The Bushwoman Character Analysis

The unnamed bushwoman is the main character in “The Drover’s Wife,” and the story centers around the challenges she faces raising a family largely on her own in the Australian bush. She has four children—Tommy, Jacky, and two daughters—with the drover, who is often away for many months at a time. The bushwoman has grown extremely self-sufficient over the years, though she still clings to various trappings of more “civilized” life—reading the Young Ladies’ Journal and dressing up to go for a walk with her children every Sunday, for example. As a girl she dreamt of a comfortable life and she enjoyed being pampered by her husband early in their marriage by buggy rides and fancy hotel stays. After the drover’s finances were devastated by a drought, however, both were forced to trade their creature comforts for a demanding, solitary existence in the outback. The bushwoman has since come to accept the inescapability of her fate and the harshness of life in the bush, which has robbed her of her more “womanly” nature (symbolized by her wearing trousers, which both amuses and frightens her children). In addition to depicting her struggle to protect her family from a snake that invades their home, the story enumerates the many threats that she has faced over the course of her life in the bush, which range from natural phenomena—fires, floods, and wild animals—to lascivious men who, realizing no husband is at home, occasionally come to her door. By the end of the story, the reader has a clear understanding of just how tough these many challenges have forced the bushwoman to become, both physically and emotionally, in order to ensure the survival of her family. That she remains unnamed throughout the story suggests that she symbolizes a generation who helped establish the foundations of white settlement deep in the Australian continent.