School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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'There is a concept behind it': symbolic narrative and material realities in Randolph Stow's To the Islands

Rendell, Kate Leah ( 2016)

This thesis critically examines the novel To the Islands, published in 1958 by Australian writer Randolph Stow. Taking issue with the predominantly aestheticist readings of the novel that have dominated the field, I offer a close-reading which re-contextualises To the Islands in relation to Stow’s time at Forrest River Mission in 1957. Employing a methodology that refigures Stow’s anthropological and culturally appropriative modes in pursuit of his symbolic narrative, I argue that this is a novel intensely implicated in place. In doing so, I expose the authorial ambiguities and textual repressions in the novel that are directly linked to the material realities of Forrest River, both as Balanggarra country and as Mission site, to reveal the uneasy cultural and racial politics of this work. Out of this reading, To the Islands emerges as a far more problematic novel than most critics to date would have us believe. As a timely consideration of an author currently experiencing revived interest, this thesis makes a significant contribution to the field. It also has important implications for how we read texts which appropriate Aboriginal contexts.