On Her Knees

Tim Winton spent his early life in Perth, Western Australia, before moving to the city of Albany at the age of 12. At 19, while studying at the Curtin University of Technology, he wrote his first novel An Open Swimmer, which won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and launched his career as a writer. Winton met his wife Denise when they were in school together, and the two married when Winton was 21. While Winton has lived in Greece, France, and Ireland, he currently lives in Western Australia with his wife and their three children. In addition to a writing career that includes producing works of adult literature, children’s literature, short stories, and nonfiction, Winton is actively involved in environmental advocacy in Australia as a patron of the Marine Conservation Society and the Native Australian Animals Trust. A private person, he rarely appears publicly unless promoting a book or advocating for environmental movements. Winton has won the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award four times and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction twice.

“On Her Knees,” published in 2005, reflects a prevalent issue of class tension in Australia. At the time of the story’s publication, Australia had only one Act prohibiting discrimination due to social origin or class. The Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 specifically outlaws class discrimination in employment and job terminations. However, despite the evidence of widespread class discrimination, very few legal cases in Australia have made use of the 1986 Act to combat it. In “On Her Knees,” Carol’s working-class status makes her vulnerable to her wealthy clients. Class discrimination causes her insistence of her innocence to mean less than the accusation of her client to other wealthy homeowners and, she assumes, to police. Carol’s refusal to involve law enforcement in the issue of the missing earrings reflects the low numbers of cases of class discrimination brought to trial in Australia.

Tim Winton’s book of short stories The Turning, in which “On Her Knees” was originally published, is full of similar and connected stories set in Western Australia. Each story deals with a kind of turn: a surprise, an accident, a change in perspective, or a new understanding. Many of Winton’s short stories and novels, like “On Her Knees,” explore the lives of ordinary working-class people in their everyday struggles. His 1991 novel Cloudstreet follows two working-class Australian families who share a house over a period of twenty years. In this way, Winton’s work often fits into the genres of Proletarian and working-class literature that portray the lives of the working class, often as a provocation for social change. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is a notable example of this sort of work. In Here Comes The Sun, a 2016 debut novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn, Margot, a worker in a luxury Jamaican resort, struggles with her family and the effects of classism as she strives for financial security. Similarly, John Lanchester’s 2012 novel Capital follows the residents of a gentrifying London neighborhood during the 2008 financial crisis as they go about their everyday lives. Both novels illuminate the tensions of class conflict through the struggles of individuals and the drama of ordinary days.