Baynton and Mansfield’s Unsettling Women

Abstract

In February 1913, Sydney was abuzz with excitement regarding ‘The Bush Girl’. A stage melodrama ‘entirely Australian [abounding] in sparkling incidents of bush life’, the play was packed with ‘picturesque scenes and dramatic situations’, including a ‘spectacular tit-bit’ when Kate, the heroine, rescues the hero from ‘a terrible death by fire, by felling a tree which bridged the chasm between her lover and safety’.¹ It was so popular that, due to ‘the rush of theatergoers’, the Palace theatre reached capacity and had to turn disappointed Australians away. By this time, the eponymous Bush Girl was a seminal part of the Antipodean colonial lexicon, a key figure in the regional artistic imaginary. Peter Morton explains that this was a ‘local variant’ of the New Woman who was considered a ‘mate’ and ‘almost an honorary man’. The Bush Girl’s relaxed and easy nature with men and practical clothing evinced her equality, authenticity, and a refreshing straightforwardness distinct from the refined yet artificial turn-of-the-century Englishwoman.² Women were repeatedly featured as crucial players in the construction of Nation and Empire, supporting their male partners by working alongside them.