Page 18 - Luce 2024

B ooks an d Authors

Bunter series by Charles Hamilton, writing as Frank Richards
(1908–1940); Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers (1946–1951) and St Congratulations
Clare’s (1941–1945) series; Anne Digby’s Trebizon series (1978–
1994); and, of course, the more recent success of J.K. Rowling’s to JCH Fellow,
Harry Potter series (1997–2007), the boarding school narrative
has long enjoyed popularity with young readers.These fictional Dr Helen Garner
boarding schools appear to function as a wish fulfilment for
many children, allowing them to imagine being temporarily The Council and all at JCH join
free from the strictures of parental supervision without having in congratulating Dr Helen
to confront that most frightening of prospects – parental death Garner (1961) on being awarded the 2023 ASA Medal. The
and orphanhood. They offer an appealing balance of safety and Australian Society of Authors awards the medal biennially
danger, order and anarchy, supervision and freedom, care and to an Australian author or illustrator who has made an
independence. outstanding contribution to Australian culture, both as a
creator and as an advocate.
In boarding school narratives old and new, the child’s home
and family, whilst out of sight are never entirely out of mind. In ASA Chair Sophie Cunningham said that ‘Helen Garner has
Malory Towers, girls receive regular parcels from home, stuffed been integral to the Australian writing scene for decades: as
with the makings of those famous midnight feasts, whilst in the a writer, as an advocate for, and mentor of, other writers, as
Harry Potter series, owls deliver shrill parental admonishments a critic and commentator, and as a chronicler of the times.
in the form of ‘Howlers’. Even at a magical boarding school She’s an inspiration.’
in the remote Scottish Highlands, it appears that young Ron
Weasley cannot entirely escape his mother’s wrath. Helen Garner’s debut novel, Monkey Grip, was awarded the
National Book Council Award in 1978 and since then her
The sanctity of motherhood numerous novels, stories and works of non-fiction have won
While all readers, children and adults alike, are familiar with many major awards including the Australia Council Award
the stock character of the wicked stepmother from fairy tales for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in 2019, and in 2020
like Snow White, Rapunzel and Cinderella (not to mention the Lloyd O’Neil Award for Services to the Australian Book
their Disney adaptations), there are few genuinely cruel natal Industry.
mothers in children’s literature.
Past recipients of the ASA Medal include Bruce Pascoe,
When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm set about collecting their now Thomas Keneally, Nadia Wheatley, Valerie Parv, Tim
canonical German fairy tales in the early nineteenth century, Winton and Anita Heiss.
they silently excised any ‘bad’ mothers, replacing them with
cruel, scheming and even murderous stepmothers to preserve
what we term the ’sanctity of motherhood’. More well-

Whilst mothers may be incompetent, incapacitated, or deserved
inattentive, a truly wicked natal mother is, it seems, a taboo
too far (even Mrs Wormwood in Roald Dahl’s Matilda is stupid, recognition
selfish and uncaring rather than actively malevolent and Mary’s
cruel mother in Jacqueline Wilson’s The Diamond Girls is for Alice Pung
revealed to be suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness).
In September we were delighted
Mirrors and windows to learn that JCH Artist-In-
In her seminal 1990 article ‘Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Residence, Alice Pung OAM,
Glass Doors’, literary critic Rudine Sims Bishop suggested that was the recipient of the 2023 Creative Australia Fellowship
children’s books may function either as ‘mirrors’, allowing for literature.
readers to see their own lives reflected, or ‘windows’, affording
them a view of a reality different from their own. Alice has successfully published in many genres and her
books have been included on both VCE and HSC study lists.
For many decades, only a narrow range of familial experiences She was awarded an OAM in 2022 for service to literature
was ‘reflected’ in children’s literature, denying many children and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in
the affirming experience of seeing families just like theirs. the same year.

The romanticised and socially valorised ‘ideal’ of the Creative Australia explained that the fellowships are open
heteronormative nuclear family certainly still persists, as to established artists to ‘support creativity and professional
suggested by the ‘happily ever after’ of the Twilight novels and development’. They stated, ‘Her literature fellowship
the Epilogue of the Harry Potter series. project, a novel manuscript called Super Vision, will engage
with an important and under-represented topic – working
But, as the academics and practitioners who contributed to our mothers. The cumulation of her workplace expertise, life
book make clear, modern authors and readers alike are more experience, public platform and personal insight will yield
open to the idea that what makes a family, what binds people a work that will hopefully be enduring and significant; and
together, is not necessarily a marriage certificate, shared DNA, perhaps even change the national conversation about how
a common name, or the same address, but ‘love, love, love.’ we value certain “caring” work’.

18 LUCE Number 22 2023