Pages:
232
Original
date of publication: 1901
My
edition: 1981
Why
I decided to read: All Virago/All August
How
I acquired my copy: Amazon UK June 2012
My
Brilliant Career was written when Miles Franklin was only 16, and it shows all
the imperfections of youth. Based on Franklin’s experiences, the novel is the
story of Sybylla Melvyn, a young girl who proves to be too much for her parents
to handle, is sent to her grandmother’s in the Australian bushland, where she
quickly becomes enamored of that way of life—and of pursuing a career as a
writer.
Sybylla
is headstrong and opinionated, but as with youth she is naive and defiant. I
liked her at first for being different from the usual housewife aspirant, and
for wanting something more from life than the obvious. Our heroine is,
nonetheless, a product of her environment, and she is, accordingly, naïve. But
the more I read, the less I really liked Syblla. As I’ve said the book is
autobiographical, so I don’t think that Miles Franklin had much of a chance to
fully disengage herself from her material. There is also a reliance on
melodramatic plot elements that the author might easily have gotten from the
romance novels of the period (eg, the “ugly duckling” theme, the struggle
between Sybylla and her mother, or the romance). It is a little bit juvenile
and speaks of someone who doesn’t have much experience of the world.
Still,
the novel is revolutionary for the narrator’s outlook on life and her interest
in and love for her native country. The author’s affection for the Australian
bush country is palpable; the author was apparently a skilled horsewoman, for
example, and it shows clearly in the novel. Although people in her area took
the novel as fact, Miles Franklin insisted that the novel wasn’t completed
based on her experiences, and it is interesting that for a period of 60 years,
she banned the republication of My Brilliant Career—despite its popularity upon
publication in 1901.
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