AustLit

'Elizabeth Harrower’s first novel, Down in the City (1957), introduces concerns that define her oeuvre, offering a typically adroit depiction of destructive domestic relations and middle-class mores. Focused on the marriage of upper-class Esther Prescott and ‘boy from the back blocks’ Stan Petersen, the novel embeds this central narrative in a compelling portrait of Australian urban modernity. The novel’s eponymous city is Sydney in the immediate postwar period, which Harrower writes with attention to its booming industry, new wealth and burgeoning commodity culture. At the beginning of the novel and at certain points throughout it, the city seems to offer sensuous enjoyment, increased liberty; however, Harrower emphasizes an urban modernity under the spell of capitalism and commodity culture, dominated by ‘air-conditioned’, ‘disinfectant-smelling’ spaces of ‘no light, no land, no sea’. In these spaces of urban alienation, female autonomy is circumscribed and interpersonal relationships are destructive. Arguing that this depiction of the urban milieu is central to the novel, this essay explores the narrative’s presentation of space and its capacity to produce subjectivities and condition relations.'

Source: Abstract.