The Snake Symbol Analysis

The snake that slips under the floorboards of the bushwoman’s house at the beginning of the story represents the threat that natural forces pose to the (white) settlers in the Australian bush. The snake not only symbolizes the threat posed by the natural world because it is the bushwoman’s main foe in the context of the story (just as nature writ large is the bushwoman’s main foe in the context of her life), but also because of the symbolic nature of snakes in general.

Starting with the role that the snake plays in the Genesis chapter of the Bible, in which a snake tempts Eve into sin, snakes have come to serve as powerful symbols of trickiness and the ruination of humanity in Western culture. In “The Drover’s Wife,” the snake in question is particularly tricky because it slips under the floorboards and hides, only emerging after many hours have passed. In other words, it becomes an invisible threat, as opposed to the serious but very visible threats posed by the other natural occurrences in the story—such as the wildfire, the flood, and the “mad bullock”—that the bushwoman has faced in the past. Thus, the snake represents the extent to which nature is unpredictable and, as such, hard to reliably defend oneself against. Furthermore, like an isolated Eve, the bushwoman is the only woman for miles, and one of few settlers at all in the enormous bush. Thus, if the snake kills her and her family, this can be understood to represent the “Fall of Man” on a smaller, national scale—especially in the context of Lawson’s nationalistic beliefs; were the bushwoman to fail, this would suggest humankind’s failure to tame the natural world. The bushwoman’s defeat of the snake, then, suggests humankind’s ultimate dominion over nature.