Henry Handel Richardson, a study

by Nettie Palmer

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Nettie Palmer was an influential Australian writer and literary critic.

Biography of Janet Gertrude (Nettie) Palmer at the Australian Dictionary of Biography website.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reams have been written about HHR, I wrote one myself when I was at university. But I doubt if anything has been written that is so clear-sighted and free of jargon as Nettie Palmer’s study.

She begins with a straightforward account of HHR’s life, concluding that it was the years in HHR’s youth in Australia and Vienna that preoccupied her imagination. She was a private, reclusive woman who wrote not for money or fame, but because it was her gift. And then she moves on to an analysis of the books.

Today, no one could write an essay about a work by HHR without the isms: feminism, post-colonialism, and racism. Nettie Palmer, incredibly knowledgeable about Australian literature was free of all that despite her university education, and so she focusses the space she has available on HHR’s themes and characters.

It is so refreshing to read!

Each book is discussed in chronological order of writing, so Palmer begins with The Getting of Wisdom even though it was published second in 1910. Palmer doesn’t say so directly, but (as you’d expect) she implies that it’s a slighter work than the later novels: it’s a coming-of-age story that concludes with Laura breaking free of her troubles, but as Palmer puts it, beginning with an image of Everygirl, it took on her own nature, with its special gifts and preoccupations. (p. 39). IMO it’s an important book for teenage girls to read, but by the time we reach adulthood we have ceased to care about the pettiness of their preoccupations with appearance and status and so TGOW as a study of a young girl’s inner growth becomes interesting more for me as a pointer towards a question it doesn’t tackle. If clever girls, in HHR’s case one who was destined to become a great writer, can rise above the pettiness because of their consoling gifts, what becomes of those less gifted, those who suffer the barbs of their peers without ever being welcome in the peer group but have nowhere else to go?
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/10/09/h...