excluded from politics as well as history due to the spatial division, and her alternative history also provides us with another perspective to see the cause of a historical event, which derives from the oppression of women by the spatial
segregation instead of conflicts among men. By crossing the boundary of the spatial division to and fro, Mary’s quest for knowledge remains positive.18 Admiring women’s challenge to the existing norms, Wertenbaker admits, “I’ve always liked women on quest” (“Interview,” Rage and Reason 140).
C. Crisis of Imperialism and Colonial Resistance in Our Country’s Good
Timberlake Wertenbaker not only questions the construction of femininity, but she thinks the idea of masculinity equally problematic. Unlike choosing two
outstanding women in New Anatomies and The Grace of Mary Traverse, she focuses on men and masculinity in Our Country’s Good and After Darwin. This section deals with Our Country’s Good first. The play describes a colonial history in Australia, which is also a history of the British Empire in the late 18th century. Because masculinity develops along with imperialism (Connell, Masculinities 185), when imperialism encounters resistance, masculinity is also challenged, too. The colonial ambivalence and resistance manifested in the play indicate that British imperial history in Australia is revised and the relation between the superior masculine colonizer and the inferior feminine colonized is subverted.
18 Some critics read Mary’s quest pessimistically. For example, both Ester Beth Sullivan and Mary Karen Dahl read the play from the perspective of Althusser’s hailing ideology. Sullivan concludes that both The Grace of Mary Traverse and Our Country’s Good “are unflinching in their portrayals of the oppressive conditions of capitalistic, colonizing, and patriarchal societies” (148-49). What she means is that both plays re-confirm the existing society for the reason that all main characters are none the less hailed by mainstream ideology. Similarly, Dahl comments, “Reading Wertenbaker’s play [The Grace of Mary Traverse] through Althusser, I find it affirms the (1) longing to, and (2) difficulty of, standing outside ideology” (157). Martha Richie, on the other hand, reads the play as an allegory of Thatcher’s government in the 1980s, concluding, “Wertenbaker is clearly pessimistic in this play, not only about the efficacy of revolutionary action but also the possibility of a woman leading such action” (409-10).
Instead of seeing the play pessimistically, I, by reading the play from the perspective of crossing spatial division, submit that the ending is positive because of the possibility of the fluidity of the spatial distinction.
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Our Country’s Good was premiered at Royal Court Theatre in London in 1988, and then moved to Sydney, Australia in the next year. Among all the plays
Wertenbaker creates, Our Country’s Good is the dramatist’s most critically and commercially successful work, and it solidifies Wertenbaker’s reputation as a crucial playwright in British and world theatre. The play is described by Robert Brustein as
“an award-winning play” (29). It won Wertenbaker the 1988 Laurence Olivier Award for the Best Play, six Tony Awards nominations, and the 1991 New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for the Best Foreign Play, to name just a few.19 Our Country’s Good is based on Thomas Keneally’s novel, The Playmaker (1987), which describes a real historical event in 1789 when a group of English convicts performed George Farquhar’s comedy, The Recruiting Officer (1706), to celebrate the birthday of British King, George III, in Australia, which was an English penal colony.20
When gender is taken into consideration to read this play, the relation between the colonizer and the colonized is no longer seen as oppositional, but ambivalent.
However, from the reviews of the play, we observe a serious lack of the discussion on gender; instead, the theme of the function of the theatre is highly noticed, especially when Wertenbaker also reveals her purpose of writing the play is to “explore the redemptive power of the theatre, of art, for people who had been silenced”
(Introduction, Plays One viii).21
19 The most important award Our Country’s Good won is supposed to be the Laurence Olivier Award for the Best Play. The highest honor in English theatre, starting from 1976, Laurence Olivier Award has been given to only three female playwrights by 2009: Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money in 1987, Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good in 1988, and Pam Gems’ Stanley in 1997.
Owing to more limited discussion of gender for the
20 Wertenbaker was commissioned by Max Stafford-Clark, a well-known director in British theatre, to rewrite Thomas Keneally’s novel. Directed by him, Our Country’s Good fulfilled Stafford-Clark’s commission in 1988. Then in 1993, finishing his directorship in the Royal Court, Stafford-Clark established his own theatre company, Out of Joint, which produced another play by Wertenbaker, The Break of Day, in 1995. The Break of Day was also commissioned by Stafford-Clark to rewrite Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The comparison and contrast between the play Our Country’s Good and the novel The Playmaker are not the main thrust in this section; therefore, for more detail about this topic, see Ann Wilson’s “Our Country’s Good: Theatre, Colony and Nation in Wertenbaker’s Adaptation of The Playmaker.” Modern Drama 34 (1991): 23-34.
21 Our Country’s Good gains different reviews in different places, and we may conclude that the issue
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play, this section intends to focus on gender in this history play in order to explore the construction of history through the power relation between the sexes. More
importantly, to understand gender in the play, we have to go beyond gender and take race and class into consideration. Since gender is a constitutive element of world relationships, it should not be examined separately.
Wertenbaker’s treatment of the gender issue in her plays always reveals a possibility of reconstruction and a transformative power of gender roles; thus, the discussion on gender in Our Country’s Good illustrates the dignity of human reformation, and more crucially, the ability of resistance to unfair and coercive domination. This different reading from the perspective of gender is especially significant because many critics read the educational function of theatre from a negative point of view. Wertenbaker emphasizes “the redemptive power of theatre”
(Introduction, Plays One viii), but this “redemptive power” is manipulated by the government, turning it into a means of domination, for many critics. Ann Wilson explains that the convicts in the play learn civilization through the art of theatre, but
“the production of The Recruiting Officer amounts to the adoption of cultural values of the dominant community and hence is a means of colonization” (“Our Country’s Good” 33). Esther Beth Sullivan, agreeing with Wilson, also comments, “The Recruiting Officer indeed recruits the convicts to England’s imperialist project,
making them willing rather than resistant participants” (143). Besides, Carlson, giving a pessimistic reading of the ending of the play, declares that “the play ends by
reproducing the dominant ideology at the expense of a social critique” (“Language and Identity” 138-39). The function and value of theatre, for those critics, is a way of
on and about theatre is the favorite among critics and reviewers; the issues of race and class attract a glimpse of attention; gender is the minor and marginalized topic. As for more detail about different comments in London, Sydney, and the United States, see Susan Carlson’s “Issues of Identity, Nationality and Performance: the Reception of Two Plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker.” New Theatre Quarterly 9.35 (1993): 267-89.
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homogenizing individual differences under the dominance of the British Empire, teaching the convicts to be subject to the imperialist ideology. However, the convicts’
learning the language in theatre does not simply mean that they are “hailed” into the British imperialistic ideology unconsciously,22
Reading Our Country’s Good from the binary structure of colonialism, this section reveals that both the aboriginals and the English people, including English officers and convicts, are stereotyped and gendered as feminine in order to serve the British Empire. During the colonial period of Australia, on the one hand, British imperialism feminizes and marginalizes men as well as women in the colony; on the other hand, the colonized people resist the dominant authority by reconstructing their gender, race, and class identities. These two forces reshape the colonial history of Australia, reversing the humiliation of Australian forefathers as British convicts to the noble image of human dignity illustrated by their ability of resistance to the British Empire. The first part of this section, analyzing the opposition between British people and Australian Aboriginal peoples, emphasizes that the feminized aboriginals’
resistance through the counter-discourse challenges the historical discourse from the Empire. The second part discusses the opposition between the British officers in the Navy and the British convicts, which symbolizes the relation between the colonizer and the colonized, and focuses on the convicts’ resistance by mimicry. The third part of the section then takes a step further to deconstruct the dominant and masculine
but neither does it mean that they lose the awareness of resistance to colonialism. Instead, learning British civilized language and art performance could be a resistant way to menace the colonial authority from the inside of imperialism. Language helps those convicts to set up their gender, race and class identities, and also facilitates them to fight for their own voices.
22 Sullivan appropriates Althusser’s theory of ideology to read Our Country’s Good, concluding that the convicts are “hailed” into the British imperialist ideology (143).
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British officers due to the reason that they have been feminized by the British Empire so that their masculinity is in crisis. The three parts of the discussion demonstrate how the imperialistic masculinity of the British Empire in Australia is decentralized by the aboriginal resistance, the British convicts’ colonized resistance, and the British officers’ feminization; at the same time the theme of crossing and blurring borders of race, class, and gender by colonial resistance is highlighted.
1. British People versus Australian Aboriginal Peoples
Our Country’s Good is based on real historical facts about the First Fleet’s transportation of criminals from England to Australia to build New South Wales in 1787. Most characters in the play, including convicts and officers, are named after real people who sailed on the First Fleet. Also, The Recruiting Officer, the first play
performed in Australia, indeed was performed by some convicts and an officer (Gibson 1). According to Jane Gibson’s research, about 160,000 people, including men, women, and children, were sent to Australia into slavery, and most of them were criminals (1). Australia became a British penal colony, and the early Australian history started with convicts who created and cultivated their new state. This early period of colonial history is the “convict stain” of the Australian past because it reminds Australians that their country was built on barbarian and unjust law (Buse 154). The First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in 1788; after two hundred years, when Australians celebrated their anniversary in 1988, they mentioned a little about their colonial past and their bad treatment of Australian Aborigines, who even refused to celebrate the anniversary, trying to forget this “convict stain” (154). Coincidentally or deliberately, Our Country’s Good was premiered in London in 1988, which became another way to celebrate the anniversary and to commemorate this unforgettable past which belonged to Australia as well as England (155).
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Although Our Country’s Good is “welcomed by Australians as a gripping account of their colonial past” (Carlson, “Issues of Identity” 279), some Australian critics still question the authenticity and authority of this past described in the play.
The main question they ask is: is that the Australian past or is that our Australian country (280)?23
Moreover, the gender issue is always an important theme in imperialism. R. W.
Connell explains that while “masculinities are not only shaped by the process of Paul McGillick wonders, “Whose history is it anyway? When does it stop being England’s history and become Australia’s?” (qtd. in Carlson, “Issues of Identity” 280). In other words, McGillick questions the fixed, unchangeable concept of history which centers on one country (England) only. Gilbert and Tompkins also criticize this narrow idea of history because it is Eurocentric and it overlooks the aboriginals or colonial history in Australia, claiming, “[A] colony’s history frequently
‘began’ when the whites arrived: any events prior to contact with Europeans were irrelevant to the official record which became the history, a closed narrative
designated to remove traces of alternative histories” (106 emphasis in original). As mentioned in Chapter Two, when commenting on the concept of history, Wertenbaker asserts that the flexibility of history always welcomes the other and difference. While the playwright criticizes the island mentality of English people in Credible Witness, Three Birds Alighting on a Field, and The Break of Day, she by implication also disapproves of chauvinism and nationalism, which insist on only one interpretation of historical narrative. History is always hybrid and mixed with a great variety of
different components. The colonial history in Australia is also English history and a responsibility for English people to face and remedy.
23 Based on Susan Carlson’s survey, Krug thinks that Our Country’s Good is “not about Australians but displaced Britons” (“Issues of Identity” 280) whereas McGillick questions, “Whose history is it anyway?” (280). Carlson concludes that Australian reviewers ask whose country their country is since the play is named “Our” Country’s Good (280).
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imperial expansion, they are active in that process and help to shape it” (Masculinities 185). What he means is that masculinity and imperialism develop hand in hand.
Particularly, Connell further describes that men of the frontier, such as British officers in Australia, are the symbolic characters of masculinity (185). The colonizer expresses masculinity through violence and power in the colony, and therefore the colonized is feminized, men and women alike. Revathi Krishnaswamy observes that masculinity rationalizes colonialism (292), and one of the strategies of colonial domination is to
“justif[y], naturaliz[e], even legitimiz[e]” the effeminacy of the colonized men (303).
That is to say, to feminize the colonized facilitates and rationalizes the dominance of the colonizer, and to “genderize” the colonizer and the colonized as masculine and feminine is an imperialist strategy to dominate the colony.
In light of such a gender perspective, one can easily find that English people in Our Country’s Good are defined as the masculine colonizer whereas Australian Aboriginal peoples are the feminine colonized; hence, it is needless to stress the gender of the character “The Aborigine” because he/she has been predetermined as female.24
24 From the cast list of the premiere, The Aborigine is performed by an actor, named Jude Akuwudike (Our Country’s Good 183). However, in light of the discussion that the colonized has been to be genderized as female, I suggest that it would be more dramatic and meaningful for the character to be performed by an actress.
In the play, the representative of Australians and the colonial victims is
“The Aborigine,” a character without gender and name. This character suggests that he/she is so marginalized that his/her identity is worthless to mention. More crucially, to call this genderless character “The Aborigine” contains a pejorative connotation.
Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin express that “aborigine” is “considered by many to be too burdened with derogatory associations” (4) because of “the feeling that the term fails to distinguish and discriminate among the great variety of people [. . .]” (4). In other words, the term “aboriginal” suggests that the differences among aborigines are
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erased and reduced to a homogeneous and inferior people.25
The Aborigine’s soliloquy also shows “her” marginal position in the colony.
All in all, this genderless, nameless character without an origin functions as a feminine other in opposition to the masculine British colonizers and settlers in the play.
26
Without the presence of any other character during her soliloquy, the two scenes mentioned above center on The Aborigine. Nevertheless, some British characters are Appearing only four times, she delivers her soliloquies without talking with people. In her monologues, The Aborigine describes her reaction toward the coming of English people from disregard to disillusion. In Act One, Scene Two, “A Lone Aboriginal Australian Describes the Arrival of the First Convict Fleet in Botany Bay on January 20, 1788,” The Aborigine portrays the coming of English people, which embodies the western civilization, as a big giant canoe, murmuring, “A giant canoe drifts on to the sea, clouds billowing from upright oars. This is a dream which has lost its way. Best to leave it alone” (Our Country’s Good 186). The dreamlike scene of the arrival of the First Fleet is incomprehensible for The Aborigine, so she thinks the best way is to ignore it. However, when she appears next time, she starts to wonder about the meaning of the dream which represents the arrival of English people. In Act Two, Scene Four, “The Aborigine Muses on the Nature of Dreams,” she ponders, “Some dreams lose their way and wander over the sea, lost. But this is a dream no one wants.
It has stayed. How can we befriend this crowded, hungry and disturbed dream?” (249).
Unable to resist the “giant canoe,” the aboriginal peoples are compelled to accept the dominance of the British Empire. This undesired dream, insisting on staying in the land they consider their own, leaves them questions and even fear.
25 Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin explain that now the most common and appropriate way to describe aborigines is “Australian Aboriginal peoples” (4 emphasis added).
26 To stress the feminizing power in the colonial discourse, I deem it more appropriate to use “she” and
“her” to refer to this character.
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present in the last two scenes in which she appears, but they do not have any communication. In Act Two, Scene Seven, “The Meaning of Plays,” the British convicts in rehearsal are discussing the meaning of plays; in other words, having learnt civilization through the performing of a play, the English convicts use the proper language to express their thoughts and then to improve themselves. However, on the other hand, Australian Aboriginal peoples have suffered a lot from the British colonization. The Aborigine describes that their ancestors die at the arrival of the British people, stating, “Ghosts in a multitude have spilled from the dream. Who are they? A swarm of ancestors comes through unmended cracks in the sky? But why?
What do they need? If we can satisfy them, they will go back. How can we satisfy them?” (257). Aboriginal ancestor spirits do not rest, coming back to the earth due to the hatred of the British arrival. The Aborigine cannot find a way to send them back;
nor can she understand why they return to the earth.
Not until The Aborigine is going to be like her dead ancestors, death, does she realize the dream is a cruel reality rather than a fantasy that takes away many people’s lives. Her final appearance shows in Act Two, Scene Eleven, “Backstage,” and she horrifyingly reports, “Look: oozing pustules on my skin, heat on my forehead.
Not until The Aborigine is going to be like her dead ancestors, death, does she realize the dream is a cruel reality rather than a fantasy that takes away many people’s lives. Her final appearance shows in Act Two, Scene Eleven, “Backstage,” and she horrifyingly reports, “Look: oozing pustules on my skin, heat on my forehead.