AustLit

Pam Macintyre (q.v.), in an article in the La Trobe Journal, discusses Josee extensively:

'Whiting's novel Josee: an Australian Story (1890) opens with an evocative picture of working-class, pluralist Melbourne on market night, a Melbourne she never visited...'

Macintyre quotes the novel:

Saturday night is market night all the world over, and in Melbourne, no less than in London, the poorer parts of the town are filled with an eager crowd, buying, selling, shouting, gazing and bargaining. Long sheds of corrugated iron line a wide open space, where people thronged and gas burners flared.

The groups of men, women and children standing around the sheds, were as varied in their appearance as the goods displayed for sale. Irish women with shawls over their heads and tongues that never ceased chattering for a moment; bronzed and bearded bushmen come in from the surrounding districts to make purchases; city waifs and strays, ragged and unkempt as any London street arabs and yellow-faced Chinamen in petticoats and pigtails gliding silently among the throng. (Whiting, 1890: 6)

Later in the article, Macintyre continues: 'In Josee, one of the few novels which depict the working class as other than distasteful, sensationalised background, Duncan, a rough but kind-hearted bushman, is taken reluctantly through the back alleys of Melbourne by a little waif, "down one of the narrowest streets that lead away from the market-place ... [the door] gave access to an uninviting network of dark rooms and passage." (Whiting, 1890: 10) In the dimly lit room, the little girl's mother is dying. Widowed and unable to get a job because of ill-health, she is destitute. She begs Duncan to take the child and her only money - £5. Whiting, revealing attitudes not characteristic of the period, presents this picture of poverty without judging or moralising. The reader is invited to see the woman as a victim of circumstance. Josee avoids the judgemental and voyeuristic tone that often accompanies descriptions of poverty in novels of the period. However, once the reader turns the corner, leaving behind the dank, dim alleys, a different Melbourne is apparent in the 'wide streets, beautiful shops and great public buildings. (Whiting, 1890: 6)'