Pages:
411
Original
date of publication: 1946
My
edition: 1983 (Virago Modern Classics)
Why
I decided to read:
How
I acquired my copy: London, September 2011
The
Roaring Nineties is set on the Australian frontier in the 1890s. Sally Gough is
the wife of a gold miner, eking out a rough living in the goldfields of Western
Australia. It’s a tough life these people live, certainly much different than
ours is now; and it’s interesting to watch the characters grow, even as the
Australian frontier changes with the advent of the railway and the growth of
towns.
It’s
a tough book to get through; bleak in many places. As such, it’s a bit of a
slog. But despite that, I enjoyed this novel; it’s very realistic and true to
the time period (even though I know nothing about colonial Australia or the
business of gold prospecting). Sally seems very flat and devoid of emotion; I
guess that life on the frontier makes people become stoic in that way. Her
focus is her family and she turns out to be a tough, resilient person. Even
though her marriage to her husband Morris frustrates her and she if offered the
possibility of something more exciting, she proves herself to be very loyal and
practical by sticking with her original promise. There’s also a covert feminist
theme to this book; so many of the female characters are victims of the men on
the goldfields, but Sally is the exception to this rule.
The
Roaring Nineties is above all a social commentary culminating with the conflict
between the alluvial miners and the big companies that sought to control them. It
will be interesting to watch Sally and her family’s lives through the other two
books in the series, Golden Miles and Winged Seeds. Apparently, Prichard based
her story on the reminisces of two real people, who became the inspiration for
Sally Gough and Dinny Quin. It’ll be interesting to see how the story develops.
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