The Making of Australia - Coursework Example

MAKING OF AUSTRALIA. INTRODUCTION The highly Imperial British Kingdom had spread all over the world through colonization. Her roots were everywhere on the earth. Australia that had been initially formed as a penal colony has been put into so many ups and downs and her face has been lifted with the help of toiling of so many people in and around Australia. The proper noun of her used in previous sentences with respect to Majestic UK , Australia or any other nation of the world is really under a questionable status. Women convicts transported to Australia and their plight either in UK or in Australia are to be analyzed in full to understand if they were constructed by the elite society. To arrive at the beginning of the understanding, the life of aborigines of Australia depicted by Grimshaw is helpful. The rustic lifestyle of aborigines was found to be in equilibrium wherein confrontation between men and women was minimal. The good origin of Aborigines derailed: The cultural significance of giving birth to a child had been well understood to its grass root by the aborigines. The baby’s birthplace entrenched its niche in the social and physical world. The governments’ approach towards the pregnant women convicts and the care provided by the governments in the period of colonization and settlement could be seen as the aborigines’ basic attitude towards child nurturing. The economic status of aborigines was well depicted in the book by Grimshaw (1994). British elite group of women had around sixty eight essential materials like head bands, swaddling cloth etc, at the time of delivery for making a pregnant women to give birth to a child; even a poorer woman of British had forty to forty-five essentials. But Aboriginals had very little preparation for giving birth. The encounter between two sets of women reveals some of the ways in which British technological superiority and cultural arrogance were to determine future relations between the two groups. On several occasions, Aboriginal women used Government House and its well-guarded grounds as a refuge from attacks by their men, a function which the British upper class were pleased to perform in the name of chivalry. Here also, the game of chivalry was enjoyed by the British elite society, which fuelled the latent barbaric instinct in aborigines. The physical strength and the way Aboriginal women acted upon during and after delivery amazed many upper middle class British women and even Aboriginal men frown on their own women for doing lengthy walks and strenuous work during and after delivery. Aborigines’ treatment of male role in reproduction was simply a physical starter. They had a spiritual and land-related explanation for conception, placing little emphasis on sexual intercourse except in creating a path by which the baby spirit could enter a women’s body. Ashley Montageu opined that mothers were considered simply the vehicles for the baby spirits to enter and sexual intercourse was just an act necessitated for the purpose of reproduction. Instead of encouraging their kids to ask questions, the children were taught and allowed to observe the adult activities and mimic so that they can perform the acts independently when they grow old. Children of Aborigines were effectively protected from orphan status by way of kinship system, through which essential supplies to the children were maintained without any break. The reciprocal obligation of kinship system was easy to maintain an economic integration among them while social significance was in no way diminished. Elizabeth Mac Arthur found: - men were not gallant because they did not escort their ladies, as was popular in the tradition of knightly chivalry. But women of Aborigines enjoyed much economic and spiritual independence. They were not concerned if their men were not around them to foster or protect. Because of the entry of White settlers, Aborigine men were prohibited from hunting and women were however able to continue their nurturing role as reproducers and also procure sustenance through prostitution. Thus aborigines were degraded and not got degraded. Marriage prospects and its failure: Smith babetee (1988) works on the marriage prospects of Australian women especially the women convicts. Rev.Rusden’s letter to the governor encapsulates the main reasons why so many women tried so hard and long to marry in the face of great difficulties and constant rejection. They would go to great lengths to convince the government they were free to marry. Getting permission for female convicts to get married was a very hard part of their life especially when they were already married and widowed or disowned by their spouse. This too encouraged the practice of co habitation that needed no legal validity to adhere to. Working class difference and unchastity: Struma’s (1978) work on Australian women speaks about the employment opportunity provided for women convicts in the female factories and the surrounding colonial area. Unemployment and the resultant reluctance in forming a family encouraged non formation of family and leading a life of co-habitation. Cohabitation encouraged prostitution. Even male convicts had the view of female convicts as unchaste and unfit to lead a family life, as upper middle class British had of the female convicts. A comprehensive analysis of the historian’s views by Daniels Kay : This book talks of the history of women especially the convict women. The author Daniels. K. (1998) shoots so many questions on the historians and administrators to elucidate what actually convictism had been meant in the context of transportation of convicts to an alien soil. In the argument of Deborah Oxley, (1988, “Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past” edited by Stephen Nicholas) far from being prostitutes, or habitual criminals most of the women were from the skilled or semi-skilled working class. Three occupations dominated. General servant, house maid and kitchen hand. But women’s value was under valued and they remained underemployed in colonies. She points out that, historians have tended to deny women a productive role in colonial history. As they have undervalued their skills, they believed that women were simply unfit to contribute to the economic development. They considered women a ‘wasted asset’. The misconception of the historians’ views on women is self evident in this interpretation. Can an asset be a waste at all? Or if asked the other way can a waste be assumed as asset? The perplexity of the historians’ assessment on women as well on economics of asset is self evident in this dubious interpretation. John Hirsts’ view on convicts focused mainly on the male side. However he was of the view that transportation of convicts reformed them more effectively than the rigors and moralization. This he ascribed to the change in social circumstances and particularly the availability of employment. In her study on the first generation of native-born (The Hatch and Brood of Time) Portia Robinson puts forth her strong view of the ‘forced degradation’ of women during the first four decades of European settlement. The availability of completely different opportunities for women in colonies simply offered them a choice of behavior—that is either to continue with immorality and criminality or to veer away from it—which was not necessarily based on “economic necessity”. Convict women are mostly portrayed as prostitutes. The views of Anne Summers on the treatment of women in Australian penal colony attract the attention at this juncture. The very coinage of the term ‘prostitutes’ is purely male chauvinistic. It has been coined with a view to make the observers, beholders, readers and in entirety the world believe that ‘prostitution’ is an immoral activity committed solely by women without the contribution of males. Unfortunately the very utterance of this term is associated with an assumption that women are perpetrators of the so called ‘prostitution’ wherein men are high above and in no way with the act to judge and pass their verdict of punishments to the ‘made-ill-fated’ women. Enforced whoredom: The wish of the Governor Arthur Phillip that convicts did not lay foundation of an empire of them had scattered to pieces and the reverse took place in the history. Who or what is the source bed of this unwanted and ugly imprint in the history of Australian women? When women convicts were transported with a chief aim of gratifying the inhabitants of the colony the question of abhorring women indulging in prostitution is quite ridiculous. The incidents that followed the transportation right from the First Fleet were in negative direction only. Enforced whoredom was shoved on the women convicts initially by the co sailing male convicts, which when women convicts were packed in a separate vessel was shifted to the sailors and the masters of the ship crew. Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s attempt to grant marriage licenses with a view to divert the life of the women convicts from the stereotype whoredom went futile as the epidemic of immorality had already spread and got planted deep in the soil of colony. The inducements placed before such schemes attracted both the male and female convicts to enter into marriage contracts for the purpose of enjoying the sops offered by the administration alone. When the sops began to reduce, the marriage rate too fell down. Lord Molesworth’s Report on Transportation in 1837 depicts the vicious cycle -- of prostitution, commitment of offence, impregnation and confinement at the cost of government -- in which women convicts, however nice they, were entangled in. Anne Summers (1994) in her Damned whores depicts the female convicts who were incorrigible to manage. The fundamental frailties of these whores were already explained in a psychological analysis by Karen Horney (1945). Horney asserted that the perception of self was influenced by relationship with others. The definition provided by Horney of ‘real self’, ideal self’ and despised self’ explains the stereotypes of the whores which were internalized by the culture, which left those women with little room for self-fulfillment in the form of ‘real self’. Real self is that which is capable of making us feel satisfied and fulfilled. Constant tension between living up to the social expectations in the form of ‘ideal self’ and the threat of social alienation resulting from the actions that deviated from those expected standards made the whores to fall prey to their ‘despised self’ again and again. Plight of women convicts of Newgate: Portia Robinson (1988) talks of the Newgate women at UK whose lifestyles were obviously estranged and obscene. Elizabeth Fry’s attempt to reform the abandoned womenfolk of Newgate and her psychological approach and fragmented targets were really laudable. Firstly she wished the women convicts to be introduced to standards of cleanliness and decent dress. Women convicts portrayed in this book were really depraved with a character quite unbecoming of a woman. Theft was the main crime committed by the women of Newgate. Inebriation and prostitution were joining hands with these types of women convicts. Many of the cases of women convicts were stealing watch and money worth £3 or £5. They stole cloths from children and abandoned the kids after stealing. The maximum punishment that was able to be awarded by the judges to these wretched criminals was transportation for 7 years to places beyond seas. These ‘refuse of London’ were deserving transportation either to get reformed or continue to live in still degraded status of ‘the disgrace of their sex’. Female convicts in Paramatta Female Factory: DAMOUSI (1997) speaks of Paramatta based female convicts. Navy Surgeon Peter Cunningham viewed that many female convicts were led astray by men and were placed in such a position that offering their body to keep men quiescent would be a cheaper and feasible option for them to procure a male protection. The vulgarity, vagrancy, brutality and wilderness of women convicts were analyzed in depth viewing their sexual deviance as an inevitable association of all these vices. Damousi chronologically observes the psychological and social viewpoint of masculinity and femininity. The acceptances of the view that women have sexual desire in seventeenth century faded during the next century and women were begun expected to be subservient and were allowed to express their sexual feelings and get them satiated only through matrimonial love. In the name of morality a deviance in the social view point happened, which placed scores of restrictions on the activities of women wherein entered the male domination. The demographic minority of women aggravated this feature of male domination that viewed female convicts in an entirely different perspective. The real misconception occurred when women were considered an inanimate ‘object’—conveniently with ‘life’ for men’s sexual gratification. This ‘object’ perception was the seed bed of all perplexities and confusion in human relations. Failures in marriage too were from the same source. Military and Naval officers who were highly conventional in their views about women were in practice highly frail to get contaminated by the denounced ‘pollutants’ called the whores. CONCLUSION: A society comprising only two sub sects-- namely men and women-- if blames only one of the constituents as the culprit, it is a sheer evidence that the society as a whole is yet to mature in its ideological growth. Deficient understanding of masculinity is the root cause of all these blasphemies. The entire theory of binary is misunderstood. One, who pronouns himself /herself as a donor should not blame the receiver for not receiving, while the donor is not prepared to part with. The society is still erring in similar manner. The elite group especially the masculine part of the group constructs women convicts for the sake of their own pleasure and throws the female constituents away on the ground that they tempted the elite group to err. The simple majority in number might have offered such make-belief strength to manhood to point their fingers towards womanhood. To understand masculinity it would now be feasible only when woman ideologists, thinkers and observers are allowed to express their views however sour they may be. The masculinity is currently counter acting the feministic views, which should forthwith be stopped. If man folk begin to indulge in self-analysis of the charges in women’s views, a point will arrive where perfect equilibrium is achieved. The nation then need not be pronounced as ‘her’ or ‘she’ in a self-deceitful manner. *** *** *** Reference list – Damousi. J, 1997, “Depraved and Disorderly Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia”, Cambridge university Press. Daniels. K., 1998 “Convict Women”, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Grimshaw Patricia, Marylyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly, 1994, “Creating a Nation”, McPhee Gribble Publishers. Melbourne Karen Horney, 1945, “Our inner conflicts: A constructive theory of neurosis”, W.W.Norton, New York. Portia Robinson, 1988, “Women of Botany Bay”, Penguine, Ringwood. Smith babete, 1988, “A Cargo of Women: Susannah Watson and the Convicts of the Princess Royal”, Rosenberg, Sydney. Stephen Nicholas, 1988, “Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past” Struma Michael, 1978, “Eye of the Beholder: the Stereotype of Female Convicts 1788-1852, labour History, No.34 , May 1978. Summers Anne, 1994, pp 313-335“Damned Whores and Gods of Police”, Penguine Books, Melbourne. Read More