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Setting
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
The subject of Lawson’s story dictates its style. The harshness of the bushwoman's life has made her emotionally numb, and “The Drover’s Wife” follows suit, recounting events that would otherwise be very provocative with a sense of constant restraint:
She is hurt now, and tears spring to her eyes as she sits down again by the table. She takes up a handkerchief to wipe the tears away, but pokes her eyes with her bare fingers instead. The handkerchief is full of holes, and she finds that she has put her thumb through one, and her forefinger through another.
Even when the bushwoman breaks down in tears, the narrator immediately moves away from describing her emotions to an observation about the handkerchief she is using, underlining her impoverished, dilapidated surroundings and taking the attention away from her feelings.
Even the figurative language in the story is kept to a minimum and described with concise language. And sometimes, important plot points are only obvious through context clues. The snake that enters the bushwoman's house, for instance, is presented as a threat through its actions and the fact that the family must own a “snake-dog” as fierce as Alligator to defend themselves. The narrator never explicitly says that the snake is frightening, nor does the story use any adjectives to illustrate its unpleasantness. In fact, the story is so minimalistic and nondescript that at one point, Lawson actually uses the word "adjective" in place of an adjective.
The story also uses a great deal of repetition, as it returns to similar symbols, images, and scenes over and over again: stunted trees, flat and uncompromising terrain, mundane daily chores. It does so in order to mimic the mundanity and cyclical nature of life in the Australian bushland. This is the case with the bushwoman’s family life and her work, but it extends even to the visitors who come to the shanty from elsewhere. Lawson describes incidents like the following as being part of the regular monotony of her lifestyle:
Occasionally a bushman in the horrors, or a villainous-looking sundowner, comes and nearly scares the life out of her. She generally tells the suspicious-looking stranger that her husband and two sons are at work below the dam, or over at the yard, for he always cunningly inquires for the boss.
The bushwoman's life and Lawson’s style are unadorned, simple and rugged. Dangerous situations, like unannounced bushmen appearing to extort her, occur so often for the bushwoman that they become normalized amid the “everlasting, maddening sameness” of the Australian bush.
Related Themes:
