Date of Award

1-1-2006

Document Type

Thesis - ECU Access Only

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Master of Arts

School

School of Education and Arts, International, Cultural and Community Studies

Faculty

Faculty of Education and Arts

First Supervisor

Dr Susan Ash

Abstract

This thesis comprises three sections. Section One is a novel Silhouettes of Alice, divided into four parts. Parts I and II are set in the fifties and sixties, and Part IV is set in the twenty-first century. The novel highlights the formative years of a girl's life from the age of five to twelve years, leaving home at twenty, and later, at mid-life, getting divorced and starting over. Section Two is a collection of twenty poems that form part of the creative writing component, a new work entitled Country Girl. Section Three is an essay on Views from the Veranda: Visual Maps of Place, Culture and Identity. This area of research highlights the veranda as a significant cultural contribution to the Australian way of life, place and identity. The veranda is featured in both manuscripts, and is integral to themes of love, home, friendship and familial guardianship. In the essay, by utilizing several authors' works, I discuss how the veranda acts as a caesura, a pause on the edge of the house, a reflective space where families interact, educate, communicate, and socialize. The research into the veranda, especially Philip Drew's work Veranda: Embracing Place, has facilitated my inquiry into the social, physical and cultural significance of the veranda. The essay also utilizes Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, primarily for theoretical insights into spatial environments, and his philosophical and metaphysical theories on intimate places where the mind rests, evoking the imagination, memories and daydreams - the writer's essential tools .

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