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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Brilliant Career, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Womanhood
Class and Poverty
Ambition, Respectability, and Pride
Love
Maturity and Suffering
Summary
Analysis
The servants and laborers at Five-Bob Downs have left to attend the servants’ ball, so Harold leaves to attend to the horses. Sybylla and Aunt Helen do not have access to their wardrobes, so they make themselves presentable as best they can and then go down to dinner. At the table are 20 other guests, including Joe Archer and Miss Derrick. Sybylla gets her first look at Miss Derrick and perceives that she is governed by self-confidence and propriety instead of emotions. Miss Derrick would never make a fool of herself, nor become a genuine companion to her husband. Sybylla thinks that the notion of a husband wanting a wife to act as his companion, rather than a prize to show off to his friends, is a modern-day myth.
Sybylla’s understanding of companionship suggests that she believes in the possibility of an equal partnership between a man and a woman. That partnership, however, does not exist within marriage, and a woman would make a fool of herself in pursuit of it. Sybylla sees a wife as a possession of her husband, which he can show off as he pleases. This highlights that Sybylla perceives marriage’s social role for men is one of reputation-building. In Sybylla’s mind, a traditional woman like Miss Derrick would accept this arrangement with ease, as she is not dominated by her emotions like Sybylla.
Themes
Literary Devices
Since the guests have to serve themselves, the dinner is informal, and afterwards they all help wash the dishes. Despite the heat of the evening, the younger guests propose dancing, and they go to the dancing room to play piano and dance together. After a few songs, Harold orders Joe Archer to play a waltz and asks for the pleasure of dancing with Sybylla. She protests that her poor dancing ability will not bring him pleasure, but he asks her to let him judge his own pleasure, and the two begin to dance. As they move, he tells Sybylla to come to his room to strike a bargain.
The presence of Joe Archer again allows Harold to exert his authority, which is especially notable because Archer is one of the only laborers eating with the guests instead of attending the servants’ ball. While Archer’s presence at the dinner suggests a level of privilege, Harold undermines that privilege when he orders the jackeroo to separate from the dancing guests and provide them with a waltz. During the waltz, Sybylla once again demonstrates her insecurity, as she insists Harold will be displeased by her dancing. Harold’s request that she let him decide what pleases him is symbolic of their relationship: she refuses to believe he can love her, and he only wants to convince her of his feelings.
Themes
Sybylla does what Harold asks and follows him to a detached building considered Harold’s domain. They stand apart, and he tells her, calmly, that “it is no use [...] making a long yarn about nothing,” so he will not make a speech––instead, he simply asks her, “Yes or no?” Sybylla is stricken and disappointed by Harold’s lack of emotion. Despite his proposal, he still has not professed his love or asked her to profess hers. Sybylla attributes this to Harold’s conceitedness, but the older Sybylla who narrates the story says that this interpretation was wrong. Harold is just a quiet and straightforward man who expresses himself through actions and expects others to do the same.
Harold’s reluctance to “making a long yarn about nothing” marks a contrast between him and Sybylla. In her narration, Sybylla frequently recognizes that her story is boring or egotistical, but she continues telling it. She believes in the importance of words and stories, which is why she is so disappointed that Harold refuses to vocalize his love for her. Her narration rejects the notion that Harold is conceited, but his expectation that everyone else express themselves in the same way he does suggests that Harold shares some of Sybylla’s habit of projecting her own beliefs onto other people.
Themes
With some annoyance, Sybylla accepts Harold’s proposal. She internally qualifies her acceptance as temporary and intends to break it off one day to surprise Harold and cure his conceitedness. Harold is pleasantly surprised; he laughs that he never thought Sybylla would say yes “so easily, just like any other girl.” He moves to kiss her.
Though she accepts Harold’s proposal, which on the surface should be a symbol of maturity, Sybylla retains her youthful selfishness. She does not consider how she might hurt Harold with her scheme to undermine what she sees as conceitedness. The core of that perceived conceitedness seems to be his belief that she will agree to marry him. Sybylla’s wariness of that harkens back to her uncomfortable confrontations with Frank Hawden. However, Harold does not share Hawden’s sense of entitlement to Sybylla’s affection. In fact, he is surprised that Sybylla agrees to marry him. He is especially startled that Sybylla would behave like “any other girl.” This underscores that Sybylla’s perception of herself as different to other young women is shared by those around her, and the fact that Harold shares that perception suggests that he likes Sybylla’s unconventionality.
Themes
Literary Devices
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Sybylla is unsure why she undertakes her following action. Perhaps she is hysterical; perhaps she is irritated by Harold’s sudden assumption of ownership over her; perhaps Satan himself took hold of her. Whatever the reason, Sybylla responds to Harold’s kiss by grabbing a whip and striking him across the face. The wound cuts across his face, and anger enters his eyes. Harold moves slightly, and Sybylla hopes he will hit her back. She is paralyzed by the significance of her action. She drops the whip and falls to the ground, hoping that Harold will beat her. She is humiliated at her unwomanly attack of a man, who is bound by the laws of his sex not to strike a woman.
Sybylla acknowledges her own status as an unreliable narrator, as she cannot fully explain her behavior. Her attack with the whip recalls the first day of Harold and Sybylla’s relationship. They first bonded when Harold playfully showed off with his stock-whip, and Sybylla trusted him not to hurt her with it. Now, Sybylla has intentionally whipped Harold in the face. This suggests that Harold handles his relationships, particularly his courtship with Sybylla, with more gentleness and forethought than Sybylla does. The violence is also gendered; women are not supposed to be aggressive, and Sybylla is ashamed by her own unwomanliness. Harold, on the other hand, holds to the laws of conventional manliness and does not reciprocate an attack.
Themes
Harold breaks the silence. He calmly informs Sybylla that a less violent rejection would have stopped him from kissing her, though he didn’t realize that a kiss from a fiancé would be so offensive to her. Sybylla wants to tell him that she does not blame him, but she cannot bring herself to speak. Harold cleans his face with water and comes over to comfort Sybylla. He reassures her that he knows she didn’t mean to hurt him and apologizes for speaking harshly to her. In a gesture of forgiving courtesy, he asks Sybylla to tie his handkerchief for him. She does so, and they return to the other guests.
For the first time, Harold is the one who speaks, while Sybylla remains silent. This completes the reversal of their usual roles, since Harold typically expresses himself through his actions, but Sybylla took up that role with the whip. Despite the sudden violence, Harold forgives Sybylla easily. This demonstrates the extent of his love for her, but it also hints that he is perhaps overly eager to overlook Sybylla’s flaws.
Themes
The other dinner guests ask what happened to Harold, but he dismisses their questions and puts the matter to an end. Sybylla slips away from the party to reason through the events of the night. She cannot understand why Harold Beecham would choose a charmless, ugly woman like her. Is his proposal a whim, or does he really love her? She stands in the dark as music begins to play again inside. Harold comes through the flowers calling her name and asks Sybylla to come in and dance with him. She agrees, and they dance for a few more hours. That night, Sybylla does not sleep, but lies awake listening to the owls.
Back at the party, Harold asserts his social influence by shutting down any gossip about how he was injured. Meanwhile, Sybylla falls back into brooding over her insecurities. Her fear that Harold proposed on a whim provides a possible reason for her outburst with the whip. It also complicates her feelings about the engagement in general––she does not want to be married, but she desperately wants to be loved. To puzzle through this, Sybylla sits outside, where she can take in the Australian landscape. She continues to take solace in the distinctive wildlife of Australia later that night, when she stays awake listening to the calls of the mopoke owls.
Themes
