In the Wake of First Contact: The Eliza Fraser Stories

by Kay Schaffer

• ISBN13: 9780521499200
• ISBN10: 0521499208
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Eliza Fraser was an English woman shipwrecked on the Australian coast in 1836, where she lived with an Aboriginal community until her rescue. The story of a 'civilised' white female being taken captive by 'savage' black men was both fascinating and repulsive. Images and narratives surrounding this notorious episode have proliferated from the 1830s to the present. Kay Schaffer looks at the various literary and artistic manifestations of Eliza Fraser as a fictional presence in Australian culture. Schaffer looks at the contemporary narratives, and at more recent representations of Mrs Fraser in film, in the art of Sidney Nolan and the writing of Patrick White. The book uses these texts to examine historical discourses of colonialism, race, gender and nation. This accessible and stimulating book promises to make an impressive contribution to women's studies, cultural studies and Australian history.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Preface

1. Her story/history: the many fates of Eliza Fraser

2. Eliza Frazer's story: texts and contexts

3. John Curtis and the Politics of Empire: The Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle

4. Policing the borders of civilisation: colonial man and his others

5. Cannibals: Western imaginings of the Aboriginal other

6. Modern reconstructions: Michael Alexander's history and the Sidney Nolan's paintings

7. Patrick White's novel A Fringe of Leaves

8. A universal postcolonial myth?: representations beyond Australia - Gabrial Josipovici, Michael Ondaatje and Andre Brink

9. And now for the movie: popular accounts

10. Oppositional voices: contemporary politics and the Eliza Frazer story.