My Brilliant Career

by

Miles Franklin

My Brilliant Career: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Aunt Helen finds Sybylla crying and comes in to comfort her. Sybylla tearfully expresses her troubles to Helen. Helen says that once Sybylla is ready to listen, Helen will respond to her. As Sybylla composes herself, she anticipates the typical advice that life is a trial to prepare the soul for the afterlife. But Helen tells Sybylla that she understands––all people must grapple with being misunderstood. Sybylla’s refusal to look for love and good in the world is an act of cowardice. Helen believes Sybylla has a strong character, and if she learns to control herself, she can be loved universally.
Aunt Helen’s no-nonsense but compassionate approach to consoling Sybylla contrasts the unsympathetic response Sybylla encountered from the religious community in Possum Gully. She also provides a mature, external perspective on Sybylla’s character, allowing the reader to form new opinions of Sybylla with the benefit of some distance. She recognizes that Sybylla fears being misunderstood, and Sybylla herself will not realize how significant that concern is until years later.
Themes
Womanhood Theme Icon
Love Theme Icon
Aunt Helen goes on to tell Sybylla that plain looks will not stand in the way of “friendship love [...]––the only real love there is.” The passion between men and women should not be called love, and Sybylla should not think of it. Then she turns away with a sigh, clearly thinking of her own past. When she was 18, Helen married a man named Colonel Bell. She loved him dearly, but within a year he left her for another woman. On the occasion of a divorce, Sybylla knows, everyone blames the woman, and Helen’s life was ruined by the humiliation.
The notion that platonic love is more genuine than romantic love comes as the opinion of a woman scorned by romantic love, but the narrative does not treat Helen’s personal history as a reason to doubt this belief. Rather, Helen’s advice about love gives Sybylla an alternate perspective on love, which she had formerly seen as a simple yet unobtainable treasure. Helen’s history with marriage also provides Sybylla another model of womanhood: a noble, traditional woman whose life was ruined by a man.
Themes
Womanhood Theme Icon
Love Theme Icon
Aunt Helen proposes a plan: Sybylla will look in the mirror once now, and then for three or four weeks the mirror will face the wall and Sybylla will not look at her reflection. During this time, Helen promises to make Sybylla “nice-looking.” Sybylla agrees. She looks in the mirror and finds herself “a very ugly spectacle,” but Aunt Helen reminds Sybylla that she mustn’t think of her own appearance at all. With this plan set, Sybylla goes to bed.
In addition to modeling womanhood, Helen demonstrates how Sybylla might find some optimism without losing practicality  Instead of reassuring Sybylla that she is not plain, Helen points out that plain looks are not a meaningful flaw, and instead of promising to make Sybylla beautiful, Helen opts for a more neutral phrase: “nice-looking.”
Themes
Maturity and Suffering  Theme Icon
The next morning, Sybylla takes in the pleasures of her new room. Her room in Possum Gully lacked even bare necessities, but this one is decorated with lovely furniture, art, toiletries, and a writing desk full of pens and paper. The “gem” of the room is a bookshelf stocked with volumes of Australian poetry and two or three dozen novels. Sybylla sits and reads, lost in the literature, until she is called to breakfast.
The direct comparison to Possum Gully strengthens Caddagat’s impression as a haven for Sybylla. She is surrounded by luxury, art, and literature, which fulfill her craving for culture. The fact that the literature she enjoys in this utopia is specifically Australian also speaks to Sybylla’s national pride.
Themes
Ambition, Respectability, and Pride Theme Icon
Maturity and Suffering  Theme Icon
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To make Sybylla beautiful, Aunt Helen requires her to spend the morning grooming herself instead of reading, to replace Sybylla’s “gloomy pessimism” with “healthy girlish vanity.” Sybylla obeys for three days but then reverts back to her habit of doing “things [she] oughtn’t at the time [she] shouldn’t,” and she burns her foot in a spilled pot of boiling liquor. This burn, combined with a case of influenza, confines Sybylla to bed. This effectively keeps Sybylla from looking in the mirror. She is not too ill, so she finds being pampered in bed to be quite fun.
Sybylla is once again positioned as different from other girls, as Helen characterizes the vanity about appearance that Sybylla lacks as not only “girlish” but “healthy.” Describing a fixation on appearance as “healthy” for young women implies that Sybylla’s insecurity about her looks is unhealthy and unfeminine. Helen associates this vanity with grooming, while she associates “gloomy pessimism” with reading. Sybylla has been ashamed of her own pessimism, but this contrast is the first indication that her shame might be due to gendered anti-intellectualism.
Themes
Womanhood Theme Icon
The Beechams are the neighbors of the Bossiers, and the other “leaders of swelldom” of the area. The Beechams consist of two maiden ladies (one of whom is close friends with Helen) and their nephew Harold. Harold is much wealthier than the Beechams, and he often comes to bring Sybylla apples while she is bedridden. Helen teases Sybylla about Harold’s flirtatious intentions, and Sybylla retorts that if Harold knew she was ugly, he would lose interest.
Sybylla’s response to Harold bringing her apples establishes the dynamic between them that will continue through the rest of the book. He pursues her with kindness and flirtation, while Sybylla rejects the possibility that Harold could truly care for her.
Themes
Class and Poverty Theme Icon
Love Theme Icon
While in bed, Sybylla spends hours reading. Books bring her great pleasure, especially those of Australian poetry. They replace the loneliness of Possum Gully with a sense of companionship. The world around her, with all its features and mysteries, has “written a tale on [the writers’] hearts as had been written on [hers].” In the piece of her heart where she hides youthful dreams, she puts the hope that one day she will meet these writers as a peer.
Sybylla often downplays her fascination with the world around her in favor of complaining about farm work or worrying about her womanhood. However, this section makes clear that, despite her cynicism and self-interest, Sybylla is deeply intrigued by the world outside herself. She describes the world as writing a tale on her heart. This locates that tale right next to her personal ambitions, since she immediately goes on to describe her aspirations of writing as living in a piece of her heart. Positioning these two feelings so close together emphasizes the significance of both.
Themes
Ambition, Respectability, and Pride Theme Icon
Maturity and Suffering  Theme Icon