by Donald Horne
These weaknesses in criticism, rather than the stupidities of the audience, may be one of the reasons why some Australian work is ‘misunderstood’; it has not been sympathetically and knowledgeably explained. Criticism is essentially a task for the intellect and the weaknesses of Australian criticism may be part of the general inability to pursue prolonged, subtle and exhaustive thought. Conversation about literature or the arts often shows the same characteristics: a few snap judgments, perhaps a bit of shouting, and then you pass on to the next topic. Conversation does not flourish in Australia. It is possible to find good conversation, but you have to know where to look.
For its size and nature Australia has a vigorous cultural life, in which, amongst the second to tenth-rate activity usually found in any cultural life, there has been permanent achievement, particularly in poetry and painting. For one good man to rise each generation is something; Australia has provided more than that. Australian critics often – usually – expect too much. They show an obsessive concern with attacking the nonsense that usually surrounds art. Some of them seem to have a solitary view of art – an art without audience and without other practitioners, the peace of a man mowing his own back lawn or standing on the rocks fishing alone. Yet an audience (which will usually be partly silly) and a bustle of activity (much of which will usually be bad) are often the conditions under which good work appears. Australian intellectuals always expect too much of Australia: they demand painting without dealers, poetry without pretension, theatre without audiences. Others express genuine dismay because most Australians are indifferent to the products of their culture, as of course they are. Culture does not run to equality.
In literature and the arts one can make no demands of subject; an artist may draw his ideas from anywhere. To deny this is barbarous; to impose standards, as some Australians have done, that are arbitrarily said to be dictated by national history and tradition is simply to impose limits on the human imagination. However, while acknowledging this, it is also proper to seek for any attitudes to life that seem common to many Australian writers and artists in the hope that this may tell one something about Australia. What is first noteworthy is that in any artistically effective form the old ‘class-conscious’ democratic spirit has gone. This is not surprising. Only sentimentalists or crooks could still write in ignorance of the profound and obvious changes in Australian society. But no one seems to be interested in the new forms of fraternalism of ordinary Australians; creative people don’t seem interested in the mateship of the cab driver or the RSL Club. Much of the old utopian humanism has also gone. There is still plenty of humanism amongst the ordinary people but it seems to have turned sour in more cultivated minds and a new sense of a future for Australia has not yet emerged to be utopian about. New Lands and New Ages are no longer fashionable, although the New Age is now outlining itself: perhaps it seemed better to the fastidious when it wasn’t there. There is some of the old exuberance and robustness left, some sense of joy in living, but it is often now more muted: as the people become more joyous the poets seem to become more sombre.
There is still an obsession with landscape, natural environment and myth. Some of this is as pantheistic as the ordinary people’s ability to identify with their environment. Even the most sophisticated minds seem to go bush for their images of innocence: to some poets and painters the desert seems to be the Australian symbol of hope. There is little urban literature that deals with ordinary Australians as if they were observable human beings. Usually if an artist looks at the ordinary people he turns on them and savages them or invents romantic substitutes. However there are many haunted images of melancholy or despair, gestures of dismay or disillusion. Paradise has been lost and artists are disappointed.
Literature and the arts in Australia no longer represent the moods and attitudes of the community, except unconsciously and in distortion; they show a remarkable lack of interest in the people. To say this is not to criticize either artists or people but to suggest that the sense of alienation and disappointment felt by so many writers and artists is something of their own contrivance. There are exceptions. One of these is to be found in the paintings of Russell Drysdale. As Max Harris said in Australian Book Review: ‘There is alienation in Drysdale’s canvases … the loneliness is expressive of self-containment, of a kind of inner quietness … Drysdale feels, as does every bush dweller, complete identity with the landscape. This identity, the belongingness of man and environment, is the rich and rewarding return of the condition of Australian loneliness. In terms of European thought, “loneliness” is a word of purely tragic impact … Drysdale’s paintings are interpretative exercises in this beautiful man-and-environment oneness … the “essence” of Drysdale’s figures is not threatened, but assured, contained, enduring.’ In the Australian sense of reserve, the sudden desire for quiet, there can sometimes be not shyness but a sense that this is all there is: man and his environment. It’s not what all the books promise, but there’s a pattern in it; and an interest in it; and it’s all there is.
Women
It is both true and untrue that Australia is peculiarly a ‘man’s country’.
In access to occupational opportunities and professional or public position Australia is quantitatively no more a ‘man’s country’ than any other ‘Western’ society. That is to say that it still is a man’s country, but no more so than in comparable countries. In Women in Australia Norman Mackenzie showed how the distribution of women in the Australian labour force was remarkably like that in other developed industrial societies. Indeed participation in the professions in Australia was slightly higher than in the USA or Sweden. ‘But in terms of absolute numbers the differences are striking. While the percentage of women in the medical profession is slightly higher in Australia, there are merely a few hundred women doctors against more than 12 000 in the US … As numbers increase, even if the proportion remains much the same, women in a profession develop a sense of confidence and solidarity.’ The numbers are not large enough to allow this in Australia and this lack of size decreases public acceptance, opportunities for specialization and the chance for women to reach the top.
Perhaps where it has been most obviously true that Australia has been a man’s country is in access to leisure activities and pleasure. Until recently – in many parts of society – the cliche image was demonstrably true. At parties men stood at one end of the room and talked about sport, money, motor cars – and women. At the other end of the room women sat and talked about children, homes, undies – and men. Beer drinking, perhaps the most common form of Australian companionship, was almost an exclusively male pursuit. While the men stood up in their bars and fantasized about the women they would like to get into bed with, their wives gathered at home over afternoon tea and fantasized about new bedspreads.
As with all cliche images of this kind, there were many exceptions. In Sydney, for instance, in the vogue-forming Eastern Suburbs, both in the inner suburbs where the old-style bohemians gathered and in the richer suburbs along the Harbour foreshores where such chic as there is in Sydney is generated, it was known that in overseas countries women mixed with men and the people in these areas did the same. But the more important qualification to make is that the whole situation is now changing, especially among the young, but – in many ways – also among the middle-aged.
It may be that this stiffness in relations between the sexes is better described as social awkwardness rather than male dominance. Men and women go their own ways, but the men get the best of the bargain because they have more ways to go. Statistically, of course, Australia was a man’s country for most of its history. During the period of settlement there were likely to be a hundred men to seventy women in the towns and as many as four men to one woman in the outback: there is still a marginal preponderance of men. Perhaps the awkwardness grew up over this period and became a habit. In what might be described as more cultivated circles it might be that no one had anything much to say: in a country where the art of ge
neral conversation languishes, what could men and women talk about?
It may have had something to do with the fact that in Australia women often rule the roost. The man goes off to work and in his spare time plays with his mates. In the house he is often merely the odd jobs man, the chauffeur and the gardener. The woman sets herself high standards of house-wifemanship and family care and makes a temple of her home. An American West Coast Professor of Psychology Dan L. Adler has even gone to the trouble of inventing a word, ‘matriduxy’, to dramatise his research findings – that more often than not, Mother is the decision-maker in the Australian home, and that Australian homes are more Mother-dominated than American homes. This research usefully confirmed something that was already evident: that the obsession of many Australian women with their homes goes beyond fashion or normal motherly concern; it represents an attempt to provide spiritual value in material things and modes of living. In a largely non-religious and non-competitive society an obsession for ‘good taste’ in homes, in their furniture and decoration, and in home entertainment and cooking gives life much of its meaning. (That much of the ‘good taste’ is bad is beside the point.)
This is often mistakenly compared with what is said to be the American concern with status. There is far too much loose talk in Australia about ‘status symbols’. They exist in a crude form in the small world of ambitious men. If an Australian man wants to show off he can buy a certain kind of car, or a big house in a fashionable suburb, or try to get into an exclusive club, or go for a trip overseas. He can use his money and throw his weight around by buying symbols of power that are simply symbols of money. He may oppose ‘taste’ because money can’t always buy it. But an Australian woman is looking for the good life, the right and satisfying way of doing things. She is not usually concerned with her husband’s career; she does not use her ‘home’ to help him in his job, but to build a world in which she believes. She has created a much more subtle world than the man’s world, not so dependent on money, a world of multiple difference.
Some of the values of this world are shown in these quotations from the women’s pages of newspapers: ‘The dinner party was given under the stars in a walled courtyard softly lit by storm-globed candles in black wrought iron stands’ … ‘The dining room looked elegant with a soft glow from yellow candles in silver candlesticks on the sideboard, and from candlesticks flanking dahlias on the long table’ … ‘City parties started last Sunday with a very lovely buffet lunch given by A and D at their Killara home with a creek flowing through the garden’ … ‘For L and K, who leave Friday for a fantastic trip abroad, it’s been a continuous round of au revoirs. Their itinerary will take in Egypt, with a trip up the Nile, Jerusalem, Amman, Petra, the Greek Islands, the Continent, England and home via the Americas’ … ‘A dinner that was just teeming with atmosphere was given by artistic L and A to say “goodbye, return soon” to R, who leaves Friday for her charming Chelsea house and pet poodle Buttercup’ … ‘For originality of ideas you can’t beat D and C who gave a simply super St Valentine’s Day party. The red heart motif was carried out in name tags and lace-edged hearts decorated the white cloth on the buffet table. Even the jellied salad and sweets were heart-shaped’… ‘The moment the front door of the rosy pink Villa Porto Rosa is opened one has a sense of being transported to the Mediterranean coast. From its tiled floors and colonnaded balcony to the palm trees and a view of boats on the water, this house at Watson’s Bay is Italian in feeling’… ‘Crisped vegetables seasoned with garlic, oil, tarragon vinegar and freshly ground pepper team in an exciting combination salad that’s a winner for meatless lenten menus’ … ‘Make your next party an outstanding success by serving some of the world-famous Chinese dishes’.
Migrants – how assimilated?
Australia has managed to be an immigrant country for most of its history without even thinking about it. In the goldrush decade of the 1850s the population trebled, mainly because of migration, and even by the end of the century only 77 per cent of Australians were native born. Even now only 83 per cent of Australians were born in Australia (and of these, 5 per cent have migrant parents). Yet, unlike Americans, Australians have not taken any pride in projecting an image of their country as a haven for the oppressed or as a market for the talents of the world. Yet they might well do so. After the Second World War Australia absorbed a big proportion of the ‘displaced persons’ of Europe and throughout its history it has been a society open to the ambition of immigrant talent. If entry in the Australian Who’s Who is any kind of a test, the proportion of migrants who achieve success is more than double the proportion of native Australians who achieve success.
The constant factor in policy has been that Australia, traditionally, has bought most of its immigrants. Apart from the gold rush decade and the two main periods of economic depression – in the 1890s and 1930s – most migrants have come to Australia because the Australian government has actively encouraged them and paid their fares. Before the immigration that followed the Second World War, since most of the immigrants came from the British Isles, it was assumed that once they got here it was up to them to make their adjustments to what they found. This caused many hardships. Australia is not as ‘British’ as it looks. However the immigrants spoke English – although not to Australian standards – and the rest was up to them.
The break in patterns came after the Second World War. Australians had got such a scare when the Japanese almost seized all of New Guinea, and bombed Northern Australia, that the 1930s slogan ‘Populate or Perish’ was given new meaning. It was decided to bring in from Britain and Europe enough migrants to double the annual population increase. For the first time, people who did not come from the British Isles were to be bought, along with the British.
The 167 000 ‘displaced persons’ who came to Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s were bought very cheaply. Most of them were penniless. They had little or no other choice. They were transported to Australia for nothing, housed in old army huts, even tents, and put to work on construction projects, mainly in the country areas. For two years they were bound to manual labour. After that, it was up to them. (Educated people with special skills – unless they cared to swing a spade for a couple of years – were not invited.) From an economic viewpoint they were a godsend. They helped to get the country on its postwar move without involving immediate expensive additions to its superstructure.
Having taken the plunge in procuring ‘reffos’ (who were successfully labelled ‘New Australians’), Australian governments then went on to sign migration agreements with most of the governments of Western Europe to assist the passage to Australia of people who had more choice in the matter. To these were added a number of other Europeans whose relatives brought them out here. For the first time a large segment of the Australian population is of non-British or non-Irish origin.
Officially there was still a narrow assimilation doctrine, in which immigrants were supposed to ‘become Australians’ in double quick time. Six migrant centres and twenty-nine hostels were set up to assist this purpose. Lessons in the English language and in Australian customs were pumped into the newcomers. Community organizations were formed. Annual citizenship conventions (stocked with Uncle Toms) were summoned. And a naturalization ceremony was rigged up at which New Australians were required to swear allegiance, among other things, to Elizabeth II – a requirement that is not officially made of the native born.
Needless to say none of this has had the particular effects required. Immigrants continue to make their own time in adjusting to a new society and many of them continue with old ways. There are about seventy foreign language newspapers and periodicals in a couple of dozen languages and hundreds of clubs and societies in which immigrants pursue old friendships and old enmities. In soccer, by far the fastest-growing spectator sport, the old rivalries of Europe are resumed by teams bearing national names that provide a basis for the English football pools in the English summer. The Hungarians sit in espresso-land and s
till divide on the question of the Arrow Cross. Greeks parade the streets bearing anti-Royalist placards. (Even Greeks who have sworn allegiance to Elizabeth II.) The Yugoslavs are bitterly divided between Serbs and Croats (when ex-King Peter came to Australia to visit migrant Yugoslavs the Croats attacked him as a ‘Serbian king’), and to a lesser extent between Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Bosnians. Fascist outfits like the Ustashi still exercise some power. Most of the Eastern Europeans divide not only among themselves, but also as Jews and non-Jews.
Amazingly, no one really knows what degree of assimilation is going on. If you saw the Australian Greeks going down to the wharves at Woolloomooloo to wait for a brideship, you might say – none. If you saw a Dutch family in its home in a suburban street, as self-contained and accommodated to its surroundings as a molecule that passes from one body of matter to another, you might say that assimilation was complete. There is some evidence that a sense of community can disappear with Germans, Poles and other Northern Europeans in the first native-born generation. (With the Dutch it seems to disappear with the migrants themselves.) Southern Europeans seem to lose their sense of difference more slowly, especially when there has been chain migration in which a significant part of a community in the homeland transfers itself in groups to Australia and attempts to continue its group life. Greeks may be the slowest assimilators of all.
What seems obvious is that ordinary Australians themselves have ‘assimilated’ to Europeans more quickly and gently than most critics of ordinary Australians had allowed for. It is true that the continuing employment boom has meant that there has been little or no competition for jobs but – whatever the reason – the immigration into Australia of European immigrants who do not speak English has worked without the tensions of America. There have not been closed areas of settlement and separate schools, or strong political groupings extending into the general community or (with the exception of the Greeks) separate church groupings. Although it has no doubt involved the many individual unhappinesses natural to migration, the post-war migration to Australia has been a reasonably happy migration, as migrations go. Migrants are not more delinquent than other Australians; in fact the crime rate among migrants has proved less than among the native born.