writer and reader, I appreciate. I enjoyed Elizabeth's narrative pursuing a sense of self and navigating what that means to her in each situation she is forced into. When she meets MacArthur, she chases his advances not because he is worthy of her or for any hopes of romance but because in the moment of ecstasy, she experiences a euphoria of self and control that intoxicates her. Unfortunately, this moment ties her to MacArthur as wife. The novel does not shy away from the dismal historical reality of life as an orphan, losing her grandfather's respect, and being married to a callous man. Yet despite this unsatisfying marriage, Elizabeth has agency. Interestingly, during Elizabeth's moments of self-actualization as [End Page 394] an adult, the narrative often goes outside of her, marveling at her experience of self. This duality speaks to the layers of narrative in the novel itself. As an "autobiography," the narrative is in first person, but it is first-person retrospective, which adds a layer of distance and ambiguity to the events. This distance exists on top of the "Editor's Note" by Kate Grenville, which tells the reader that while the "autobiography" was found and written by Elizabeth, the novelist "had to use [her] imagination where the old ink was impossible to read" (4). The note also admits that Grenville rearranged the papers to create a cohesive narrative. One might think this addition is redundant since A Room Made of Leaves is not found autobiography, but I find the "Editor's Note" necessary to the novel's overall exploration of the self and story because it centers these themes for a character who in real life never got to tell her own story. Acknowledging that the text has been handled by another person in another time allows the reader to confront the absence of an actual autobiography by Elizabeth MacArthur. The novel does not take in only the story of Elizabeth adjusting to her role as woman of an emerging colony, but it also encompasses the conflicts between the settlers and the Indigenous population suddenly displaced by Elizabeth and John MacArthur and the other colonizers. At the end, before the narrative tapers off into a summary of the "history" already established by John MacArthur's exploits, the novel covers a deadly encounter with John and his regiment against an Aboriginal man, Pemulwuy, whom the colonizers consider a terror. Elizabeth is not present for this encounter. What we and she are privy to, though, is John's returning and relaying the encounter slowly while self-editing and self-affirming his story of events. The narrative and Elizabeth strongly encourage a suspicious reading of John's account of the encounter. Later, Elizabeth remarks on the greater cost of her rise as respected landholder: that land was stolen from Aboriginal peoples. I almost wish Elizabeth had only had these distant encounters with the Aboriginal peoples because earlier in the novel, she takes a British astronomer as a lover, a man who is learning the Aboriginal people's language and is friendly with them. This relationship provides a lens for Elizabeth to appear empathetic to the plight of that population. There is a desire to look back on certain figures of history with rose-colored lenses, especially those we feel were also obscured. However...