Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

`Finding Gold In A Gully': Nineteenth-Century Australia In Constructions Of British Domesticity From Sensation Fiction To Realism, Lisa Vandenbossche

All Theses

This thesis investigates nineteenth-century Australia as a frequently disregarded site of colonial discourse where men and women were able to create wealth but unable to transform economic gains into social currency upon return to England and irrevocably weakened English patriarchal authority when they attempted to do so. Unlike many of the other British colonies such as India and Africa, due to its demographics the Australian colonies by and large remained absent from nineteenth-century racial violence, thus allowing greater possibilities for economic advancement and social rehabilitation of disenfranchised English populations. By combining travel narratives with the sensation fiction of Mary Elizabeth …