AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)
Notes
-
Dedication: For Betty Withycombe
-
Epigraphs from Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm begin Parts One and Three. An epigraph from Henry Miller's Black Spring begins Part Two.
-
Hubber and Smith note a 1976 Japanese translation which was published in one volume with the work of Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille and sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Australian Literature and the Arab-Australian Migrant Novel
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 79 no. 1 2019; (p. 129-148) 'Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story, published in 1948 and set in the 1930s, is one of the few Australian novels that features an Arab male character. His inclusion gives readers an insight into how an Arab was represented and, by extension, perceived in early- to mid-twentieth century Australia. The Arab in this case is a travelling salesman or a hawker, an occupation adopted by many early male and female migrants from what was then a region in Syria, today known as Lebanon. Hawkers traversed vast tracts of remote Australia peddling an array of wares, and their arrival to a country town or estate like Meroë in The Aunt’s Story, was met with excitement.' (Introduction) -
y
Reading Corporeality in Patrick White’s Fiction : An Abject Dictatorship of the Flesh
Leiden
:
Brill
,
2019
15911959
2019
multi chapter work
criticism
'In Reading Corporeality in Patrick White's Fiction: An Abject Dictatorship of the Flesh, Bridget Grogan combines theoretical explication, textual comparison, and close reading to argue that corporeality is central to Patrick White's fiction, shaping the characterization, style, narrative trajectories, and implicit philosophy of his novels and short stories. Critics have often identified a radical disgust at play in White's writing, claiming that it arises from a defining dualism that posits the 'purity' of the disembodied 'spirit' in relation to the 'pollution' of the material world. Grogan argues convincingly, however, that White's fiction is far more complex in its approach to the body. Modeling ways in which Kristevan theory may be applied to modern fiction, her close attention to White's recurring interest in physicality and abjection draws attention to his complex questioning of metaphysics and subjectivity, thereby providing a fresh and compelling reading of this important world author.'
-
Magda Meets Theodora : Language and Interiority in The Aunt’s Story and In The Heart of the Country
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , February vol. 33 no. 1 2018;'In ‘Orders of Discourse’ Foucault raises the deeply embedded opposition between reason and folly: ‘From the depths of the Middle Ages a man was mad if his speech could not be said to form part of the common discourse of men’. This discursive rule becomes magnified in the case of women and of the colonised. In Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country and Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story, Magda and Theodora demonstrate the precarious marginality of the colonial woman. They are doubly marginalised as colonial women, existing outside settler history, which is the narrative both of the masculine responsibilities of settlement and an attendant sense of displacement. In Coetzee’s novel, Magda plays out a version of The Tempest in which she is subjected both to the Law of the Father and to Caliban, while in The Aunt’s Story Theodora plots a determined path out of the discourse of men into the ambivalently liberating horizon of madness. The differences between the women say as much as the similarities, but both offer a compelling version of the layered marginalities of the female colonial subject. In the writers’ hands the place outside discourse, the peculiar language of the colonial women, becomes the potential location of counter discourse. This essay proposes that the women demonstrate a radical interiority, a capacity to inhabit the lives of others in a way that is considered madness but which enacts the utopian function of literature itself.' (Publication abstract)
-
On Reading The Aunt’s Story by Patrick White
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 17-31) 'The Aunt's Story was published in 1948. It was White's third novel, after Happy Valley and The Living and the Dead. He began it not long after the end of the war and wrote the first section, "Meroe", at a table in London, the second section, "Jardin Exotique", on a balcony in Alexandria, and the third, "Hosstius", on the deck of a ship as he sailed home to Australia. He arrived in Sydney wielding the manuscript as "a shield of a kind", and it was accepted by his American publishers with an acknowledgement that it was very fine but probably wouldn't sell. White was dismayed by the novel's reception in Australia. When his mother Ruth read it, she said to him, "Such a pity you didn't write about a cheery aunt" (White Flaws 58). (Introduction 17) -
Theodora as an Unheard Prophetess in Patrick White's The Aunt's Story
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Le Simplegadi , no. 16 2016; (p. 37-49)This essay takes into consideration some of the themes dear to Veronica
Brady’s heart and present in her profound critical analysis of Australian literature. Veronica often read Patrick White’s work in the light of a spiritual quest and a mystical-mythical vision. Aim of this essay is to investigate how the figure of the aunt, in The Aunt’s Story (1948), embodies one of the isolated and visionary characters in White’s work who transmits a message that superficial contemporary society is unable to understand. I will show how Theodora Goodman’s role as explorer in the inner land of the Self connects her with ancient partnership (Eisler 1987), Goddess’ archetypes, in particular that of the Crone, embodying a “woman of age, wisdom and power” (Bolen 2001). This figure had an important but now forgotten role in ancient gylanic societies (Eisler 1987). Theadora, the Goddess’ gift, as the protagonist’s name should read, is a powerful reminder of the sacred spiritual function of ancient
women-priestess. Theodora is Theadora, a priestess beloved by the Goddess. Contemporary society, being unable to see beyond the ordinary, can only catalogue these sacred figures as ‘mad’.
-
Old Gold
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Syntax , no. 6 2003; (p. 23-24)
— Review of The Aunt's Story 1948 single work novel -
[Review] The Mirage [et al]
1959
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 21 February 1959; (p. 19)
— Review of The Mirage 1955 single work novel ; The Aunt's Story 1948 single work novel ; You Can't See Round Corners 1947 single work novel -
Sublime Madness?
1959
single work
review
— Appears in: The Observer , 7 February vol. 2 no. 3 1959; (p. 87)
— Review of To the Islands 1958 single work novel ; The Aunt's Story 1948 single work novel -
[Review] The Aunt's Story
1948
single work
review
— Appears in: New Republic , 16 February vol. 118 no. 7 1948; (p. 27-28)
— Review of The Aunt's Story 1948 single work novel -
The Imago
1950
single work
review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 11 no. 4 1950; (p. 209-210)
— Review of The Aunt's Story 1948 single work novel -
Imagery and Structure in Patrick White's Novels
1991
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Breaking Circles 1991; (p. 175-181) -
Patrick White and the Aesthetics of Death
1987
single work
criticism
— Appears in: LiNQ , vol. 15 no. 2 1987; (p. 2-14) The Pathos of Distance 1992; (p. 290-303) -
Mandala Symbolism in the Novels of Patrick White
1995-1996
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Commonwealth Review , vol. 7 no. 1 1995-1996; (p. 117-123) -
Patrick White: An International Perspective
1991
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Breaking Circles 1991; (p. 182-196) -
Patrick White and Theodora Goodman in New Mexico
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 171-173)
-
cAustralia,c
- Europe,
-
cUnited States of America (USA),cAmericas,