赫伯特小说中的土著混血儿主题

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Chapter 1 Introduction

§1.1 The Life and Works of Xavier Herbert

Xavier Herbert (1901-84), one of Australia’s unique novelists, was born on 15

May 1901 at Geraldton, Western Australia. At the age of 12, Herbert’s family moved to

Fremantle and he studied at a state boys’ school. Herbert was not an excellent student at

that time but showed talent in Chemistry and English composition. However, he learned

far more knowledge and experiences outside the school, roaming throughout the town

and exploring the ships or the local cemetery with his friends. In those years, he

witnessed the Aboriginal dispossession.

In 1922, Herbert became a qualified pharmacist in Perth. In 1925, he went to

Melbourne University and began writing his short stories. Herbert then travelled around

northern Australia, working as stockman, miner, railway-fettler, pearl-diver and

prison-overseer and as the Northern Territory superintendent of Aborigines. (1935-36)

All these supplied the rich materials for his future writing. In 1951, he and his wife

Sadie settled at Redlynch in Northern Queensland. At the age of 83, Herbert died in

Alice Springs on November 10th, 1984.

Herbert published six books. Among them, Capricornia and Poor Fellow My

Country are two major works which are regarded as epics in Australian literature.

Capricornia, after the early rejection for its half a million words by the publisher,

was finally published on 26 January 1938. The novel received immediate public and

critical acclaim, becoming a best seller, winning the Sesqui-centenary Literature Prize

and 1940 Australian Literature Society gold medal.

The other is Poor Fellow My Country, the most massive and longest novel ever

published in Australia, which took Herbert nine years (1964-73) to complete. It made

history in Australian literature owing to its 850,000 words which was a third longer than

Tolstoy’s War and Peace and spanning from the accession of Edward VIII in 1936 to

the turning point in the victory of the Pacific War after the battle of the Coral Sea in

1942, with the end set in the 1970s. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1975 and

honorary doctorates for Herbert. It is a condemnation to the despoliation of the land by

the white invaders, and some discrimination against the colored people and half-caste

and “presentation of the ignorance, carelessness, hollowness and cupidity of the white

invaders.” His other works include Seven Emus (1958), Soldiers’ Women (1962),

The Subject of the So-called ‘Half-caste’ in Herbert’s Fiction

Disturbing Element (1963) and Larger than Life (1963). Among them, Soldiers’ Women,

the only other long novel, is not set in the northern Australia and does not dealt with the

Aboriginal people and the land. This novel is focused on “male aggressiveness and

female sexuality and the nature of destiny” (Goodwin 109). Disturbing Element is his

own autobiography, telling the story of his life from his boyhood to 1925 when he

moved to Sydney. It is “an eloquent and fascinating book, honest in its self-appraisal,

and sharply pointed in its dialogue”. (Goodwin 108) In addition, Herbert has other

works including a number of uncollected short stories, and incomplete, abandoned, or

even rejected novels, for instance, Yeller Feller, which was burned for it was rather

similar to Capricornia.

During all his lifetime, Herbert won some important awards: the Gold Medal of

Australian Literary Society (1940), Commonwealth Literary Fund (1940),

Commonwealth Literary Fund Half Fellowship (1952), Commonwealth Literary Fund

Grant (1957), the Miles Franklin Literary Award for the best novel of the year (1976).

§1.2 The Comments on Xavier Herbert

Herbert is known in his own country for his great contribution to Australian

literature. However, he is relatively unknown outside Australia, unlike Patrick White,

the winner of Nobel Prize, who is well known as overseas as in Australia.

Herbert’s work possesses distinctive features and forms compared with his

contemporary writers. Although he is white man, he is unique for “as much sympathy

for the Aborigines as in Katherine Susannah Prichard, as much understanding of the

country as in Tom Ronan，

as much anger in Brian Penton, as much nationalism in Joeph

Furphy.” (Mclaren 1) Herbert lived almost all of his life in Australia and wrote about

Australia, concerning with the ill-treatment to Aboriginal people, expressing a love for

Australia as a land. The themes in most of Herbert’s works are the condemnations of the

abuses of Aborigines in Australia. For instance, his novel, Capricornia reveals the

inhuman treatment of Aborigines, especially that of the half-castes or part-Aborigines,

in the first 50 years of white settlement in the Northern Territory. One critic says “Mr.

Herbert’s study of the half-caste problem is fearless, and he is to be congratulated on his

courage in stating the truth as he sees it. The social historian of Australia in years to

come will find it invaluable.” (Laurie Clancy, preface)

Chapter 1 Introduction

Bernard Smith (1916-), an Australian critic, cultural historian and influential

thinker, notes that Norman, the hero in Capricornia is the first half-caste character

presented in Australian literature as a suffering human being, and with his creation by

Herbert, Australian culture begins a process of atonement.

Unlike some of his contemporary writers, Herbert was not only a novelist but also

an activist. He had continually struggled to bring the Aborigines’ plight to the attention

of the white authorities and worked as Aboriginal Protector of the compound in Darwin,

Northern Territory. Frances De Groen, the author of Herbert’s biography, says he built a

school for half-caste children in the compound and repaired the huts. Aborigines who

know Herbert appreciated treating them as fellow human beings and particularly his

attempts to encourage the pride in their cultural heritage. Therefore, “Herbert

represented a threat to Darwin’s prevailing white supremacism.” (Barns, 13)

In addition, his literary creations made a great impact on the politics and society of

the time. His description of the bad food at the compound was quoted by the official

report on the Stolen Generation: “the porridge, cooked the day before, already was sour

and when doused with the thin milk, gave up the corpses of weevils by the score, the

bread was even worse, stringy grey wrapped about congealed glue, the whole cased in

charcoal.”(Barns 14) In the same way, Herbert’s work as well as did much to develop

public support for the Aboriginal land rights movement of the 1970s and helped to

create a climate of opinion in which the Mabo and Wik judgments were possible.

However every bean has its black. Herbert likewise had his own weak point, as

well. In A History of Australian literature, the author thinks it is maybe mistake to

compare Herbert with Vance Palmer or Katharine Susannah Prichard for his parochial

nationalism. Herbert expressed contempt for white Australians as “lousy bastards” and

“colonist bastards”; and he scolded British and American for their invasion in

commerce and culture. As a matter of fact, Herbert was contemptuous of most

nationalities except Jews for his wife was a Jewess.

De Groen maintains Herbert did not completely cast off the racist thinking and

attitudes which his works condemned. In an article of the Bulletin in 1962, he even

described the Aborigines as “degenerate” and concluded they could never become

civilized.

The Subject of the So-called ‘Half-caste’ in Herbert’s Fiction

On account of Herbert’s great contribution to Australian literature, the scholars

have conducted a wide and profound research into his works or his biography from

various perspectives.

In his book, literature And the Aborigine in Australia, published in 1978, J.J.

Healy （1939 ）focuses on the relation between indignation and ideology based on

Herbert’s Capricornia. Healy firstly claims “the necessary pre-condition for

Capricornia was an enlarged environment of social protection.”(Healy 155) Then,

according to the Aboriginal problem expressed in the novel, he analyzes the author’s

retrospective view of history and of the circumstance, the deeply sympathy for the

Aborigines and half-castes in the Capricornia. Healy concludes that Herbert’s novel is

“a strong contribution to that aspect of the Aboriginal problem that threw the orthodox

concept of Australia as a nation embodying certain traditions and values into

jeopardy.”(ibid.164) Obviously, Healy finds the creation of Capricornia has relation to

the social and political condition in the 1930s.

In 1981, Laurie Clancy (1941- ), Senior Lecture in La Trobe, published a

monograph Xavier Herbert. In this book, the author studies one of Herbert’s novels in

every chapter. In Chapter 1 the author researches Herbert’s biography, The Disturbing

Element. And in Chapter 2, Clancy interprets themes contained in Capricornia, such as

Australian theme, the isolation of Capricornia，Herbert’s views of moral responsibility,

Herbert’s psychological characterization and the design of Capricornia. In Chapter 3,

Laurie Clancy analyzes Seven Emus from its structure and authorial distance, and its

theme on the problem of the half-caste and the spirit of the land. Thus it can be seen, in

this book, the author attempts to elaborate the every thought or theme of Herbert’s

works, which maybe reach a new level for the study of Herbert.

In 2003, Sean Monahan wrote A long and Winding Road

：

Xavier Herbert’s literary

Journey, which may be the best and most comprehensive monograph for studying

Herbert at present. In Part II, Chapter 2, Capricornia is looked on as “the great leap

forward” from its features in the structure of sentence and paragraph, the style, and

repetitions. In Chapter 3 ，the author discusses the swagman spirit and the subject

Aboriginality in Chapter 4, Part III. Monahan frequently assesses the quality of

Herbert’s characterization by appeal to the categories ‘round’ and ‘flat’- term

popularized by E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. His structural analysis of Herbert’s

Chapter 1 Introduction

work is based squarely on Northrop Fry’s distinction among four types of prose fiction-

anatomy, confession, romance and novel.

In 1999, France, de Groen spent ten years writing Herbert’s biography, Xavier

Herbert: A Biography, which interweaves “a testimony to the complexity of his life, the

many-layered intangibles within a framework of literature, politics, and public relations,

the outback and the city, the desire for a life-partner locked raggedly into the desire for

satiation of his alleged satyriasis.” (Richard 3)

Though Herbert’s works have enjoyed wide popularity in his own country, his

works have not received much critical popularity in China. The reason is that few

people are familiar with him and his works, except several scholars on Australian

literature. In China, the study of Herbert is unsystematic generally. Professor Huang

Yuanshen only in the History of Australian Literature introduces Herbert’s life and

some works in general. In 2004, his famous novel Capricornia was translated into

Chinese by Ouyang Yu. But this Chinese version of Capricornia is not of good quality

because of many obvious mistakes. So the author thinks that Xavier Herbert needs to be

further studied in China.

§1.3 The Purpose and the Structure of the Thesis

The subject of the half-caste problem is well expressed in Herbert’s Capricornia

and Seven Emus. As a huge, sprawling novel, it is difficult to summarize the plot of

Capricornia, which presents a picture of Northern Australia. According to the subject of

half-caste problem, the thread of novel can be the story of Norman, son of Mark

Shillingsworth and an Aboriginal girl, in Australia’s north. After his mother had died,

little Norman was abandoned by his father, Mark, due to the injustice and racism toward

the colored people. Fortunately, he was adopted by his uncle, Oscar, the owner of the

Red Ochre cattle station. Later, he was sent to the southern part of Australia where he

became a mechanic possessing self-respect and much more ability than the average

white man. Norman returned north, believing he was the grandson of a noble Javanese

sultan. But he met with a serious experience of racial discrimination. Eventually he

discovers he was really part-Aboriginal, for which he felt shame. Norman refused to

submit to being half-caste or Aboriginal. At the same time, in the novel, Norman’s story

was mixed with other characters and many events and accidents such as violent death,

railways smashes, flood and long treks.

The Subject of the So-called ‘Half-caste’ in Herbert’s Fiction

After the success of Capricornia, Herbert met with the difficulties in his writing

and drew a blank in the publication of his novels during 1942-58. Till 1959, a short

novel, Seven Emus, came out. Seven Emus is the name of a cattle-run in the port

Dampier, Northwester of Australia, which had belonged to part-Aboriginal, Bronco

Jones. However, Appleby Gaunt, a plausible rogue, cheated him of half of the station.

Meanwhile, the other villain, Mr. Malcolm Goborrow, anthropologist, wanted to steal

the precious Aboriginal totem, the dreaming stone from the tribesman with the help of

Gaunt. They deceived Jones to do so together. However, Jones struggled with them to

help the tribesman to protect the dreaming stone. The old Aborigines, Moonduk and

Mardoo didn’t believe him as an outsider.

Both novels focus on the problem of half-castes or part-Aborigines. The two

heroes, Norman and Bronco are confronted with an identity crisis: they belong neither

to the black nor white race. In spite of the similar theme, the two novels have some

differences from each other. Capricornia reflects the problems in 1930s, while Seven

Emus maybe happened in 1950s. There is a gap of about more than 20 years between

them. The latter can be seen as the extension of the former. Furthermore, the

embarrassing experience that Bronco was rejected by the Old Man in the tribe is the

complementary part of the problem in the Capricornia. As a result, if comparing

Capricornia with Seven Emus, we can obtain convincing results for the theme of

half-castes expressed in Australia, which will be discussed and presented in the

following chapters in detail.

Many scholars working on Herbert neglect to further study the subject of the

half-caste problem expressed in Herbert’s writing.

This thesis aims to explore the half-caste’ problem in his novel, Capricornia

through such aspects as: the white racism, the identity crisis and multiculturalism. I

choose to use the specific terms postcolonial discourse such as self/other, race, the

hybridiry and third space.

As a postcolonialist, Homi Bhabha is aware of the ethnic group’s dilemma and

anxiety. Bhabha proposes the theory of Third Space, in which all forms of culture, each

in its state of fluidity and hybridity, could be appropriated, translated so as to subvert

the binary oppositions and create new cultures. Bhabha’s theory opens up new

negotiation space by deconstructing the either/or binaries of East/West, Self/Other and

Man/Woman.

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摘要：

Chapter1Introduction1Chapter1Introduction§1.1TheLifeandWorksofXavierHerbertXavierHerbert(1901-84),oneofAustralia’suniquenovelists,wasbornon15May1901atGeraldton,WesternAustralia.Attheageof12,Herbert’sfamilymovedtoFremantleandhestudiedatastateboys’school.Herbertwasnotanexcellentstudentatthattimebutsho...

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