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Ildikó Dömötör, "Progress in the Bush: Colonial Women's Efforts to Come to Grips with the Rudiments of Housework in Nineteenth-century Australia" Middle-class gentlewomen looked at themselves as ladies in nineteenth-century Britain. Their life was regulated by certain unwritten assumptions. When they moved to the Australian colonies and settled down in the bush they wished to keep up the image of themselves as ladies. The local conditions however, required substantial transformation on their part. Back in Britain these ladies were used to living in style and comfort. Relocating to the middle of nowhere in the bush caused considerable changes in their lifestyle. They had to learn to accommodate themselves to their new environment. It was by no means a smooth process but they did their best to cope with their new situation. The bush transformed these ladies into highly skilled domestic workers. Their personal chronicles narrate a gradual progress in the field of housework. Their letters, diaries and memoirs show to what extent they could reconcile with their fate. Many of them even found their new way of life a liberating experience. This paper sets out the concept of the lady in the bush and how life in rural Australia affected the everyday life of these middle-class British women. I will show how much progress they achieved in their attempts to adjust themselves to the colonial circumstances. Biography: Ildikó Dömötör is a PhD candidate with the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. Her research interest is in nineteenth-century Australian history. Her thesis examines colonial women's perceptions of the bush and the Aborigines. She was first attracted to Australian history during her undergraduate studies in Budapest, Hungary. The offer of a generous scholarship enabled her to commence her postgraduate research in Melbourne in 2001. |
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