Thwarted Desire and Poverty Theme Analysis

As a young woman, the bushwoman dreamed of living a comfortable and exciting life. Lawson says that “as a girl she built the usual castles in the air.” Now, however, “all her girlish hopes and aspirations have long been dead.” Having been through countless hardships in the bush, she has become used to a life devoid of the dreams of her youth, and has accepted the difficulty and instability of an existence so far removed from society. The contrast between the bushwoman's early desires and current harsh reality suggests that she still longs for the comfort and propriety she once imagined for herself, yet also that such desires are ultimately trivial and impossible when one has to spend all their time fighting for survival. The bushwoman has little time to seek higher joy or meaning in her life, and even as the story implicitly presents such desires as nothing more than fantasy, there is a sense of noble pathos to the fact that the bushwoman sacrifices her own comfort in order to push the boundaries of society for future generations. Importantly, the destruction of her dreams is also directly related to her extreme poverty, as access to wealth would have freed her from the immediate burdens that prevent her from fulfilling her childhood desires. Lawsons’s story thus contrasts youthful flights of fancy with the often harsh, unforgiving reality of impoverished and practical adult life.

The bushwoman's girlhood “castles in the air” have primarily been destroyed because her isolated location, exposure to natural threats, and responsibilities as an effectively single mother. Yet despite Lawson saying that her “girlish hopes and aspirations have long been dead,” certain actions suggest that she is keeping some of these aspirations alive. For example, by walking through the empty landscape every Sunday with a baby carriage, wearing her best clothing, she reveals her continued desire to be a part of polite society; however, as long as she is remains isolated in the outback, these remnants of her childhood aspirations are nothing more than fantasy. She attempts to maintain a connection to society, but the story emphasizes that there is no one around to see her efforts, and, as such, they are ultimately a rather pathetic imitation of the world she once dreamed of belong to. Furthermore, the bushwoman is ultimately—and understandably—too preoccupied with staying alive to have much time for anything else. This subtly suggests the shallowness and futility of certain social proprieties, even as the bushwoman continues to cling to them.

Though the harshness that characterizes the bushwoman's life results largely from her isolation, it is exacerbated by her poverty. Because she lives in such a humble dwelling, described as “built of round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with split slabs,” the snake is able to enter this dwelling quite easily. This puts her family in a more vulnerable position than if they had a tightly-built, luxurious house. In this way, the bushwoman's poverty exacerbates her vulnerability.

Through brief flashbacks Lawson illustrates that the few times in her life that the bushwoman had access to money, she was indeed able to both be comfortable and experience luxury. Lawson says that “when [her husband] had money he took her to the city several times—hired a railway sleeping compartment, and put up at the best hotels. He also bought her a buggy, but they had to sacrifice that along with all the rest.” Thus, during this period of relative wealth, her husband was able to provide her with security and comfort that freed her from having to focus on survival and brought her closer to her girlhood dreams. Once this period of time was over, she was forced back into a life focused on survival.

However, Lawson suggests that even though many desire lives of comfort, people are adaptable. Over time, the bushwoman came to feel more comfortable with her current circumstances than she would feel with a more luxurious life: Lawson says that “as a girl-wife she hated it, but now she would feel strange away from it.” Lawson is therefore suggesting that one can grow used to anything if one has to, to the point where one would “feel strange away from” adverse circumstances, and that choosing to accept one's lot in life and move forward, instead of giving up and abandoning one's family and responsibilities, is an alternative way to imbue life with meaning.

The life of the bushwoman illustrates quite starkly how isolation and harsh natural conditions in the Australian outback precluded the possibility of comfort for settlers there in the late nineteenth century. However, the position of the bushwoman as a settler on the Australian frontier also indicates that Lawson is suggesting that it is the poor who create the infrastructure necessary for comfort, not the rich. The bushwoman's toiling away in poverty is building a new frontier for the colonial nation and new opportunities for her children, who may grow up in a town: indeed, the drover “intends to move his family into the nearest town when he comes back” from tending his livestock. The bushwoman has perhaps sacrificed her own childhood dreams in service of the dreams of a growing nation.