Sybylla's Mother example essay topic

My Brilliant Career is a classic that is valued not only for its amazing insights into the uncertainties of adolescence but also for its social comments on late nineteenth century society. As a result of the novel being a semi-autobiographical account of Franklin's life, the experiences of the fictional Sybylla Melyvn seem genuinely real. The novel is a bildungsroman that describes the Cinderella-like transition of an awkward, teenager growing up in the country into a blossoming young country belle. The novel paints a Bronte ish image of adolescence as it shows Sybylla's inner struggles during her first and last love as well as her search for a social identity. In terms of social commentary, My Brilliant Career demonstrates a woman's resistance towards the conventional role of women in the nineteenth century. My Brilliant Career is an unforgettable novel because it uses fairy tale elements to show the rite of passage.

The fairy-tale's virtuous mother and its cruel stepmother are combined together to become Sybylla's mother. Once beautiful, cultivated, and happy, she has, under the combined influence of a drunken husband and depression era economics, become an embittered and harsh antagonist to her daughter". The heavy work told upon my gentle refined mother. She grew thin and careworn and often cross". (17) Sybylla's grandmother, Lauren Bossier and Sybylla's Aunt Helen play the fairy godmothers of the story. They are responsible for wrestling Sybylla from the impoverished surroundings of her Possum Gully existence and bringing her to Caddagat where music and dancing fulfil her desires of a cultured life.

Sybylla's transformation from girlhood to womanhood is characteristic of a fairy tale because it uses physical changes to symbolism growing maturity", Aunt Helen's treatment for making me presentable was the wearing of gloves and a shady hat every time I went" (58). When Sybylla first meets her handsome prince, Harold Beecham she is dressed so that she is mistaken as one of the "kitchen fry" (79). Sybylla describes this experience by comparing it to fairy tale heroines, "on making my first appearance before my lover, I looked quite the reverse of a heroine. My lovely hair was not conveniently escaping from the comb at the right moment to catch him hard in the eye, neither was my thrillingly low sweet voice floating out on the scented air in a manner which went straight to his heart, like the girls I had read of". (75) At the night of the Ya btree ball, Sybylla has no competition with ugly sisters but she does have to compete with Miss Derrick, who brings "herself and her dress in with great style and airs" (121) and consequently is treated "as though she were a princess" (122). Sybylla is again acutely conscious of her difference from such a romantic heroine, remarking, "Beside her, I in my crushed white muslin dress was as overshadowed as a little white handkerchief would be in comparison to a gorgeous shawl heavily wrought in silks and velvet" (121-22).

When Harold Beecham proposes to Sybylla, she is disappointed and affronted, "No word of love was uttered to me and none requested from me" (124). Her disappointment illustrates her awakening to the difference between reality and childhood whims, "This was not as I had pictured a man would tell his love, or as I had read of it, heard of it or wished it should be" (139). It is interesting to note that Sybylla gives verbal acceptance of the proposal while in her heart planning the ultimate rejection. This is further evidence of her fairy take like expectations of love. When Harold Beecham's fortune is restored the element of a fairy tale is even more pronounced, for Harold himself describes the situation as "like a fairy yarn" (207).

When he proposes for the second time to Sybylla he is once more confronted with the Cinderella figure, "I had baked and cooked, scrubbed floors and whitewashed hearths, scoured tinware and cutlery, cleaned windows, swept yards, and discharged numerous miscellaneous jobs, and half-past two in the afternoon found me very dirty and very tired... ". (212). Sybylla Melyvn's internal struggle to elevate the bushman as the true Australian yet her desire for cultural refinement shows the uncertainties of adolescence. Sybylla thankfully however, speaks frankly of her feelings without vain attempts to hide her emotions, "A man who rises from indigence to opulence by business capabilities must have brains worthy of admiration, but the man who makes a fortune as M'Swats of Barney Gap was making his must be dirt mean, grasping, narrow minded, soulless- to me the most uncongenial of my fellows" (203). The inconsistencies in Franklin's execution of the book, shows her youthful inexperience however at the same time helped to add to the strong voice of the novel.

For example her special notice proclaims, "Do not fear encountering such trash as descriptions of beautiful sunsets and whisperings of wind" (xvii). The book however, ends in this way "The great sun is sinking in the west, grinning and winking knowingly as he goes, upon the starving stock and drought-smitten wastes of land. Nearer he draws to the gum-tree scrubby horizon, turns the clouds to orange, scarlet, silver flame, gold! ...

The gorgeous, garish splendour of sunset pageantry flames out!" (258). My Brilliant Career can be appreciated for its strong heroine, Sybylla Melyvn and her feminist views on society's opinion of marriage and the patriarchal expectations of women. This is evident right from the very start of the novel, "As a tiny child I was filled with dreams of the great things I was to do when grown up. My ambition was as boundless as the mighty bush in which I have always lived. As I grew it dawned upon me that I was girl - the makings of a woman! ...

It came home to me as a great blow that it was only men who could take the world by its ears and conquer their fate, while women, metaphorically speaking, were forced to sit with tied hands and patiently suffer as the waves of fate tossed them hither and thither, battering and bruising without mercy. (33) In Sybylla's memoir of her early years at Brindabella, she records her early rebellion against social conventions "Her mind must not probe beyond limits tacitly understood... to be discouraged in the realm of mental speculation till the mind becomes inelastic and atrophied was what I subconsciously resisted" (134-35). Further evidence of the protagonist's high spirits is the incident where Sybylla whips Harold for trying to kiss her, which represents her rejection of male dominance in marriage. What is even more unusual about Sybylla is her high demands to absolute equality in marriage that leads her to reject Harold's second proposal, "He offered everything - but control" (223). In many male bildungsroman's, marriage is never the ultimate goal but simply an incident in the plot. When Miles Franklin tries to do this in the novel the story stops moving, "I could see my life, stretching out ahead of me, barren and monotonous as the thirsty track along which Harold was disappearing...

By training and education I was fitted for nought but what I was? (226) In conclusion, it is understandable that My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin is valued not only for its amazing insights into the uncertainties of adolescence but also for its comments on late nineteenth century society. Despite criticism of this work as crude in its execution, it as endured as a true Australian favourite for its honesty and vividness..