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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
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
As Odette enters the long-since abandoned mission grounds, she remembers her past there. She used to hide behind the laundry to cry. She loved going to church not for the service (she never believed in Christianity) but because it gave her an opportunity to be with her family once a week. In the graveyard, Odette tends the graves of her mother, who died giving birth to her; her “cousin-sister” Bonita, who died during a measles outbreak; and her husband Daniel and her father Ruben, who both died in a stone quarry accident. Their headstones are carved from the rock that killed them, at Odette’s insistence.
Odette has spent her entire life under the control of White people, supposedly—according to the White people—for her own “protection.” The evident disregard for Aboriginal lives undercuts the claim that Aboriginal wellbeing is at the heart of this system. Family separations and forced religious adaptation speak to the cruelty and coercion of the system, which was purposefully designed to divorce Aboriginal children from their culture by taking them from their families. In this context, it’s not hard to understand why Odette is so determined to keep Sissy in her care—or why she’s so worried about her ability to do so.
Active
Themes
Deane’s new police officer, Sergeant Lowe, emerges from the fog hanging over the river to waylay Odette on her way home. He has questions about Sissy, and he wants Odette to know that he plans to keep a much closer eye on the Aboriginal people than his lazy, frequently drunk predecessor, Bill Shea. Odette says as little as possible. She’s alarmed by how much Lowe already seems to know about her. As she hurries home, the pain in her side increases.
Despite the obstacles, Odette and Sissy have lived a relatively undisturbed life up to this point. It’s clear from the moment Sergeant Lowe emerges from the ominous fog that this is about to change. Although Bill Shea wasn’t exercising very much power over the Aboriginal population, he's still technically in a position of power. The lives of the Aboriginal people in the district, then, are at the mercy of whomever is in charge and their own agenda.
Active
Themes
After his conversation with Odette, Lowe strides back to his office. He took the assignment in tiny, rural Deane because he wanted to be placed in authority over a captive population of Aboriginal people. As a military police officer serving in Europe after the end of World War II, he’d been in a similar position of power, and he enjoyed it. He can’t wait to get started making decisions about the future welfare of the Aboriginal children under his authority.
Active
Themes
