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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The White Girl, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonial Violence
Dignity and Resilience
Loss
Love and Family
Power
Summary
Analysis
Every morning when 63-year-old Odette Brown wakes up, she lights the cookstove in the kitchen and then goes outside to fetch water and to greet the black kite (a bird of prey) that hovers over the Line, the road separating the mission (now an Aboriginal reserve) from the “good white settlers” of the town of Deane. She feels a strange pain in her left side. Going back inside, she prepares her usual Sunday breakfast of tea and bread, toasted in rendered fat and seasoned with salt. This meal always reminds her of her childhood on the mission.
Odette’s morning routine establishes her connection to the land as an Aboriginal woman. It also shows readers how strictly Australian society enforced racial and cultural divisions in the 20th century. In this case, those divisions are both metaphorical and literal, etched into the landscape by physical boundaries like roads. During the 19th and 20th centuries, White Australian society sought to isolate and assimilate Aboriginal populations. One way of doing this was by forcing Aboriginal people to live on “missions,” religiously affiliated and controlled reservations like the one where Odette spent her early childhood.
Themes
While sipping her tea, Odette glances at a framed photograph of her daughter, Lila, taken when Lila was 16 years old and newly pregnant with Odette’s now 12-year-old granddaughter, Sissy. Lila never named the father of her baby and no one from Deane stepped forward to claim responsibility, although from Sissy’s skin tone, he was clearly White. When Sissy was a year old, Lila left. Odette hasn’t seen her since. She’s spent the last 12 years caring for Sissy and trying to keep the Welfare authorities from taking her away.
The very strong implication of Lila’s silence is that she was raped by a White man. Sexual violence was only one of the atrocities committed against Aboriginal people by White colonists and their descendants. Lila’s abrupt departure suggests that, for her, Sissy was an enduring reminder of that violence and trauma, trauma she reasonably wished to escape. Odette worries that the welfare authorities—the White, self-appointed and so-called “protectors” of Aboriginal people—will take Sissy from her. Even though she’s in her 60s, Odette is considered a ward of the state rather than a legal adult, just like her young granddaughter. A common narrative among Australian settlers claimed that Aboriginal families were incapable of properly caring for their children.
Themes
Sissy is still asleep in the twin bed she and Odette share when Odette pulls on her coat and boots and walks down the Line toward the Aboriginal cemetery. On the way she crosses the muddy ravine and little trickle of water that remains from the once-mighty river running through Deane. Odette’s route passes Henry Lamb’s junkyard. Although he’s White, Henry has long lived on the fringes of Deane society. A childhood accident left him with permanent brain damage. His disability led to teasing and bullying in school. Abandoned by his White peers, he made friends with the Aboriginal children, including Odette.
Again, everything in this opening chapter reinforces the oppressive nature of settler colonialism. The single twin bed suggests Odette’s impoverishment and lack of social mobility, the Line reminds readers of how society excludes people like her, and the dry riverbed offers an implicit criticism of the way White settlers stole and abused the natural resources once enjoyed and stewarded by Aboriginal people. While the book primarily focuses on the devastating situation of Aboriginal people, it shows how ideas easily expand to encompass other vulnerable groups. The disabled Henry is excluded because he falls short of society’s unspoken ideals, too, even though he is White.
Themes
Worried about the thick mud on the Line, Henry suggests that Odette take the easier path through town. Aboriginal people are no longer arrested for crossing the line without permission, although the law prohibiting them from doing so remains on the books. Still, Odette prefers to bypass town whenever she can. Like the birds, Henry muses. Someone once told him that when Deane prohibited Aboriginal visitors, the birds stopped flying over it, too. Odette agrees that this is true.
The friendship between Henry and Odette suggests that there is nothing natural about the strict division of human beings into groups along arbitrary racial and cultural lines. And the fact that some of the most obviously discriminatory laws have fallen out of favor reinforces this idea. But Odette refuses to compromise her dignity to conform. She isn’t willing to align herself with a society that clearly doesn’t want her.
Themes
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According to the recent census, Henry remarks, there are only 127 people left in and around Deane. That seems a high estimate to Odette, who hasn’t seen that many White people in years. The census doesn’t count Aboriginal people.
The mention of the census establishes Deane as a very small and very isolated community in decline thanks to the shortsighted farming practices that killed the river. It also helps to establish the book’s timeframe. Its events happen prior to the 1967 referendum regarding counting Aboriginal people in the census.
Themes
Changing the subject, Odette asks Henry if he has a salvageable bicycle that she could give Sissy as a birthday present. Their conversation is interrupted by the dramatic arrival of Aaron and George Kane, the teenaged sons of Joe Kane, a disaffected White farmer whose farm failed during a long drought. Years earlier, Odette took care of the boys for Joe, but she quit soon after his wife died violently, fearing for her safety—and that of her beautiful, teenaged daughter, Lila. Joe stalked Odette and Lila for a while afterward, then abruptly stopped for reasons Odette never discerned.
The Kane family story belies the foundational colonial myth about the inherent superiority of White civilization and society over Indigenous ones. Odette is clearly a better caretaker than the boys’ mother, and the farming practices European colonists and their descendants imported to Australia ruined the land once carefully stewarded by its Aboriginal inhabitants. Readers should also note the sexual interest that Joe Kane took in Lila around the time she became pregnant with Sissy.
Themes
Aaron demands that Henry open the junkyard and sell him and George equipment for their truck. Henry insists that he doesn’t have the parts and that he never opens the junkyard for business on Sundays. Aaron tries to bully him into compliance, but Henry refuses to budge. The brothers ignore Odette except when she addresses them directly. George remembers her fondly, but Aaron claims not to recognize her. Eventually, they leave, promising that they’ll be back.
Aaron’s sense of privilege and power is palpable. He enjoys wielding power over others. Importantly, neither Henry (White, but disabled) nor Odette (able, but Aboriginal) have the clout to stand up to him. Note the skillful way that Odette deescalates the situation without directly confronting Aaron. She’s obviously well practiced in managing White people in self-protective ways.
Themes
The interaction disturbs Odette, and her sense of unease stays with her all the way to the old mission. When she worked for the Kanes, she knew that Joe was physically abusing Aaron, but she had no way to intervene. In the present, something about George’s face seems strange to Odette, but she can’t put her finger on why.
It turns out that Aaron has been the victim of his father’s violence and control too. This doesn’t excuse his actions, but it does contextualize them, and it points to the way that exerting power over others perpetuates harm in sometimes unexpected ways. Odette can’t put her finger on why George’s face bothers her, and readers will have to wait for her to realize why. But it’s appropriate in this context to remember Joe Kane’s interest in Lila and the related possibility that he might be Sissy’s father.
Themes
