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Chapter 3
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
Though Sybylla, Mrs. Melvyn, and Jane find Possum Gully boring, Mr. Melvyn is enjoying himself in the stock-dealing business. He travels all over the area inspecting livestock, and he gains a good reputation among drovers and auctioneers. Sybylla reflects that a man must have a clear head to work in stock dealing, and he must not be too honorable for the practicalities of business. Mr. Melvyn fails at this; he is too honest and too gentle to be better than second-best.
The disparity between Mr. Melvyn’s experience in Possum Gully and the experiences of the women in the family further highlights how female opinions were devalued in the 19th century. Sybylla does not respond to this with as much bitterness as might be expected. In fact, she attributes her father’s failure in stock dealing to positive qualities– (honesty and gentleness), hinting that she continues to love him despite the suffering he has inflicted upon the family.
Themes
Literary Devices
Mr. Melvyn is wrapped up in wanting to be seen as “a socialistic fellow” who treats all men equally, an aspiration that Sybylla characterizes as “vanity.” He loses money with every sale, and quickly Mr. Melvyn finds himself close to bankruptcy. He falls into drink, which only worsens his business sense. He mortgages the family property on Possum Gully, but within four or five years he has lost the money from the loan.
While the Melvyns want to be perceived as wealthy and cultured, Mr. Melvyn also wants to project the image of a liberal-minded and democratic man. Sybylla shares similar egalitarian values, but her description of her father’s compassion as “vanity” implies that his actions are driven by pride instead of empathy. As he pursues his vanity, he proves that he is incapable of reaching his ambitions. His failure and descent into alcoholism highlights the selfishness of his unrelenting ambition.
Themes
Mr. Melvyn finally gives up on stock dealing and decides to live like their neighbors by starting a dairy farm. By this time, Sybylla is 15. She explains that children who grow up milking cows are used to the labor, but because she and her siblings were well into adolescence when they started farming, their hands and arms swell up from the hard and painful work. Mrs. Melvyn is suffering, too, since she has to wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning to churn the butter. The family can no longer afford a servant, so Sybylla’s “gentle, refined mother” becomes “thin and careworn, and often cross” from the demands of housework.
The aspect of class inherent in 19th-century womanhood becomes more apparent as Mrs. Melvyn loses the gentleness and refinement that have characterized her as an ideal woman. Sybylla emphasizes the physical effects that dairy farming has on her, her mother, and her siblings, which speaks to the tangible, embodied suffering of poverty. The contemporary audience of the novel would likely have little experience with poverty, and discussing its tangible difficulties rather than philosophical ones forces the reader to acknowledge the day-to-day hardships of being poor.
Themes
The Richard Melvyn whom Sybylla knew and loved at Bruggabrong is absent in the dairy-farming Richard Melvyn of Possum Gully. Mr. Melvyn is now a bedraggled alcoholic with no manners, who has lost “all love and interest in his family” and refuses to accept the responsibilities of the head of the household. He was once very kind with animals, but now he is cruel to the cows on the dairy farm.
Mr. Melvyn has lost the qualities that Sybylla will later use to characterize “manliness.” Just as she develops an understanding of womanhood, Sybylla discovers models of masculinity, and Mr. Melvyn represents a failure to achieve manhood. He fails to complete the responsibilities expected of the head of the household: he neglects the wife and children dependent on him, he abuses his power over the livestock, and he has lost the refinement that the Melvyns once took pride in.
Themes
Literary Devices
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The only part of life that brings Mr. Melvyn joy is going to town to sell butter, since while he is there he can spend all the earnings on alcohol. Mrs. Melvyn is restricted by “the curse of Eve” from following her husband to town, so Sybylla becomes responsible for following her father and bringing him home.
Sybylla taking responsibility for her father represents a disruption of traditional gender and family roles, as a child is burdened by her father and a woman is in charge of a man. Even in the family’s circumstances, Mrs. Melvyn refuses to act against gendered expectations. Her reference to the “curse of Eve” is an allusion to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the first people created by God in the Judeo-Christian religion. Eve is tempted by a snake to eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge. As punishment, God decrees that Eve, and all women, will be “ruled” by her husband. As a Christian woman, Mrs. Melvyn believes her duty binds her to obey her husband, so she cannot challenge his drinking.
Themes
Sybylla muses that if she was more like the person Mrs. Melvyn wanted her to be, she would have respected Mr. Melvyn throughout this time, but she notes, “I am an individual ever doing things I oughtn't at the time I shouldn't.” While she brings her father home, Sybylla questions the fifth commandment and her mother’s order that she should always honor her parents. Mr. Melvyn being her father does not prevent Sybylla from seeing that he is selfish and weak, and she comes to loathe her father with the uncomplicated passion of a 15-year-old. Despite her anger, Sybylla does not resent her mother, thinking that “a woman is but the helpless tool of man—a creature of circumstances.”
Sybylla’s playful tone when she admits to “doing things [she] oughtn’t” contributes to the comedy of the novel, which often pokes fun at its own protagonist. It also implies that she does not feel great guilt for her unconventional behavior, though she recognizes that she disappoints her mother. Any sympathy Sybylla once held for her father is gone––though her note that her feelings are uncomplicated because of her age implies that she has since gained some nuance in her understanding of her father. She excuses her mother from blame by denying Mrs. Melvyn agency. This suggests that despite Sybylla’s personal stubbornness, she sees the systems that oppress women as ultimately insurmountable.
Themes
As she and Mr. Melvyn continue home, Sybylla is startled and disconcerted to find that a “grim lonely” feeling is maturing in her. It is like a climbing plant without a pole to grow on: it searches for something to cling to, and without a gardener to prune it, it threatens to rot.
The language of a plant growing into rot parallels how Sybylla’s own maturation has been corrupted by poverty and Mr. Melvyn’s neglect. The emphasis on her loneliness also foreshadows the search for connection and understanding that Sybylla will embark on as she continues to grow.
Themes
Literary Devices
