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dc.contributor.authorGenoni, Paul
dc.date.accessioned2019-11-06T04:34:00Z
dc.date.available2019-11-06T04:34:00Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.identifier.citationGenoni, P. 2019. Charmian Clift, Brenda Chamberlain, and the dichotomous freedom of Hydra. JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 19 (1).
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/76757
dc.description.abstract

This essay draws a comparison between two published memoirs of participants, both of them women writers, in the Hydra expatriate community of the 1950s and ’60s: Australian Charmian Clift’s Peel Me a Lotus, and Welsh artist and writer Brenda Chamberlain’s A Rope of Vines. As memoirs of female experience on Hydra the two texts have elements in common, but the contrasts are also stark. Whereas Clift focused on family life, the bucolic harbourside agora and the boisterous life of the taverns and kafenia, Chamberlain represented herself as being alone and declared, ‘the port and the people on it do not interest me.’ For Chamberlain, the dockside was a place of ‘unreal glamour’ that deadened her creative spirit as surely as it deflected Hydra’s international visitors from understanding the true nature of the island they superficially embraced.

This essay discusses both Clift’s and Chamberlain’s responses to Hydra, examining how despite the differences in their memoirs, both writers can be seen to be working at a resolution of the conflicting aspects of Hydra the town and Hydra the island, as each woman struggles in her own way to realise the promise of ‘freedom.

dc.publisherAssociation for the Study of Australian Literature
dc.relation.urihttps://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/14110
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.1/au/
dc.subjectExpatriation
dc.subjectLife writing
dc.subjectCharmian Clift
dc.subjectBrenda Chamberlain
dc.subjectGreece
dc.subjectHydra
dc.subject2002 - Cultural Studies
dc.subject2005 - Literary Studies
dc.titleCharmian Clift, Brenda Chamberlain, and the dichotomous freedom of Hydra
dc.typeJournal Article
dcterms.source.volume19
dcterms.source.number1
dcterms.source.issn1833-6027
dcterms.source.titleJASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature
dc.date.updated2019-11-06T04:33:59Z
curtin.departmentSchool of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry
curtin.accessStatusOpen access
curtin.facultyFaculty of Humanities
curtin.contributor.scopusauthoridGenoni, Paul [11939917400]


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