School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemWilliam Morris: illuminating a life( 2016)Drawing on biographical, literary and other sources pertaining to the life and work of nineteenth-century English writer and artist William Morris, this thesis examines and re-evaluates the importance of Morris's love for Georgiana Burne-Jones. Arguing the significance of this relationship for Morris’s personal, literary, artistic and political life, it underlines how a century of Morris biography and scholarship has misread – or failed to read – Morris’s deep romantic connection to Georgiana – the wife of his best friend – and hence the true nature of the deep personal sorrow evident in much of his life and work. In making this case, this thesis challenges in particular the lengthy scholarship that has focused on the relationship between Morris’s wife, Jane Morris, and the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Much confusion has arisen, I argue, because so many have attributed Morris’s deep sorrow to his wife’s love for another – rather than his own, largely unreciprocated, love, for the wife of his own best friend. I propose that Morris loved Georgiana Burne-Jones before either was married, and that she remained the principal love of his life. I find evidence of this in Morris’s poetry and personal correspondence and argue that, after their marriages, when their respective partners found love elsewhere, Morris turned to Georgiana to seek a return of his love for her. Georgiana became the focus of his poetry and the recipient of many tokens of love – including handcrafted gifts that should be read as ‘labours of love’. But this thesis extends its analysis beyond Morris’s personal writings and intimate relationships. I demonstrate that the social conditions and moral expectations that hindered free love between such people became the focus of Morris’s hatred, and awakened him to the status of women in society. Focusing in particular on the fragment of an unfinished novel never published in Morris’s lifetime, I draw connections between Morris’s personal sorrow and his attraction to social causes. Morris was drawn to socialism and alternative societies in the 1870s and 1880s, and the hope that future generations would not have their lives blighted by impersonal powers such as church and state. Thus I propose a radically different biographical interpretation of Morris’s inner life and motivation. Further, I highlight what I believe to be a gross misconception about Morris, based on inadequate understandings that have arisen in twentieth-century biographies. These studies assert that Morris had difficulty relating to women, and that this contributed to the failure of his marriage, and his inability or unwillingness to deal with the affair between his wife and Rossetti. On this basis, some assume that the relationship between Morris and Georgiana was close, but compensatory and chivalrous. I challenge this interpretation and demonstrate that, to the contrary, Morris was decisive in his dealings with his wife and Rossetti, and serious in his quest to win the love of Georgiana. Thus this thesis draws out a new and challenging autobiographical narrative of Morris’s life and love. To quote Morris, ‘love is enough’ to explain many key aspects of his life’s trajectory – but we have to illuminate that love and understand it afresh.
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ItemA woman of spirit: Lorna Osborn (1922-2011) and her circles: citizenship and influence through religion and education( 2011)This thesis explores the life of the prominent and influential Victorian Methodist and Uniting Churchwoman and educator, Lorna Osborn (nee Grierson) who taught for a quarter of a century at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. It analyses aspects of her family background, her education at school and university, her marriage and children, and the formation of the networks that underwrote her religious, social and educational activities as a mature woman from the 1940s to the 1980s. Though Australian women received political citizenship at federal level in 1902 following Federation, male-dominated social structures meant that most women, particularly if they were married and mothers of young children, seldom accessed positions that entailed influence, authority and effective leadership in business, politics or many of the professions, prior to the changed consciousness about gender following the second-wave feminist campaigns of the 1970s. The thesis illuminates how Protestant Christianity, especially Methodism, though it set limits to acceptable female behaviour, also provided spaces for women's agency outside the strictly domestic sphere. Osborn herself did not try to enter male preserves. Esteemed as an active and efficient churchwoman, she was able to operate at high levels in church affairs. Stemming from this foundation, Osborn was embedded in supporting networks which later helped her forge an impressive career at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School, where fresh circles of colleagues and students invigorated and extended her possibilities for innovation. Educationally on the conservative wing, Osborn's strong adherence to Christianity and to advancing the rights of girls to higher education drove her impressive, dynamic career that promoted talented middle-class girls into an advantaged position to compete academically and professionally in the wider society. This study of Lorna Osborn's life throws light onto the experience of many other women in her circles.
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ItemAn imperial partnership: the marriage of Henry and Alice Northcote( 2011)This thesis examines the lives of two Victorian era aristocrats, Henry (Harry) Stafford Northcote and Alice Stephen Northcote, who married in 1873, and in 1900 began an eight-year career in colonial government. It reviews in particular their negotiation of the system of imperial power that they represented, first in Bombay (1900-1903) and then in Australia (1904-1908). The combination of attention to biographical specificities and the various social and political contexts of the Northcotes' engagements allows the details of their lives to illuminate issues of wider historical significance. The study encompasses two different biographical challenges: interpreting the various correspondences that make up the main source of information about Harry; and discovering Alice despite a paucity of primary source material. Harry, scion of a minor aristocratic dynasty, first served in British politics what proved to be an apprenticeship for colonial service, while Alice, as the adopted daughter of a self-made millionaire, was a socially aspiring society hostess and little else. The couple experienced a dramatic life change at the end of the century: the means of resolving a painful predicament gave both Northcotes the opportunity to find personal renewal and professional fulfilment. They performed in the colonies with a measure of grace and humanity but, imbued as they were with the values of their era and class, Harry and Alice delivered what the British Empire required; they never questioned the ethos or mode of delivery. What the Empire required was always and everywhere the political, economic and social domination of others, particularly those of cultural and racial difference, for the ultimate benefit of the Mother Country and British colonials. In India Harry and Alice made separate but related efforts to impose Western standards of sanitation and medicine. Harry's administration was principally concerned with providing immediate relief for catastrophic famine, and the implementation of Western methods of dealing with epidemics of plague and smallpox. Alice's work involved raising revenue for the Dufferin Fund, a charitable venture characteristic of Victorian era philanthropy: a combination of culturally specific assistance and control. Harry's job description changed when he became governor general of the newly federated Australia. He moved from autocratic rule in a colony of extraction to performing a leading role in a constitutional monarchy in an increasingly self-governing settler society. Harry fulfilled both jobs with judgement and diplomacy, and in Australia he steered the ship of state through turbulent political waters. Alice, having found her metier as governor's "incorporated" wife, and having discovered considerable organisational skill, master-minded the First Australian Exhibition of Women's Work in 1907, an event designed to support fragile federation. On the couple's return to England Harry was active in the campaigns to prevent reform of the House of Lords and female suffrage, indicating that his conservative political views had not changed. Harry died in 1911 and Alice lived out a long widowhood until 1934, creating no new persona, but engaging in activities informed by Harry's legacy.
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ItemYouth to age: family and education in the development of Judith Wright( 2012)This thesis is a biographical study of Judith Wright’s first twenty-one years, which argues that by examining this period we are better able to understand her unconventional life-course and intellectual development. It shifts the emphasis from current, dominant readings of Wright, which contend that she was born different, inspired, unique, that like the archetypal Romantic poet she lived more or less outside of history. It seeks a new perspective on Wright by positioning her within the cultural, historical and intellectual environments in which she grew up. While the story of Wright’s life after the publication of her first poetry collection, The Moving Image (1946) is well known, not so well understood is the interesting path that led towards it. This thesis argues that it is through this prism that the mature Wright can best be seen. In order to understand the intellectual formation of Wright this thesis focuses on two areas: her family background and her time at the University of Sydney between 1934 and 1936. The first three chapters consider the example provided by three familial generations. Although most accounts have viewed Wright as emerging despite, not from, this apparently conservative, pastoral background, this thesis highlights the enduring influence of her family. The emphasis in this thesis on Wright’s time at university is, in part, a response to it remaining almost completely unexamined in current biographical studies. Writers have moved quickly from her childhood years to her late twenties, when she met Jack McKinney. An over reliance on this trajectory across the literature gives the impression that Wright was self-realised from a young age. As this thesis suggests, this was not so; in fact, the experience of going to university changed Wright socially, culturally and intellectually. Though there is evidence that Wright was unconventional in some senses before Sydney, in that city she adopted the increasingly fashionable sensibilities of a modern woman and embarked on her mature career in poetry. This thesis uncovers a variety of original documentation relating to Wright’s life, including her student journalism and, it is argued, her first adult poems. The final chapter of the thesis contends that this poetry formed the basis, intellectually and stylistically, of The Moving Image, a collection which was groundbreaking for both the poet and her society. Above all, this thesis seeks to re-cast our understanding of Wright by taking proper account of the familial, social and intellectual contexts through which she developed, and of the impact of these on the public figure she was to become.
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ItemRoger Barlow: Tudor trade and the Atlantic world( 2008)This thesis is about Roger Barlow. He was born near Colchester, sometime between 1480 and 1496, into a family with connections to the woollen cloth trade, and he died in Pembrokeshire in 1553. Barlow lived and traded in Seville during the 1520s as a member of a community of English merchants who prospered there. When Sebastian Cabot sailed from Seville in search of a route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands, Barlow accompanied him and joined in his exploration of the Rio de la Plata. He returned to Castile in late 1528 before returning to England around 1530 and marrying the daughter of a Bristol merchant. In the mid 1530s, Barlow moved to Pembrokeshire and cooperated with his brothers to further the Crown's policy for Wales while building up an estate around the dissolved commandery of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem at Slebech. He retained his links with trading networks in London and Bristol and in 1541 presented the king with a cosmography, subsequently titled A Brief Summe of Geographie, and a proposal, initially developed with fellow merchant, Robert Thorne. The crux of the proposal was that the English should undertake exploratory voyages to establish a trade route to the East via the Northwest Passage. As Barlow had inserted his personal account of the Rio de la Plata, including a description of a Tupi cannibal feast, into his cosmography, this would have been the first personal account of the Americas to appear in English, had Henry supported its publication. The contention of this thesis is that Roger Barlow's story is significant because it reveals the complex and influential role of guilds and informal merchant networks during the Henrician period, the nature of England's trading relationship with Spain and its Atlantic settlements before the Reformation, and the reactions of merchants, power brokers and monarchs to the New World during the first half of the sixteenth century. As well as connecting a myriad of geographical locations, Barlow's story links the mercantile world with that of the landed gentry and the clergy at a time when both social structures and forms of belief were being challenged. Barlow accumulated a knowledge of the world and its opportunities that was extraordinary for an Englishman in the first half of the sixteenth century. Such knowledge was the bedrock of the exploration, settlement, colonization and mercantile developments that gained momentum in the century that followed.
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ItemImage is all: Lt-Colonel William Farquhar, Sir Stamford Raffles, and the founding and early development of colonial Singapore( 2012)In popular memory, Sir Stamford Raffles is hailed as the far-sighted founder of the British settlement at Singapore. This thesis challenges that image of Raffles, arguing that it obscures and undervalues the role played by Lieutenant Colonel William Farquhar. The thesis re-examines Farquhar’s role, along with that of Raffles, and analyses why Farquhar has been belittled and Raffles so glorified in Singapore’s conventional founding narrative. The thesis challenges three widely held beliefs which form the basis of Raffles’ dominance of that narrative. These are: that Raffles chose Singapore as a site for a new British trading post; that he was responsible for its rapid rise to a successful entrepôt port, and that he was responsible for Britain’s acquisition of Singapore. This research validates Farquhar’s competing claims that he was owed much credit in Singapore’s founding and early commercial success. The study breaks new ground. For the first time, an ongoing and positive link between Farquhar’s activities in Malacca and in Singapore is demonstrated. Moreover, evidence provided by Raffles’ biographers to aggrandise Raffles and criticise Farquhar is refuted by documentary evidence. Previously uncited material reveals the inaccuracy of two other popular beliefs: first, that Farquhar was an incompetent and disobedient official and, secondly, that Raffles was a highly principled and efficient administrator. This thesis also presents the first analysis of Raffles’ dismissal of Farquhar, and of Farquhar’s subsequent steps to obtain redress for what he considered was harsh and unjustified treatment by Raffles. Looking beyond Farquhar and Raffles, this research demonstrates how history can be tainted by subjective works, unsound memories and misinformation. It sheds more light on how and why particular men are immortalised, and how the pathways from historical records to myth making are created, as the cult of the great man obscures the achievements of other individuals. In addition, the research reveals how popular memory can create a simplistic, linear narrative, obscuring the complexities of history. This revisionist interpretation of the roles and characters of Farquhar and Raffles in Singapore’s founding and early development, based on new, as well as re-examined data, clarifies a misunderstood period in Singaporean history.
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ItemCharles Joseph La Trobe: the making of a governor( 2002)The central argument developed in this thesis is that Charles Joseph La Trobe was a highly distinctive individual whose background and experiences during the first four decades of his life to 1839 shaped his character and informed his administration, firstly as Superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales until 1851, and then as Victoria's first Lieutenant-Governor from 1851 to 1854. His Huguenot descent isolated him from the traditional British mould, and yet, for all that, he was very much the typical Englishman with all the attitudes then prevailing in the educated middle-class. His Moravian faith and the advanced Moravian school system in which he was nurtured set him apart from the norm of those recruited to the Colonial Office as representatives of the imperial power of Great Britain. He was altogether, in fact, an unusual choice as administrator of a valuable and remote colony, having none of the administrative experience, military training or aristocratic background usually sought in vice-regal envoys. La Trobe came from a deeply religious and highly intellectual family whose evangelicalism and social consciences dominated their lives. He was drawn to the outdoor life and to the landscape wherever he went in his extensive travels, seeing it as God's creation, and he described what he saw and experienced fully in his four published books and in his works of art. From his youth, he developed a lifelong passion for Switzerland, the country where he formed his closest friendships. Acknowledging the seriousness with which he regarded his Australian posting as a representative of the Crown, La Trobe's every action was governed and, to a certain extent, hampered by his allegiance to the Governor in Sydney and the Colonial Office in London. La Trobe's actions, ideas, assumptions and behaviours during his fifteen years in office in Melbourne may, however, be best understood by an examination of the way his character was shaped, especially by the influences on him of the Moravian faith and education, by his passion for travel, and by the devotion and support of his family and friends in England and in Switzerland. La Trobe departed from office a wearied and disappointed man whose contribution to the development of the colony was not immediately recognised. His was a vision of a cultured, economically viable and Christian society, with equality of opportunity for all. Any recognition of his achievements eluded him, the obvious negativities of his administration, especially regarding the Aboriginal people and the goldfields administration, obscuring his successes. Charles Joseph La Trobe was a complex man of striking contradictions: he was capable of great courage, yet he often appeared timid and self-effacing; he was charming and sociable at times, yet he loved nothing better than to escape the weight of his duties by riding into the 'bush'; he had strong views, but often came across as unassertive.
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ItemAn age of certainty: three generations of Melbourne radicals, 1870-1988( 2001)This thesis traces the history of a Melbourne family, the Higgins-Palmer family, over three generations, focusing on the political formation and activities of six family members: H B Higgins, Nettie Palmer, Vance Palmer, Esmonde Higgins, Aileen Palmer and Helen Palmer. It seeks to locate them in the evolution of radical politics in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, from the 1890s to the 1960s. The thesis begins with an examination of the career of H B Higgins in the context of the Victorian tradition of radical liberalism. It follows the development of H B Higgins's niece and nephew, Nettie Palmer (nee Higgins) and Esmonde Higgins, who both, in different ways and to different degrees, reacted against that tradition. Nettie's career before 1914 leads us to the rise and fall of the Victorian Socialist Party, Esmonde's postwar career to the formative years of the Australian communist party. The thesis then moves to the 1930s, when both Nettie Palmer and Esmonde Higgins have become disillusioned with their earlier beliefs but when Nettie's daughters, Aileen and Helen Palmer, have become active communists. The various family conflicts that arise from this are considered. In the 1950s Helen Palmer leaves the Communist Party, and Vance and Nettie Palmer and Esmonde Higgins move to the end of their careers, rediscovering in various ways the Melbourne radical and liberal tradition. The thesis tries within the space available to give as full a picture as possible of the lives and careers of six complex and highly articulate people, all of whom at various times played important roles in aspects of Australian political, intellectual and cultural history. Their literary careers are necessarily given only brief consideration, at risk of some distortion of their priorities in life. The focus is on the evolution of their political views, their political relationships with one another, and their involvements in the wider political life of 20th century Australia.