Remembering Babylon: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Before Lachlan arrives from Scotland to live with the McIvors, Janet and Meg are thrilled when their mother announces that her nephew is coming, even though it is due to the death of his father. Janet loves the stories her mother tells her about Scotland and her life before Australia, where Ellen lived in a mining family until she escaped by marrying Jock, even though he occasionally drank too much and “had an eye for the girls.” Janet is excited for Lachlan to arrive so she can introduce him to all the interesting bits of their life there, but when Lachlan arrives he is sullen, acting pointedly uninterested in whatever Janet and Meg try to show him. He longs for Scotland, and “nothing here [is] good enough for him.”

Although Lachlan is younger than Janet, he expects her to always defer or yield to him on account of his being a boy, which frustrates her to no end. Lachlan is prideful and tries to project an image of power and toughness, but Janet can easily make him cry, though she feels shame each time she does it, knowing the pain it causes him. Lachlan often brags about his own accomplishments, many of which are untrue, which further infuriates Janet. Although they are occasionally close, it never lasts. This is all the more painful since Janet wants to love him and show affection, if only he would not be so arrogant and demanding, if he would only “admit need, [but] he would not.”

Lachlan eventually realizes that he will need to learn the ways of Australia if he is ever to become anything there, so he commits himself to becoming a “bushman” with “fierce, little-mannish tenacity” that earns him the reluctant respect of even Jim Sweetman. This frustrates Janet further, however, since she is easily as tough and brave as Lachlan is, but still trapped by the expectations of smallness and domesticity placed on her as a woman. “She resented bitterly the provision his being a boy had made for him to exert himself and to act.” Janet sees no such future for herself, only the confined lifestyle modeled by her mother, whom Janet admires and who herself is tough and more than competent in such an environment.

Ellen watches her daughter pouring herself into books, stitching with an almost frantic energy, and punching fiercely into bread dough, and sees a well of untapped potential and energy. Ellen is concerned for her. One day, as Janet is standing in the yard, she walks across the dusty ground and looks at the vibrancy of the earth and a feeling wells up in her, a vision of her alternate self. Janet names this self Flora Macdonald, which seems suitably grand to match her capability. But the moment and the vision passes as it usually does, and she holds it within herself, careful not to “put too much store by them.”

Lachlan, on the other hand, shares such visions of grandeur and future heroism, which “ma[kes] things difficult for him” amongst the other settlers. He often has visions of himself as a grand explorer with Gemmy at his side, bravely questing, gaining a noble injury or two, discovering the bones of famed explorer Dr. Leichardt and returning to society, where a monument would be built to honor his greatness. To Janet such egotistical goals seem pointless, even “ordinary,” but Gemmy shares in Lachlan’s visions and is honored that he himself has a place in them.