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“The Inexhaustible Properties of a Lady’s Pen”: The Literary Craft of Georgiana Molloy

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Claiming Space for Australian Women’s Writing

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Abstract

In 1830, English woman Georgiana Molloy arrived on the shores of Augusta in south-west Western Australia with her husband. Molloy’s long letters to her family capture their efforts to establish themselves. While much has been written on Molloy’s pioneering spirit, attention to her literary ability has been scarce. This chapter, through its analysis of Molloy’s vivid letters to her family and her lush and alluring correspondence with James Mangles, articulates how she used writing to craft a particular persona, advance her knowledge of botany and alleviate her isolation. In doing so, it will illuminate Molloy’s growing confidence as a botanist, and the particularly feminine inflection of her responses to the Australian environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Georgiana Molloy to James Mangles, March 21, 1837, Papers of Captain James Mangles, ACC 479A, Battye Library.

  2. 2.

    Logan Esdale, “Letters”, in Encyclopedia of Women’s Autobiography, ed. Victoria Boynton and Jo Malin (Westport, 2005), 360–362, quotation at 361.

  3. 3.

    Patricia Clarke and Dale Spender, Life Lines: Australian Women’s Letters and Diaries, 1788–1840 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992), xxvi.

  4. 4.

    For research on Molloy’s life as a pioneer, see Alexandra Hasluck, Portrait with Background: A Life of Georgiana Molloy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955); William Lines, An All Consuming Passion: Origins, Modernity, and the Australian Life of Georgiana Molloy (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994); Bernice Barry, Georgiana Molloy: The Mind That Shines (Witchcliffe, WA: Redgate Consultants, 2015). For her relationship with her garden, see Maggie MacKellar, Core of My Heart, My Country: Women’s Sense of Place and the Land in Australia & Canada (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004) and Holly Kerr Forsyth, Remembered Gardens: Eight Women & Their Visions of an Australian Landscape (Carlton: Miegunyah Press, 2006). For her relationship with her natural environment, see Delys Bird, Gender and Landscape: Australian Colonial Women Writers (London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1989) and “The Self and the Magic Lantern: Gender and Subjectivity in Australian Colonial Women’s Writing”, Australian Literary Studies 15.3 (1992): 123–130 and Jessica White, “‘Since my dear Boy’s death’: Grief, Botany and Gender in 19th Century Western Australia”, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 13.2 (2013), http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/viewArticle/2704. For her botanical pursuits, see Susan K. Martin, “Gender, Genera, Genre, and Geography: Colonial Women’s Writing and the Uses of Botany”, in Crossing Lines: Formations of Australian Culture, ed. Caroline Guerin, Philip Butterss and Amanda Nettelbeck (Adelaide: Association for the Study of Australian Literature Limited, 1996), 30–39 and Jessica White, “Efflorescence: The Letters of Georgiana Molloy”, Hecate. 28.2 (2002): 176–190 and “From the Miniature to the Momentous: Georgiana Molloy and the Craft of Collecting”, Island, 135 (2013): 34–39.

  5. 5.

    Georgiana Molloy to James Mangles, January 25, 1838, Papers of Captain James Mangles, ACC 479A, Battye Library. All letters to Mangles hereafter relate to this reference.

  6. 6.

    Georgiana Molloy to Elizabeth Besley, October 9, 1832, Papers of Georgiana Molloy, ACC 501A, Battye Library.

  7. 7.

    Dale Spender, The Penguin Anthology of Australian Women’s Writing (Ringwood: Penguin Book Australia, 1988), xv.

  8. 8.

    Brenda Niall and John Thompson, The Oxford Book of Australian Letters (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), xv.

  9. 9.

    Clarke and Spender, Life Lines, xxv.

  10. 10.

    Clarke and Spender, ibid.

  11. 11.

    Georgiana Molloy to Margaret Dunlop, January 12, 1833, Papers of Georgiana Molloy, ACC 501A, Battye Library.

  12. 12.

    Clarke and Spender, Life Lines, xxvi. See also Brenda Glover, “Australian Women’s Autobiography”, in Encyclopedia of Women’s Autobiography, ed. Victoria Boynton and Jo Malin (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005), 75–88.

  13. 13.

    Dale Spender, Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers (London and New York: Spinifex Press, 1988), 16.

  14. 14.

    Lucy Frost, No Place for a Nervous Lady: Voices from the Australian Bush (Melbourne, Vic: McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1984), cited in Delys Bird, “The Self”, 125.

  15. 15.

    Georgiana Molloy to Elizabeth Besley, November 7, 1832, Papers of Georgiana Molloy, ACC 501A, Battye Library.

  16. 16.

    Georgiana Molloy to Helen Story, October 1, 1833, Papers of Georgiana Molloy, ACC 501A, Battye Library.

  17. 17.

    Molloy, Georgiana. Kennedy Family Papers, DKEN/3/28/3 Cumbria Record Office.

  18. 18.

    Spender, Writing, 16.

  19. 19.

    Cited in Barry, Georgiana Molloy, 172.

  20. 20.

    Molloy to Mangles, March 21, 1837.

  21. 21.

    Ibid, January 25, 1838.

  22. 22.

    Ibid.

  23. 23.

    Spender, Writing, 11.

  24. 24.

    Spender, ibid, 22.

  25. 25.

    Cited in Barry, Georgiana Molloy, 240.

  26. 26.

    Molloy to Mangles, January 25, 1838.

  27. 27.

    Ibid.

  28. 28.

    Clarke and Spender, Life Lines, xxiii.

  29. 29.

    Clarke and Spender, ibid.

  30. 30.

    Spender, Writing, 28.

  31. 31.

    Joseph Paxton to James Mangles, June 14, 1839.

  32. 32.

    Spender, Penguin Anthology, xv.

  33. 33.

    Molloy to Mangles, January 25, 1838.

  34. 34.

    Ibid, November 21, 1838.

  35. 35.

    Ibid, January 25, 1838.

  36. 36.

    Ibid.

  37. 37.

    Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora’s Daughters and Botany in England, 1760–1860 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 36.

  38. 38.

    Paxton to Mangles, June 14, 1839.

  39. 39.

    Shteir, Cultivating Women, 256.

  40. 40.

    Shteir, ibid, 61.

  41. 41.

    Shteir, ibid, 156.

  42. 42.

    Molloy to Mangles, January 25, 1838.

  43. 43.

    Ibid, January 20, 1840.

  44. 44.

    Ibid, June 14, 1840.

  45. 45.

    Ibid, June 30,1840.

  46. 46.

    Ibid, March 21,1837.

  47. 47.

    Spender, Writing, xv.

  48. 48.

    See White, “Efflorescence”.

  49. 49.

    Molloy to Mangles, [no day] September 1838.

  50. 50.

    Ibid, January 31,1840.

  51. 51.

    Georgiana Molloy to Elizabeth Besley, February 21, 1834, Papers of Georgiana Molloy, ACC 501A, Battye Library.

  52. 52.

    Molloy to Mangles, January 25th, 1838.

  53. 53.

    Ibid, June 22nd, 1840.

  54. 54.

    Spender, Penguin Anthology, xiv.

  55. 55.

    Spender, Writing, 6.

  56. 56.

    Marieke Hardy and Michaela Mcguire, “Introduction” in Between Us: Words of Wit and Wisdom, ed. Marieke Hardy and Michaela Mcguire (Melbourne: Penguin Books Australia, 2014), ix.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Jessica White

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  1. Jessica White
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Women and Gender Studies Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison , Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Devaleena Das

  2. Department of English, Calcutta University , Kolkata, India

    Sanjukta Dasgupta

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White, J. (2017). “The Inexhaustible Properties of a Lady’s Pen”: The Literary Craft of Georgiana Molloy. In: Das, D., Dasgupta, S. (eds) Claiming Space for Australian Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50400-1_10

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