A motif of numbness appears throughout “The Drover’s Wife,” gradually increasing as the bushwoman becomes anesthetized to the reality of her hardscrabble situation through repetition and obligation:
This is because of the everlasting, maddening sameness of the stunted trees [...] the Bushwoman is used to the loneliness of it. As a girl-wife she hated it, but now she would feel strange away from it.
The bushwoman and her family live in the Australian wilderness, which is a high-stakes and unforgiving environment. And since the bushwoman's husband, the drover, works far away from home, the bushwoman is often left to defend herself against life-threatening obstacles like storms and dangerous animals. But in between these frightening events, the bushwoman's life mainly consists of repetitive domestic labor. The monotony of the bushwoman's existence has turned her into a monotonous figure herself: she would feel “strange away” from the location that has repeatedly chipped away at her feelings, as her life in the bush has changed her from the “girl-wife” she was into the numbed, nameless “bushwoman” she is in the present tense. She goes through the motions of doing things that had previously made her happier:
All days are much the same for her; but on Sunday afternoon she dresses herself, tidies the children, smartens up baby, and goes for a lonely walk along the bush-track, pushing an old perambulator in front of her.
The story describes the bushwoman as having been less numb in her past, but having lost a great deal of her emotional reactions to things as she's gotten older and endured more. Each flashback within the frame story illustrates the stack of events that have numbed her, such as when one of her children died and she had to ride 19 miles with the child's dead body to get help. Although she often cried in the past, as she gets older, these instances become fewer and farther between. In the present day of the story, this numbness appears almost total. Even after killing the snake that infiltrates her house, she does not cry or celebrate. She merely holds her son to her “worn-out breast [...] and they sit thus together while the sickly daylight breaks over bush."
All in all, this motif of numbness illustrates the toilsome nature of the bushwoman's life—which, although often troubled by danger, now cannot provoke strong emotions in her. After her years of struggle, she, like her body, is “worn-out."
