Wilderness Values (II): Protection and Exploitation In Julia Leigh’s The Hunter

Abstract

Issues of environmental concern are deeply related to issues of environmental perception and representation. This becomes particularly astute in conjunction with texts with characteristics of the “utilizing the wilderness” type, as also explored in the previous chapter. In this chapter, I turn my attention to Julia Leigh’s The Hunter. This novel engages with myths of wilderness by also positing the evasive figure of the thylacine/Tasmanian Tiger as a metaphor for wilderness.¹ Issues of survival, extinction, feminization, and other- ing are played out through this figure, with specific effects for the understanding of wilderness that informs the nature of the novel. In the scope of this project, The Hunter is read not only in terms of the utilizing the wilderness type—foregrounding issues of logging and conservation—but can also be productively read in terms of the “into the wilderness” type considering the figure of the hunter, and as “post-wilderness” writing given the ethical concerns the text explicitly and implicitly raises.