AustLit

Minchinton examines the stereotyped portrayals of women (particularly mothers) and girls in Rubinstein's novels and questions if perhaps her representations stem from Rubinstein's own childhood experiences of abandonment, grief and loss. In particular, Minchinton addresses Rubinstein's idealised 'earth Mother' as a counterpoint to the harshly portrayed 'working' and 'absent' mothers and asks a pertinent question: ' where does the story end and the personal pain begin?' (113). Minchinton observes a slight progression in Rubinstein's body of work towards a more rounded representation of womanhood and female sexuality, however overall, she argues that Rubinstein's characters '...may as well be heroes [as] they are not specifically female at all' (122).