Previous
Chapter 2
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
After enjoying a quiet Sunday morning to herself, Sissy goes outside to prepare the wood fire she and Odette use to heat their weekly bath. It’s laborious, but the Browns’ bathtub is a luxury. Many years earlier, when it fell off Jeb Lamb’s junk truck, Ruben bought it. Then, he and a crew of relatives and coworkers loaded it onto a cart of their own, secured it much better than Jeb had, and carried it to Ruben’s yard. There’s no hot water supply, so they must fill it with buckets and warm the water by pushing hot coals underneath it.
The story about the bathtub illustrates two main points. First, the bathtub has always been a central hub of personal and communal care in Odette’s family. Sissy shows her love for Odette by taking on the chore of preparing the fire, for example. Second, despite the way White society denigrated him and made poor assumptions of his character and intelligence, Ruben shows himself to be a competent, intelligent, and savvy man in his interaction with Jeb.
Themes
Odette refuses when Sissy offers her the first bath. After Sissy soaks, Odette washes, oils, and combs Sissy’s hair. It’s a peaceful ritual. Odette can hear the call of a bird—a magpie—in the front yard. Sissy asks if there are ghosts in the graveyard as her classmates claim. Odette says that White people invented ghosts to frighten the living. The “old people” she talks to in the graveyard are neither scary nor dangerous. In fact, Sissy is welcome to come whenever she wants. Changing the subject, Sissy tells Odette that a man was watching the house from the street earlier in the day. She describes Sergeant Lowe. She tells Sissy not to worry, although Odette herself is greatly alarmed by the news.
This moment illustrates exactly why leaving Aboriginal children with their families was perceived as dangerous to those who wanted to control and assimilate indigenous populations. It shows that Odette is more than capable of taking care of Sissy and illustrates how indigenous knowledge and culture are handed down within families. It's exactly what a man like Lowe doesn’t want. His presence haunts and ruins what should be peaceful interlude. His coercion need not always be direct to be effective.
Themes
Afterwards, Odette paints. She earns a living making greeting cards on consignment for a White, female business owner who sells “native handicrafts.” When they met, three years earlier, Odette’s skill impressed the White woman, but the real selling point was her indigeneity. Having an Aboriginal “provenance” made the cards more valuable, the woman explained as she asked for Odette’s “tribal name.” Odette said she was “Bilga,” a word she read off the honey jar on the table. Odette found the woman off-putting, but still accepted her offer, because she makes more money from a few days of painting than she would in a few weeks of housekeeping for White people. She stashes her income in hiding places in her house, since Aboriginal people cannot open bank accounts.
As Odette reflects throughout the book, in her experience White culture almost uniformly wants to suppress Aboriginal culture and history unless or until it’s convenient not to. In this case, the tribal name is clearly a way to profit from the exoticism of having Aboriginal artists contributing their work. The fact that Odette must make up a name shows the efforts to culturally assimilate Aboriginal people of her generation. She doesn’t know who her people actually are. Odette’s inability to open a bank account is yet another reminder of her status as a ward of the state and a harsh reminder that she is not considered a citizen of the country that rules her life.
Themes
Sissy watches Odette painting a wattle branch, one of the few things currently in bloom. Odette refuses to paint from memory because she wants to capture the unique essence of each individual flower or animal. Sissy, in contrast, thinks all the wattle blossoms look alike. When it starts to rain, Sissy puts jars on the floor to catch drips from the leaky roof, but she loves the cozy sound of the falling water. She tells Odette that she plans to stay in this house with her grandmother “forever.”
The difference between Odette’s and Sissy’s experience of nature can be interpreted in several ways. Odette, despite growing up on the mission, was nevertheless closer to her Aboriginal heritage because she grew up surrounded by her people, even if their relational networks were disrupted. Now there are few people left in Deane and even fewer Aboriginal people. It’s also possible to interpret the difference in opinions as indicative of the difference between a youthful and a more mature perspective. It’s also possible to map this interaction onto the way that White society sees Aboriginal people (as an undifferentiated mass) versus the way that the book thinks all people should be considered in the full light of their human dignity.
Themes
Get the entire The White Girl LitChart as a printable PDF.
