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My Brilliant Career
"My Brilliant Career" is the story of Sybylla, a headstrong young girl growing up in early 20th century Australia. Sybylla rejects the opportunity to marry a wealthy young man in order to maintain her independence. As a consequence she must take a job as a governess to a local family to which her father is indebted. "My Brilliant Career" is an early romantic novel by this popular Australian author.
278 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1901
About the author
Miles Franklin
32 books70 followersStella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin was born in 1879 in rural New South Wales.
My Brilliant Career
, her first novel, was published to much excitement and acclaim. She moved to Sydney where she became involved in feminist and literary circles and then onto the United States of America in 1907.
She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and organisations of writers. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.
She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and organisations of writers. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.
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February 25, 2018
In 1901 a remarkable heroine made her debut, in a book that purports to be her autobiography.
If you took equal amounts of Becky Sharp, Cassandra Mortmain and Angel Devereaux, if you mixed them together, with verve and brio, and you might achieve a similar result, but you wouldn’t quite get there, because Sybylla Melvyn is a true one-off.
She’s also nearly impossible to explain; a curious mixture of confidence and insecurity, tactlessness and sensitivity, forthrightness and thoughtfulness …. She’s maddening andshe’s utterly charming …
But the most important thing about Sybylla, the thing that she doesn’t ever quite say, is that she wants to set her own path in life, to be mistress of her own destiny.
That’s not easy when you’re the daughter of a poor farmer from Possum Gully. It was a hard life; you were either working or you were sleeping; there was nothing else. Her mother came from a good family and her father, a working man. had tried to improve his family’s situation, but he gambled and lost. And then he turned to drink. It was hardly surprising that Sybylla’s preoccupation with books, music and drama drove her poor mother to distraction.
In the end she decided to send Syblla to her own mother on the family farm. It was a much bigger, much more prosperous farm, and it was much closer to society. Sybylla was in her element, with time to indulge her love for the arts and performing, and with an appreciative audience; her grandmother, aunt and uncle were amused and entertained. She blossomed, and her insecurity about her appearance and her disappointment with the world began to slip away.
She might have gone to Sydney, to become a performer, guided by a family friend, lawyer Everard Grey. She might have married Harry Beecham, the owner of the neighbouring farm, who was well-off enough and indulgent enough to allow her the freedom to write her book. But she dithered, and as soon as anyone got to close she pushed them away. She still had insecurities, and she still wanted to be in charge of her own fate, and to dream her own dreams.
But Sybylla’s fate wasn’t in her own hands; her father had taken out a loan and, in lieu of interest, he had given his daughter’s services as a governess. In a place so much poorer and starker than Possum Gully. She pleaded to be rescued, but she was stuck there. She tried to hold on but it was a struggle, and I think it would be fair to say that Sybylla was not cut out to be a governess.
Sybylla’s story ended where it started – at Possum Gully. That sounds downbeat, but it wasn’t entirely, because she had lived and learned.
As a story, ‘My Brilliant Career’ is much like it’s heroine; brilliant but infuriating. Because, of course, Sybylla is the story, and though the other characters are well drawn and the story is well told everything else is in her shadow.
I had unanswered questions. Why was her mother quite so hard on her? How did Sybylla become quite so accomplished? And why did nobody ever really lose patience with her?
But I loved following Sybylla’s journey, watching her grow up, and it was lovely to see her gaining a little tact and diplomacy, maturity even along the way. The writing is overblown and melodramatic, but it suits the heroine and it paints her world wonderfully well. And, best of all, it shows the restrictions that her gender and the times she lived placed on her, and it shows that none of that can break her spirit.
It’s a coming of age story – no more and no less – but it’s a coming of age story like no other.
Miles Franklin wrote ‘My Brilliant Career’ when she was just sixteen years-old. It’s a wonderful achievement, and though she was upset that it was read as autobiographical, it’s unsurprising that it was taken that way. I suspect that there’s a grain of truth a vivid imagination has turned into a compelling story.
Certainly that’s what Sybylla would have done …
If you took equal amounts of Becky Sharp, Cassandra Mortmain and Angel Devereaux, if you mixed them together, with verve and brio, and you might achieve a similar result, but you wouldn’t quite get there, because Sybylla Melvyn is a true one-off.
She’s also nearly impossible to explain; a curious mixture of confidence and insecurity, tactlessness and sensitivity, forthrightness and thoughtfulness …. She’s maddening andshe’s utterly charming …
But the most important thing about Sybylla, the thing that she doesn’t ever quite say, is that she wants to set her own path in life, to be mistress of her own destiny.
That’s not easy when you’re the daughter of a poor farmer from Possum Gully. It was a hard life; you were either working or you were sleeping; there was nothing else. Her mother came from a good family and her father, a working man. had tried to improve his family’s situation, but he gambled and lost. And then he turned to drink. It was hardly surprising that Sybylla’s preoccupation with books, music and drama drove her poor mother to distraction.
In the end she decided to send Syblla to her own mother on the family farm. It was a much bigger, much more prosperous farm, and it was much closer to society. Sybylla was in her element, with time to indulge her love for the arts and performing, and with an appreciative audience; her grandmother, aunt and uncle were amused and entertained. She blossomed, and her insecurity about her appearance and her disappointment with the world began to slip away.
She might have gone to Sydney, to become a performer, guided by a family friend, lawyer Everard Grey. She might have married Harry Beecham, the owner of the neighbouring farm, who was well-off enough and indulgent enough to allow her the freedom to write her book. But she dithered, and as soon as anyone got to close she pushed them away. She still had insecurities, and she still wanted to be in charge of her own fate, and to dream her own dreams.
But Sybylla’s fate wasn’t in her own hands; her father had taken out a loan and, in lieu of interest, he had given his daughter’s services as a governess. In a place so much poorer and starker than Possum Gully. She pleaded to be rescued, but she was stuck there. She tried to hold on but it was a struggle, and I think it would be fair to say that Sybylla was not cut out to be a governess.
Sybylla’s story ended where it started – at Possum Gully. That sounds downbeat, but it wasn’t entirely, because she had lived and learned.
As a story, ‘My Brilliant Career’ is much like it’s heroine; brilliant but infuriating. Because, of course, Sybylla is the story, and though the other characters are well drawn and the story is well told everything else is in her shadow.
I had unanswered questions. Why was her mother quite so hard on her? How did Sybylla become quite so accomplished? And why did nobody ever really lose patience with her?
But I loved following Sybylla’s journey, watching her grow up, and it was lovely to see her gaining a little tact and diplomacy, maturity even along the way. The writing is overblown and melodramatic, but it suits the heroine and it paints her world wonderfully well. And, best of all, it shows the restrictions that her gender and the times she lived placed on her, and it shows that none of that can break her spirit.
It’s a coming of age story – no more and no less – but it’s a coming of age story like no other.
Miles Franklin wrote ‘My Brilliant Career’ when she was just sixteen years-old. It’s a wonderful achievement, and though she was upset that it was read as autobiographical, it’s unsurprising that it was taken that way. I suspect that there’s a grain of truth a vivid imagination has turned into a compelling story.
Certainly that’s what Sybylla would have done …
November 15, 2023
an Australian tragedy
🌳🇦🇺I admit I found it hard to like the heroine consistently. There’d be a chapter where I felt better disposed towards her and then she would unravel all my good will in the chapter following. Overall, I found her frustrating and aggravating. If I had a subtitle for the book, it would be: I Shoot Myself in the Foot Over and Over Again. She could never accept that someone might like her just as she was, warts and all, but had to sabotage a man’s love for her repeatedly and determinedly.
🌳🇦🇺Some beautiful writing and some extraordinary Aussie vocabulary. Colorful and obfuscatory simultaneously. When you get used to the verbiage it’s colorful and comprehensible simultaneously .. mate 😏
🌳🇦🇺I asked an Aussie chum which books to read for Aussie Month (since January 26th is Australia Day).
This was one of them and it’s a good book. But the lass didn’t have to keep shredding her possibilities for a bit of love and romance in her life.
[one OZ novel I liked from long ago was The Sundowners. Out of print now, no eBook, and hard to find in paperback or hardcover. It was about a family of sheep herders 🐑]
🌳🇦🇺I admit I found it hard to like the heroine consistently. There’d be a chapter where I felt better disposed towards her and then she would unravel all my good will in the chapter following. Overall, I found her frustrating and aggravating. If I had a subtitle for the book, it would be: I Shoot Myself in the Foot Over and Over Again. She could never accept that someone might like her just as she was, warts and all, but had to sabotage a man’s love for her repeatedly and determinedly.
🌳🇦🇺Some beautiful writing and some extraordinary Aussie vocabulary. Colorful and obfuscatory simultaneously. When you get used to the verbiage it’s colorful and comprehensible simultaneously .. mate 😏
🌳🇦🇺I asked an Aussie chum which books to read for Aussie Month (since January 26th is Australia Day).
This was one of them and it’s a good book. But the lass didn’t have to keep shredding her possibilities for a bit of love and romance in her life.
[one OZ novel I liked from long ago was The Sundowners. Out of print now, no eBook, and hard to find in paperback or hardcover. It was about a family of sheep herders 🐑]
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 27, 2023
My sense is that this novel richly deserves the pride of place that it holds within the literary canon of Australia, and that My Brilliant Career (1901) remains the definitive novel of Australia’s late-colonial and early national period. Writing this novel when she was only a teenager, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin provides a moving portrayal of a young woman’s struggle for independence and personhood in a tradition-bound society whose people, with the very best of intentions, throw all sorts of obstacles in her way.
Franklin, a descendant of a passenger on one of the First Fleet ships of 1788, grew up on a station in the Brindabella Mountains of rural New South Wales. Her parents were part of what Australians half-jokingly called the “squattocracy” – Europeans who had settled on land without formal title, but who gained a de facto right to the land simply by “squatting” there for a long time.
Members of the “squattocracy” could be affluent, even eminent citizens; but the time in which Franklin grew up was a difficult time in Australia. The Baring Crisis in London in 1890 caused many British investors to withdraw their Australian investments, and what followed was a long series of bank failures across Australia. Labour strikes in a number of crucial industries added to the atmosphere of economic instability, and by 1893 Australia was suffering its share of the pain of a global economic depression (here in the U.S.A., it was called the “Panic of 1893”). Many Australians lost their jobs and/or businesses, and had to go “on the tramp,” wandering up and down the continent in a desperate search for work. For those who were lucky enough not to lose their land, what followed was often a hardscrabble struggle to maintain the barest level of subsistence.
That sense of economic insecurity informs My Brilliant Career from the novel’s beginnings. The main character, Sybylla Mervyn, describes how she saw her home life deteriorate after her father stepped away from modest prosperity, reached for greater things, fell short, and turned to drink. Sybylla says of her father that “He was my hero, confidant, encyclopedia, mate, and even my religion till I was ten. Since then, I have been religionless” (p. 10). As for Sybylla’s mother – a woman who left the comfortable circumstances of her mother’s prosperous home, married for love, and has ever since then experienced the ongoing disappointment of her husband’s business failures and moral decline – Sybylla writes that “A woman is but the helpless tool of man – a creature of circumstances” (p. 20).
Possum Gully, where the family has settled after the business failures of Sybylla’s father, is a place as unprepossessing as its name. Sybylla meditates upon the drudgery of work like lifting half-starved cows so they won’t collapse and die on their drought-stricken ranch: “This was life – my life – my career, my brilliant career! I was fifteen – fifteen!” (p. 26) Here, one sees that the title that Franklin gave to her novel has a certain irony, if not bitterness, to it.
Sybylla’s lot is worsened by her sense that she is a person of talent, drawn to music and poetry, but stuck amidst a struggle for the barest and most minimal kind of existence. Her parents find her literary ambitions laughable, and she reflects that it is “Better [to] be born a slave than a poet….For a poet must be companionless – alone! fearfully alone in the midst of his fellows whom he loves. Alone because his soul is as far above common mortals as common mortals are among monkeys” (p. 7). It is even harder, Sybylla feels, if the person who harbours a poetic sensibility amidst the rough life of Possum Gully is a woman: “The less a person thinks and inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things, when dragging along through life, the happier it is for him, and doubly, trebly so, for her” (p. 21).
Sybylla reflects at length on what the family’s poverty at Possum Gully has meant in her upbringing:
Some there are who argue that poverty does not mean unhappiness. Let those try what it is to be destitute of even one companionable friend, what it means to be forced to exist in an alien sphere of society, what it is like to be unable to afford a stamp to write to a friend; let them long as passionately as I have longed for reading and music, and be unable to procure it because of poverty; let poverty force them into doing work against which every fibre of their being revolts, as it has forced me, and then see if their lives will be happy. (p. 23).
Sybylla comments further about how the people in one’s community reveal themselves in the way they respond to a neighbour’s hard times: “In poverty you can get at the real heart of people as you can never do if rich. People are your friends from pure friendship and love, not from sponging self-interestedness. It is worth being poor once or twice in a lifetime just to experience the blessing and heart-restfulness of a little genuine reality in the way of love and friendship” (pp. 28-29).
Sybylla receives a measure of relief from the difficult rounds of life at Possum Gully when she is invited to stay with her grandmother and her Aunt Helen at Caddagat, the estate where Sybylla’s mother grew up. At Caddagat, where life is much more comfortable, Sybylla stays in her mother’s old room. She looks at pictures of her mother as a young lady – her expression “angelic – sweet, winning, gentle, and happy”. She then sees a picture of her father as a young man when he was courting Sybylla’s mother – a hopeful young man “with a fine countenance, possessed of well-cut features and refined expression” (p. 50).
And what have business failures and years of heavy drinking done to this “prince”? What have poverty and unremitting work done to the young woman this “prince” won? “I thought of a man and his wife at Possum Gully. The man was blear-eyed, disreputable in appearance, and failed to fulfill his duties as a father and a citizen. The woman was work-roughened and temper-soured by endless care and an unavailing struggle against poverty. Could that pair possibly be identical with this?” (p. 50). Many an Australian reader of Franklin’s time might have known people whose hopes were blighted like those of Sybylla’s parents.
At Caddagat, one of Sybylla’s duties is to provide some food and refreshment for the many “tramps” who have that name because they tramp up and down the Australian countryside in desperate search of some sort of work. Sybylla meditates on the economic hardships of late 19th-century Australian life:
In a wide young country of boundless resources, why is this thing? This question worried me. Our legislators are unable or unwilling to cope with it. They trouble not to be patriots and statesmen. Australia can bring forth writers, orators, financiers, singers, musicians, actors, and athletes which are second to none of any nation under the sun. Why can she not bear sons, men of soul, mind, truth, godliness, and patriotism sufficient to rise and cast off the grim shackles which widen round us day by day? (p. 89)
Close to Caddagat is Five-Bob Downs, the estate of Harold Beecham, a strong and successful rancher who seems to embody the ideal of an Australian who is tough but kind, easygoing and unpretentious, ready for any sort of hard work, equal to any change in circumstance. Realising in retrospect that her time at Caddagat and Five-Bob Downs exempted her from the suffering that so many Australians of those days experienced, Sybylla nonetheless indulges in a bit of nostalgia regarding those times:
It was great fun. The dogs yelped and jumped about. The men were dirty with much dust, and smelt powerfully of sheep, and had worked hard all day in the blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows – starving and reeking with disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were happy. We were young. (p. 100)
Reversals of fortune are at the heart of My Brilliant Career. The wealthy and successful Harold Beecham suddenly faces the loss of Five-Bob Downs and all his fortune, and faces ruin with courage and equanimity. Sybylla, who has previously rejected Harold’s romantic overtures, suddenly feels for him: “I had been poor myself, and knew what awaited him in the world. He would find that they who fawned on him most would be first to turn their backs on him now” (p. 150). It is against the backdrop of Harold’s misfortune that Sybylla accepts the marriage proposal that she had earlier rejected, telling Harold that “If you really want me, I will marry you when I am twenty-one if you are as poor as a crow” (p. 151).
Not lonf after, Sybylla faces her own reversal of fortune, when she receives a letter from her mother – a letter that casts her out of the comfort of Caddagat:
No doubt what I have to write will not be very palatable to you; but it is time you gave up pleasuring and began to meet the responsibilities of life. Your father is lazier if anything, and drinks more than ever. He has got himself into great debt and difficulties, and would have been sold off again but for Peter M’Swat. You will remember Peter M’Swat? Well, he has been good enough to lend your father 500 pounds at 4 per cent….Out of friendship to your father, Mr. M’Swat is good enough to accept your services as governess to his children, in lieu of interest on the money. (p. 159)
One senses the mother’s pleasure in putting the poetry-minded Sybylla “in her place.” Embittered and disillusioned herself, the mother seems to think that she is doing Sybylla a service by disillusioning her daughter sooner rather than later. It is one of the most painful aspects of this novel.
Sybylla’s time at the M’Swat farm is difficult, but in her time there she shows a grit and resourcefulness that even she may not have fully known she possessed. Eventually, she is able to return to Possum Gully, where her younger sister Gertie pours out her heart to Sybylla regarding their father’s embarrassing behaviour. Sybylla subsequently reflects that “I fell asleep thinking that parents have a duty to children greater than children to parents, and they who do not fulfill their responsibility in this respect are as bad in their morals as a debauchee, corrupt the community as much as a thief, and are among the ablest underminers of their nation” (p. 198).
In a surprising re-reversal of fortune, Harold Beecham’s wealth is restored, and he renews his courtship of Sybylla, and she refuses him once again. She feels a sense of loss after refusing his proposal: “Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary – some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two” (p. 203). But she refuses to marry someone that she does not feel she could make happy. And in the novel’s conclusion, Sybylla, facing a tough life of manual labour, links her life with that of her country, in a passage that I am certain has spoken to countless thousands of proud Australians, from Franklin’s time to our own:
I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do….Ah, my sunburnt brothers! – sons of toil and of Australia! I love and respect you well, for you are brave and good and true….Would that I were more worthy to be one of you – more a typical Australian peasant – cheerful, honest, brave! (p. 225)
My Brilliant Career is brilliant indeed – a great story of a strong and independent woman finding her own way amidst difficult circumstances. The Gillian Armstrong film adaptation from 1979, with a young Judy Davis as Sybylla and a comparably young Sam Neill as Harry Beecham, is a great early example of cinema’s Australian New Wave; but whether you have seen the film or not, you owe it to yourself to read this great and resonant novel.
Franklin, a descendant of a passenger on one of the First Fleet ships of 1788, grew up on a station in the Brindabella Mountains of rural New South Wales. Her parents were part of what Australians half-jokingly called the “squattocracy” – Europeans who had settled on land without formal title, but who gained a de facto right to the land simply by “squatting” there for a long time.
Members of the “squattocracy” could be affluent, even eminent citizens; but the time in which Franklin grew up was a difficult time in Australia. The Baring Crisis in London in 1890 caused many British investors to withdraw their Australian investments, and what followed was a long series of bank failures across Australia. Labour strikes in a number of crucial industries added to the atmosphere of economic instability, and by 1893 Australia was suffering its share of the pain of a global economic depression (here in the U.S.A., it was called the “Panic of 1893”). Many Australians lost their jobs and/or businesses, and had to go “on the tramp,” wandering up and down the continent in a desperate search for work. For those who were lucky enough not to lose their land, what followed was often a hardscrabble struggle to maintain the barest level of subsistence.
That sense of economic insecurity informs My Brilliant Career from the novel’s beginnings. The main character, Sybylla Mervyn, describes how she saw her home life deteriorate after her father stepped away from modest prosperity, reached for greater things, fell short, and turned to drink. Sybylla says of her father that “He was my hero, confidant, encyclopedia, mate, and even my religion till I was ten. Since then, I have been religionless” (p. 10). As for Sybylla’s mother – a woman who left the comfortable circumstances of her mother’s prosperous home, married for love, and has ever since then experienced the ongoing disappointment of her husband’s business failures and moral decline – Sybylla writes that “A woman is but the helpless tool of man – a creature of circumstances” (p. 20).
Possum Gully, where the family has settled after the business failures of Sybylla’s father, is a place as unprepossessing as its name. Sybylla meditates upon the drudgery of work like lifting half-starved cows so they won’t collapse and die on their drought-stricken ranch: “This was life – my life – my career, my brilliant career! I was fifteen – fifteen!” (p. 26) Here, one sees that the title that Franklin gave to her novel has a certain irony, if not bitterness, to it.
Sybylla’s lot is worsened by her sense that she is a person of talent, drawn to music and poetry, but stuck amidst a struggle for the barest and most minimal kind of existence. Her parents find her literary ambitions laughable, and she reflects that it is “Better [to] be born a slave than a poet….For a poet must be companionless – alone! fearfully alone in the midst of his fellows whom he loves. Alone because his soul is as far above common mortals as common mortals are among monkeys” (p. 7). It is even harder, Sybylla feels, if the person who harbours a poetic sensibility amidst the rough life of Possum Gully is a woman: “The less a person thinks and inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things, when dragging along through life, the happier it is for him, and doubly, trebly so, for her” (p. 21).
Sybylla reflects at length on what the family’s poverty at Possum Gully has meant in her upbringing:
Some there are who argue that poverty does not mean unhappiness. Let those try what it is to be destitute of even one companionable friend, what it means to be forced to exist in an alien sphere of society, what it is like to be unable to afford a stamp to write to a friend; let them long as passionately as I have longed for reading and music, and be unable to procure it because of poverty; let poverty force them into doing work against which every fibre of their being revolts, as it has forced me, and then see if their lives will be happy. (p. 23).
Sybylla comments further about how the people in one’s community reveal themselves in the way they respond to a neighbour’s hard times: “In poverty you can get at the real heart of people as you can never do if rich. People are your friends from pure friendship and love, not from sponging self-interestedness. It is worth being poor once or twice in a lifetime just to experience the blessing and heart-restfulness of a little genuine reality in the way of love and friendship” (pp. 28-29).
Sybylla receives a measure of relief from the difficult rounds of life at Possum Gully when she is invited to stay with her grandmother and her Aunt Helen at Caddagat, the estate where Sybylla’s mother grew up. At Caddagat, where life is much more comfortable, Sybylla stays in her mother’s old room. She looks at pictures of her mother as a young lady – her expression “angelic – sweet, winning, gentle, and happy”. She then sees a picture of her father as a young man when he was courting Sybylla’s mother – a hopeful young man “with a fine countenance, possessed of well-cut features and refined expression” (p. 50).
And what have business failures and years of heavy drinking done to this “prince”? What have poverty and unremitting work done to the young woman this “prince” won? “I thought of a man and his wife at Possum Gully. The man was blear-eyed, disreputable in appearance, and failed to fulfill his duties as a father and a citizen. The woman was work-roughened and temper-soured by endless care and an unavailing struggle against poverty. Could that pair possibly be identical with this?” (p. 50). Many an Australian reader of Franklin’s time might have known people whose hopes were blighted like those of Sybylla’s parents.
At Caddagat, one of Sybylla’s duties is to provide some food and refreshment for the many “tramps” who have that name because they tramp up and down the Australian countryside in desperate search of some sort of work. Sybylla meditates on the economic hardships of late 19th-century Australian life:
In a wide young country of boundless resources, why is this thing? This question worried me. Our legislators are unable or unwilling to cope with it. They trouble not to be patriots and statesmen. Australia can bring forth writers, orators, financiers, singers, musicians, actors, and athletes which are second to none of any nation under the sun. Why can she not bear sons, men of soul, mind, truth, godliness, and patriotism sufficient to rise and cast off the grim shackles which widen round us day by day? (p. 89)
Close to Caddagat is Five-Bob Downs, the estate of Harold Beecham, a strong and successful rancher who seems to embody the ideal of an Australian who is tough but kind, easygoing and unpretentious, ready for any sort of hard work, equal to any change in circumstance. Realising in retrospect that her time at Caddagat and Five-Bob Downs exempted her from the suffering that so many Australians of those days experienced, Sybylla nonetheless indulges in a bit of nostalgia regarding those times:
It was great fun. The dogs yelped and jumped about. The men were dirty with much dust, and smelt powerfully of sheep, and had worked hard all day in the blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows – starving and reeking with disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were happy. We were young. (p. 100)
Reversals of fortune are at the heart of My Brilliant Career. The wealthy and successful Harold Beecham suddenly faces the loss of Five-Bob Downs and all his fortune, and faces ruin with courage and equanimity. Sybylla, who has previously rejected Harold’s romantic overtures, suddenly feels for him: “I had been poor myself, and knew what awaited him in the world. He would find that they who fawned on him most would be first to turn their backs on him now” (p. 150). It is against the backdrop of Harold’s misfortune that Sybylla accepts the marriage proposal that she had earlier rejected, telling Harold that “If you really want me, I will marry you when I am twenty-one if you are as poor as a crow” (p. 151).
Not lonf after, Sybylla faces her own reversal of fortune, when she receives a letter from her mother – a letter that casts her out of the comfort of Caddagat:
No doubt what I have to write will not be very palatable to you; but it is time you gave up pleasuring and began to meet the responsibilities of life. Your father is lazier if anything, and drinks more than ever. He has got himself into great debt and difficulties, and would have been sold off again but for Peter M’Swat. You will remember Peter M’Swat? Well, he has been good enough to lend your father 500 pounds at 4 per cent….Out of friendship to your father, Mr. M’Swat is good enough to accept your services as governess to his children, in lieu of interest on the money. (p. 159)
One senses the mother’s pleasure in putting the poetry-minded Sybylla “in her place.” Embittered and disillusioned herself, the mother seems to think that she is doing Sybylla a service by disillusioning her daughter sooner rather than later. It is one of the most painful aspects of this novel.
Sybylla’s time at the M’Swat farm is difficult, but in her time there she shows a grit and resourcefulness that even she may not have fully known she possessed. Eventually, she is able to return to Possum Gully, where her younger sister Gertie pours out her heart to Sybylla regarding their father’s embarrassing behaviour. Sybylla subsequently reflects that “I fell asleep thinking that parents have a duty to children greater than children to parents, and they who do not fulfill their responsibility in this respect are as bad in their morals as a debauchee, corrupt the community as much as a thief, and are among the ablest underminers of their nation” (p. 198).
In a surprising re-reversal of fortune, Harold Beecham’s wealth is restored, and he renews his courtship of Sybylla, and she refuses him once again. She feels a sense of loss after refusing his proposal: “Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary – some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two” (p. 203). But she refuses to marry someone that she does not feel she could make happy. And in the novel’s conclusion, Sybylla, facing a tough life of manual labour, links her life with that of her country, in a passage that I am certain has spoken to countless thousands of proud Australians, from Franklin’s time to our own:
I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do….Ah, my sunburnt brothers! – sons of toil and of Australia! I love and respect you well, for you are brave and good and true….Would that I were more worthy to be one of you – more a typical Australian peasant – cheerful, honest, brave! (p. 225)
My Brilliant Career is brilliant indeed – a great story of a strong and independent woman finding her own way amidst difficult circumstances. The Gillian Armstrong film adaptation from 1979, with a young Judy Davis as Sybylla and a comparably young Sam Neill as Harry Beecham, is a great early example of cinema’s Australian New Wave; but whether you have seen the film or not, you owe it to yourself to read this great and resonant novel.
December 16, 2020
4.5★
Sybylla is the epitome of an Aussie Battler!
What started as an idyllic if tough childhood, changed when her father decided to chase dreams beyond his abilities. When the family's circumstances change to beyond desperate, Sybylla is sent to live with her grandmother and an aunt, before her mother decides
But there is a solution.
I loved this story and the only reason this wasn't a 5★ read is the incident where
Nonetheless, I did admire Sybylla's fierce and brave spirit, her ambition and desire for an independent life. I liked her!
Sybylla is the epitome of an Aussie Battler!
What started as an idyllic if tough childhood, changed when her father decided to chase dreams beyond his abilities. When the family's circumstances change to beyond desperate, Sybylla is sent to live with her grandmother and an aunt, before her mother decides
But there is a solution.
I loved this story and the only reason this wasn't a 5★ read is the incident where
Nonetheless, I did admire Sybylla's fierce and brave spirit, her ambition and desire for an independent life. I liked her!
April 12, 2017
About time this ‘Aussie girl’ read this book, written by a fellow ‘Aussie girl’. Miles Franklin the iconic Australian author, has penned this classic, written when she was barely an adult herself. She was a woman born of another era. Her times were meant to be spent, toiling the land (or should I say house), performing house duties and supporting her family that was lacking money. She was better than that – well she knew she was better spent bettering herself and continuing the continuance of lifelong learning - she yearned to be able to write, perform music and use her cleverness for something better. Sybylla is 16 and this is ‘her’ story.
I am not overly romantic or have any grandiose visions of happily ever afters or needing a man to complete a picture of happiness, but even I was disappointed for her. Miles comments that there is no plot, as her life does not contain one – or anyone else that she knows has one either. There is too much work to be toiled than to have the luxury of a plot. Harry Beecham calling her Syb made me sad as he was lovely. There was also another lovely scene where Sybylla talks of Harry’s lovely large comforting hands. I borrowed the physical copy after listening to this on audio, but searching for a little paragraph to place the quote here was too hard!
An interesting classic that has its little bit of relevance today.
As an after thought, and after perusing a lovely hard copy that was donated to the University library where I work, I would not recommend listening to the audio version. Too much to be missed out on in regards to the poetry.
I am not overly romantic or have any grandiose visions of happily ever afters or needing a man to complete a picture of happiness, but even I was disappointed for her. Miles comments that there is no plot, as her life does not contain one – or anyone else that she knows has one either. There is too much work to be toiled than to have the luxury of a plot. Harry Beecham calling her Syb made me sad as he was lovely. There was also another lovely scene where Sybylla talks of Harry’s lovely large comforting hands. I borrowed the physical copy after listening to this on audio, but searching for a little paragraph to place the quote here was too hard!
An interesting classic that has its little bit of relevance today.
As an after thought, and after perusing a lovely hard copy that was donated to the University library where I work, I would not recommend listening to the audio version. Too much to be missed out on in regards to the poetry.
August 10, 2019
“life itself is anything beyond a heartless little chimera- it is as real in its weariness and bitter heartache”
I read this book for university and at first, I wasn't that into it but it grew on me a lot as it went on, and I particularly enjoyed the middle section. This is Jane Eyre meets Pride and Prejudice in the Australian bush. Except, Miles Franklin is kind of critical of Jane Eyre and wants to subvert your expectations of romance and the romance genre.
Lots of people seem not to like Sybylla but I did. She's got a lot of flaws and the way she constantly changed her mind frustrated me, but I liked her strength of character. I also liked what Franklin did with her character at the end - it's what I constantly whine about saying Jane Eyre should have been and it's nice to actually see that, happen. Harold Beecham, the love interest, was also actually genuinely sweet which is kind of crazy for a classic.
Franklin also has beautiful writing, the descriptions of the Australian bush were vivid and the emotional language she used allowed you to enter these characters minds with ease.
Overall I really enjoyed this, I could actually see myself rereading it in the future which isn't always the case with classics.
March 4, 2023
Miles Franklin’s 1901 debut My Brilliant Career follows Sybylla a teenager who hates her life on an outback farm, the work’s gruelling, her alcoholic father and exacting mother drive her to distraction, and she’s desperate for a world she’s only glimpsed in books. Franklin produced her account of disaffected Australian girlhood when she was still in her teens, so she’s familiar with the terrain and expert at capturing the highs and lows of being too young to live independently and too old to simply do what you’re told. It’s one of those pieces that constantly invites comparisons, it’s clear Franklin was influenced by Jane Eyre, but the spirited Sybylla also conjured aspects of Jo March, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne Shirley. But, unlike Alcott or Montgomery, Franklin’s writing’s strongest when she shifts her focus away from her main character to describe the landscape and the daily life of Australian farmers, especially the ones barely scraping by, constantly besieged by drought or reeling from the impact of bad business decisions. Sybylla's story seems to lose its way in the melodramatic, repetitive, central sections, when she’s transported to her more affluent grandmother’s estate and seems to spend most of her time fending off obnoxious, overbearing suitors – the men in the novel are mostly horrific. Franklin’s heroine’s often fiercely outspoken particularly on the plight of women worn down by difficult marriages and constant childbearing, she’s also vocal about the impact of poverty and unemployment but her uneven brand of proto-socialism/feminism is mixed up with less palatable ideas about Australian nationalism and a notion of freedom that disregards anyone outside of the white community. There are some great passages here but ultimately, I found it more interesting as a snapshot of Australian society than I did for anything else.
April 19, 2022
Maybe 4.5. A thoroughly interesting read – clever and compelling and thought-provoking.
May 13, 2013
Hmm, I've always said that Jane Eyre is without a doubt my #1 favorite book. After today, this is in close running for the spot. So much to think about. Sigh. I hope my review (to come later) will do this book justice.
May 24, 2021
"Ah, tu, demone crudele…
Ambizione! Desiderio!"
Pubblicato ad Edimburgo nel 1901, “La mia brillante carriera” è l’opera più nota della scrittrice australiana Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, (s)conosciuta come Miles Franklin.
Non un racconto romanzato, non un romanzo realistico, dice l’autrice stessa in un’introduzione che anticipa da subito il tono di queste pagine in bilico tra l’ingenuità e la spavalderia.
“La mia brillante carriera” cambia i nomi ma è, in tutto e per tutto, la storia che Miles Franklin scrive tra i quindici ed i vent’anni.
Siamo nel sud dell’Australia, dove cresce Sybylla, voce narrante ed alter ego della scrittrice.
La sua è una famiglia di origine aristocratica e di proprietari terrieri che decade dopo una serie di investimenti sbagliati che portano il padre sulla strada dell’alcolismo.
Il trasferimento dagli immensi possedimenti ad una piccola fattoria cambia del tutto la vita di Sybilla che ben presto deve adattarsi al ritmo di vita dei piccoli agricoltori contribuendo con il suo lavoro alla sopravvivenza famigliare.
Dalle lezioni di piano e l’infanzia spensierata si ritrova, pertanto, a fare lavori pesanti a cui non riesce ad adattarsi.
"Che cos’era quel focoso spirito ribelle che mi travolgeva dentro?"
Il suo spirito ribelle reclama una vita completamente diversa.
L’amore per l’arte è qualcosa di concreto che si risolve su fogli di carta stropicciati e su cui riversa la sua immaginazione rubando tempo a quel lavoro in fattoria tanto odiato.
La scrittura è la sua ambizione:
«Sì, sono strana. Se tu avessi un briciolo di cervello, non ti prenderesti la minima pena per me. Sono anche più strana. Ho delle abitudini che nessun uomo giustifica mai in una donna. Ti ritrarrai da me come se fossi un serpente non appena le conoscerai».
«Che cosa sarà mai?».
«Ho l’abitudine di scrivere storie, e certe persone di lettere predicono per me un futuro di autrice».
Ribelle e presuntuosa, Sibylla non riesci a sottomettersi ad un destino che non considera il suo, finché avviene un cambiamento tanto atteso quanto inaspettato...
Le riflessioni sull’ingiusta condizione della donna hanno determinato a definire Miles Franklin una femminista così come in uso nell’ottocento, ossia in base ad una presa di coscienza di diritti negati.
Così si susseguono considerazioni che di tanto in tanto fanno credere che il racconto alzi il suo livello:
"Quand’ero bambina avevo la testa piena dei sogni delle grandi cose che avrei fatto quando fossi cresciuta. La mia ambizione era sconfinata quanto il deserto poderoso nel quale avevo sempre vissuto. A mano a mano che passavano gli anni si chiariva in me questo pensiero, che ero una ragazza, una donna in potenza! Solo una ragazza! Questo soltanto, non altro. Come un grande ceffone si fece spazio nella mia coscienza che soltanto gli uomini potevano prendere il mondo per le orecchie ed essere padroni del loro destino, mentre le donne, parlando metaforicamente, erano costrette a rimanere sedute con le mani legate e a soffrire con pazienza mentre le onde del fato le scagliavano di qua e di là, tempestandole di colpi e lasciandole piene di lividi spietati."
Poi, però, seppure la lettura sia scorrevole, il livello rimane ancorato ad un livello più basso venendo a mancare uno spessore necessario a rendere la storia qualcosa che lasci il suo segno, insomma, nulla di sorprendente essendo un libro scritto da un’adolescente.
Ambizione! Desiderio!"
Pubblicato ad Edimburgo nel 1901, “La mia brillante carriera” è l’opera più nota della scrittrice australiana Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, (s)conosciuta come Miles Franklin.
Non un racconto romanzato, non un romanzo realistico, dice l’autrice stessa in un’introduzione che anticipa da subito il tono di queste pagine in bilico tra l’ingenuità e la spavalderia.
“La mia brillante carriera” cambia i nomi ma è, in tutto e per tutto, la storia che Miles Franklin scrive tra i quindici ed i vent’anni.
Siamo nel sud dell’Australia, dove cresce Sybylla, voce narrante ed alter ego della scrittrice.
La sua è una famiglia di origine aristocratica e di proprietari terrieri che decade dopo una serie di investimenti sbagliati che portano il padre sulla strada dell’alcolismo.
Il trasferimento dagli immensi possedimenti ad una piccola fattoria cambia del tutto la vita di Sybilla che ben presto deve adattarsi al ritmo di vita dei piccoli agricoltori contribuendo con il suo lavoro alla sopravvivenza famigliare.
Dalle lezioni di piano e l’infanzia spensierata si ritrova, pertanto, a fare lavori pesanti a cui non riesce ad adattarsi.
"Che cos’era quel focoso spirito ribelle che mi travolgeva dentro?"
Il suo spirito ribelle reclama una vita completamente diversa.
L’amore per l’arte è qualcosa di concreto che si risolve su fogli di carta stropicciati e su cui riversa la sua immaginazione rubando tempo a quel lavoro in fattoria tanto odiato.
La scrittura è la sua ambizione:
«Sì, sono strana. Se tu avessi un briciolo di cervello, non ti prenderesti la minima pena per me. Sono anche più strana. Ho delle abitudini che nessun uomo giustifica mai in una donna. Ti ritrarrai da me come se fossi un serpente non appena le conoscerai».
«Che cosa sarà mai?».
«Ho l’abitudine di scrivere storie, e certe persone di lettere predicono per me un futuro di autrice».
Ribelle e presuntuosa, Sibylla non riesci a sottomettersi ad un destino che non considera il suo, finché avviene un cambiamento tanto atteso quanto inaspettato...
Le riflessioni sull’ingiusta condizione della donna hanno determinato a definire Miles Franklin una femminista così come in uso nell’ottocento, ossia in base ad una presa di coscienza di diritti negati.
Così si susseguono considerazioni che di tanto in tanto fanno credere che il racconto alzi il suo livello:
"Quand’ero bambina avevo la testa piena dei sogni delle grandi cose che avrei fatto quando fossi cresciuta. La mia ambizione era sconfinata quanto il deserto poderoso nel quale avevo sempre vissuto. A mano a mano che passavano gli anni si chiariva in me questo pensiero, che ero una ragazza, una donna in potenza! Solo una ragazza! Questo soltanto, non altro. Come un grande ceffone si fece spazio nella mia coscienza che soltanto gli uomini potevano prendere il mondo per le orecchie ed essere padroni del loro destino, mentre le donne, parlando metaforicamente, erano costrette a rimanere sedute con le mani legate e a soffrire con pazienza mentre le onde del fato le scagliavano di qua e di là, tempestandole di colpi e lasciandole piene di lividi spietati."
Poi, però, seppure la lettura sia scorrevole, il livello rimane ancorato ad un livello più basso venendo a mancare uno spessore necessario a rendere la storia qualcosa che lasci il suo segno, insomma, nulla di sorprendente essendo un libro scritto da un’adolescente.
March 4, 2023
An Australian classic to be read with the GR group Never Too Late to Read Classics in March and April 2023.
We are reading books by two Australian female authors, both of whom chose to write under a male pseudonym, Henry Handel Richardson and Miles Franklin. I first read The Getting of Wisdom by Richardson followed now by Franklin's My Brilliant Career. One cannot help but compare the two. Both are semi-autobiographical and both take place at the turn of the 20th century. Both focus upon the girls when they were in their teens. Both girls are strong-willed, but in different ways. The former is set in a girl's boarding school situated in Melbourne, the latter in New South Wales. I will speak here of Franklin's book. My review of Richardson's is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I prefer Richardson’s.
Sybylla is the central protagonist of My Brilliant Career It is appropriate to classify her as a feminist. She wants to escape from her family. She wants to write. She is determined to make something of herself. We become acquainted with her mother and father and siblings. Sybylla and her mother never see eye to eye. Her father has turned to drink. It is not hard to understand her need to escape the past and her urge to do something new with her life.
Nevertheless, I did not like her. She whines and complains incessantly. I find her terribly egotistic and selfish. When things are going good for her, she doesn’t think for a moment of how she might help those back home, here I am thinking particularly of her younger sister. Secondly, Sybylla's “fancy” words grate on me. A pinch of humility would have gone a long way. Since it is she who is telling us of her life, it is her words that set the style of the prose. For me the prose is stilted and unnatural. Prose is important to me, and I don’t like it here.
Being a teenager, Sybylla is interested in love and romance. She is ambivalent–one minute she wants passion and then recoils when it doesn’t live up to her dreams. Her flirtations annoyed me. The love thread in this story turned me off completely.
What saved this from a one-star book for me was the author’s descriptions of the land, flora and fauna. Richardson’s book, if I go back to comparing the two authors, has very little of this. I have never visited Australia and so I appreciate “seeing” the country through Franklins vivid depictions.
It's helpful to keep in mind that the title is to be interpreted ironically!
I listened to an audiobook version at Audible-UK. It is read by Megan Rees. Rees makes Sybylla’s words so darn flippant and light. Sybylla is intelligent and has a good vocabulary. The tone Rees uses for Sybylla is all wrong! The other characters’ words are spoken very differently. Basically, Rees’ narration is overdramatized. I had to keep telling myself to listen to the words, not the sound in my ears. Rees’s narration I have given one star.
I did not like this book. However, I do try to find positive things to say. I want my review to be fair and balanced.
We are reading books by two Australian female authors, both of whom chose to write under a male pseudonym, Henry Handel Richardson and Miles Franklin. I first read The Getting of Wisdom by Richardson followed now by Franklin's My Brilliant Career. One cannot help but compare the two. Both are semi-autobiographical and both take place at the turn of the 20th century. Both focus upon the girls when they were in their teens. Both girls are strong-willed, but in different ways. The former is set in a girl's boarding school situated in Melbourne, the latter in New South Wales. I will speak here of Franklin's book. My review of Richardson's is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... I prefer Richardson’s.
Sybylla is the central protagonist of My Brilliant Career It is appropriate to classify her as a feminist. She wants to escape from her family. She wants to write. She is determined to make something of herself. We become acquainted with her mother and father and siblings. Sybylla and her mother never see eye to eye. Her father has turned to drink. It is not hard to understand her need to escape the past and her urge to do something new with her life.
Nevertheless, I did not like her. She whines and complains incessantly. I find her terribly egotistic and selfish. When things are going good for her, she doesn’t think for a moment of how she might help those back home, here I am thinking particularly of her younger sister. Secondly, Sybylla's “fancy” words grate on me. A pinch of humility would have gone a long way. Since it is she who is telling us of her life, it is her words that set the style of the prose. For me the prose is stilted and unnatural. Prose is important to me, and I don’t like it here.
Being a teenager, Sybylla is interested in love and romance. She is ambivalent–one minute she wants passion and then recoils when it doesn’t live up to her dreams. Her flirtations annoyed me. The love thread in this story turned me off completely.
What saved this from a one-star book for me was the author’s descriptions of the land, flora and fauna. Richardson’s book, if I go back to comparing the two authors, has very little of this. I have never visited Australia and so I appreciate “seeing” the country through Franklins vivid depictions.
It's helpful to keep in mind that the title is to be interpreted ironically!
I listened to an audiobook version at Audible-UK. It is read by Megan Rees. Rees makes Sybylla’s words so darn flippant and light. Sybylla is intelligent and has a good vocabulary. The tone Rees uses for Sybylla is all wrong! The other characters’ words are spoken very differently. Basically, Rees’ narration is overdramatized. I had to keep telling myself to listen to the words, not the sound in my ears. Rees’s narration I have given one star.
I did not like this book. However, I do try to find positive things to say. I want my review to be fair and balanced.
February 22, 2013
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this book.
For its time, and the fact that it was written by Franklin when she was a teenager (!), it is a brilliant novel. The writing ability that Franklin had so young is amazing - she manages to capture so much of Australia, and her protagonist, Sybylla, lives and breathes from the first moment she steps onto the page.
I did find Sybylla to be a frustrating protagonist, due to her general inability to decide on what she wants (or who she wants), but that frustrating nature is part of what makes her feel real. Even when she was annoying me with her indecision and mood swings, I found myself wishing fervently that she would get what she wanted (if she could only decide what it was!).
I'm really glad that I picked this up as part of the Australian Women's Writer's Challenge, since I'd shamefully not read any of Franklin's work before. I find myself awed by her talent, and deeply impressed with how much she worked to change the face of Australian literature.
For its time, and the fact that it was written by Franklin when she was a teenager (!), it is a brilliant novel. The writing ability that Franklin had so young is amazing - she manages to capture so much of Australia, and her protagonist, Sybylla, lives and breathes from the first moment she steps onto the page.
I did find Sybylla to be a frustrating protagonist, due to her general inability to decide on what she wants (or who she wants), but that frustrating nature is part of what makes her feel real. Even when she was annoying me with her indecision and mood swings, I found myself wishing fervently that she would get what she wanted (if she could only decide what it was!).
I'm really glad that I picked this up as part of the Australian Women's Writer's Challenge, since I'd shamefully not read any of Franklin's work before. I find myself awed by her talent, and deeply impressed with how much she worked to change the face of Australian literature.
March 24, 2015
Miles Franklin - Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin - is probably Australia's most revered female writer. "My Brilliant Career" is her very first book, published in 1901 when she was barely 21. It was hugely successful, but she eventually withdrew it from publication until after her death, because it upset her that so many people believed it to be autobiographical. It probably was so, but like most new writers, she perhaps didn't think others would make the connections.
It's a passionate book, both about life and love, and about the Australian bush. The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is probably as boisterous and passionate as Franklin was herself. The writing is of its time - it's wordy and descriptive, often overblown by today's preferences, but the fierceness with which she loves the country and its people carries the novel through. Sometimes I wanted to slap Sybylla - often in fact! - but she was a girl on a mission - her own life - and nothing was going to stop her. Not even the perfect man, when he appeared on the horizon. She was an early Australian feminist.
Miles Franklin went on to write another seven novels under her name, and seven more as "Brent of Bin Bin", in an effort to hide her identity. She also wrote several non-fiction books.
It's a masterfully written book by such a young first time writer, especially for its time. But you need to be prepared for long wordy, reflective passages. Just go with it.
It almost seems cheeky to give it a rating - so I'll just go with 5.
It's a passionate book, both about life and love, and about the Australian bush. The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is probably as boisterous and passionate as Franklin was herself. The writing is of its time - it's wordy and descriptive, often overblown by today's preferences, but the fierceness with which she loves the country and its people carries the novel through. Sometimes I wanted to slap Sybylla - often in fact! - but she was a girl on a mission - her own life - and nothing was going to stop her. Not even the perfect man, when he appeared on the horizon. She was an early Australian feminist.
Miles Franklin went on to write another seven novels under her name, and seven more as "Brent of Bin Bin", in an effort to hide her identity. She also wrote several non-fiction books.
It's a masterfully written book by such a young first time writer, especially for its time. But you need to be prepared for long wordy, reflective passages. Just go with it.
It almost seems cheeky to give it a rating - so I'll just go with 5.
June 24, 2017
Henry Lawson famously avoided making an opinion on the ‘girlishly emotional’ parts of this book, so this ‘girl reader’ is going out on a limb to say that it is precisely those parts that make this book worth reading. In refusing to give us a romantic heroine who plays by the rules of the genre, Miles Franklin has created a rare and fascinating character. Instead of reassuring us, Franklin leaves open the crucial questions of what is good conduct in a young woman, and what is a price worth paying to secure financial security. The teenage Sybylla is flamboyant, disrespectful and given to frequent solipsism. She is driven almost mad by her lack of options as a poor and apparently ‘ugly’ ‘little bush girl’ and despite the obvious economic risks refuses to conform or even apologise for that lack of conformity where this would imply divergence with her own conscience. Ralph Waldo Emerson (as author of “Self-reliance”) would have been proud. Or would he? Miles Franklin was way ahead of her time in giving a young woman the right to sacrifice the prospect of husband and family for her own conscience. Yes, it’s Australian, but it’s not the cloying nineteenth century morality tale you might expect, and it’s far easier to read than the nineteenth century English novels, with a galloping rhythm and a great ear for dialogue. Chapter Twelve was the low point for me. After that I began to seriously appreciate Miles Franklin for creating a complex, often annoying and thoroughly likeable character in Sybylla Penelope Melvyn. Happy Australia Day to lazy, ungrateful sheilas everywhere.
July 13, 2014
3.5★s
Sybylla Melvyn was the eldest of her siblings and living in poverty with her parents in rural NSW in the late 1800s. She fought with her mother constantly, was wilful and headstrong and after being told by her mother continually that she was ugly and useless, Sybylla believed it all. The day came that she was sent to live with her maternal grandmother and aunt on a property which was the opposite of her family home; she flourished under their care, enjoyed music and the arts and the company of more genteel companions.
But her headstrong nature and constant assurance that she wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love would drive all around her to distraction. When she met young Harold Beecham, wealthy owner of the adjoining property, his quietness and seeming lack of emotion caused Sybylla some angst. After a time a sudden and unexpected change of circumstances meant Harold departed while Sybylla left the comfort of her grandmother’s home for a position as governess for a number of slovenly children in an equally filthy home…
I’m glad I read this very Australian classic; the descriptions of the harsh country in the never ending drought, the hard work of property owners to make ends meet, the struggle of families to put food on the table – what a terrible time those long ago days were. Sybylla was a difficult character to like – her arrogance on the one hand and low opinion of herself on the other made her someone I felt the great need to slap! Again and again! Anyone who hasn’t read this classic Australian novel (which seems like an autobiography, but isn’t) by the wonderful Miles Franklin (Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin) most definitely should do so.
Sybylla Melvyn was the eldest of her siblings and living in poverty with her parents in rural NSW in the late 1800s. She fought with her mother constantly, was wilful and headstrong and after being told by her mother continually that she was ugly and useless, Sybylla believed it all. The day came that she was sent to live with her maternal grandmother and aunt on a property which was the opposite of her family home; she flourished under their care, enjoyed music and the arts and the company of more genteel companions.
But her headstrong nature and constant assurance that she wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love would drive all around her to distraction. When she met young Harold Beecham, wealthy owner of the adjoining property, his quietness and seeming lack of emotion caused Sybylla some angst. After a time a sudden and unexpected change of circumstances meant Harold departed while Sybylla left the comfort of her grandmother’s home for a position as governess for a number of slovenly children in an equally filthy home…
I’m glad I read this very Australian classic; the descriptions of the harsh country in the never ending drought, the hard work of property owners to make ends meet, the struggle of families to put food on the table – what a terrible time those long ago days were. Sybylla was a difficult character to like – her arrogance on the one hand and low opinion of herself on the other made her someone I felt the great need to slap! Again and again! Anyone who hasn’t read this classic Australian novel (which seems like an autobiography, but isn’t) by the wonderful Miles Franklin (Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin) most definitely should do so.
April 21, 2021
“Mi impresionante carrera” de la autora australiana Miles Franklin es la primera historia sobre pioneros australianos que leo. Australia como país tuvo origen en la colonia-cárcel que ocupaba la isla. Al estar tan alejada de Inglaterra a muchos condenados y deudores se les daba la opción de ser expatriados allí, donde las condiciones de vida eran durísimas. También fue el destino de mujeres venidas a menos, prostitutas o víctimas de trata. Sin embargo, a pesar de su origen “criminal”, la sociedad australiana creció asemejándose a un cruce entre la metrópoli y los territorios inexplorados de lo que hoy es Estados Unidos. Esto se refleja maravillosamente bien en la novela de Franklin quien presenta ambos mundos con una transición muy natural: la niña que nació en las praderas salvajes, pasó por una infancia dura de trabajos en una zona ingrata y salvaje y fue acogida por una abuela un poco mejor situada en la vida, cuyo hogar se encontraba en un lugar más civilizado, más inglés. En esa narración de como va creciendo Sybylla, cuando no se centra en ella, la autora hace descripciones muy vívidas de las condiciones de vida en Australia, de lo difícil que era salir adelante si no se tenía fuerza y entereza.
Los personajes, con excepción de Sybylla (que ahora explicaré), me resultaron muy entrañables. Se trata de un libro semiautobiográfico por lo que se refleja muy bien el cariño que la autora tenía a algunos miembros de su familia y amigos, y el rencor que sentía hacia otros. Este es un aspecto de la novela del que se arrepintió después: el daño que hizo a sus padres con este retrato hizo que Franklin prohibiera que este libro se reeditara hasta después de su muerte. Así pues el personaje de Sybylla es complicado. Tuvo una infancia muy feliz mientras los tiempos eran buenos y su padre un hombre más despreocupado. Pero la caída en desgracia y sobre todo la pobreza hizo cambiar el rumbo de vida y, más que nada, su carácter. Sybylla es egoísta, egocéntrica, caprichosa, está llena de ira y no mira más que por si misma durante más de la mitad de la novela. Es, en esencia, una adolescente como cualquier otra. Cada piedra del camino es una lección aprendida pero Sybylla es muy cabezota y le cuesta aprender. El resto de personajes: la abuela, el tío JJ, Archie, Harold Beecham y su familia, y sobre todo, la tía Helen, son unos personajes muy entrañables.
La novela en si es una maravilla. Me hubiera gustado que el libro hubiera tenido otro final, la verdad. Y que la relación de Sybylla con su madre no fuera tan horrible, ahi está la clave de por qué no acaba como me hubiera gustado. De todos modos considero a la protagonista/narradora demasiado emocional como para que nos haya dado una versión justa y fiable de los hechos, nunca lo he visto tan claro como en este libro. Sybylla no es odiosa, es más, se le acaba teniendo cariño, pero es la persona más terca y más frustrante del mundo y eso hace que, incluso en los momentos en que tiene razón, nos inclinemos un poco hacia la otra parte.
En determinados momentos este libro me recordaba a Willa Cather. Una versión mucho más severa que Cather, claramente.
January 17, 2020
My first classic by this iconic Australian author and what a joy it was. It is considered a semi-autobiographical work and if so, I wish I could have met Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin. The story is about Sybylla, a young woman who is feisty and headstrong. She is the oldest child in a family who was once refined with a bit of money but is now poor and fighting utter destitution. Most of the book covers Sybylla's late teenage years during the late 1890s. She is sent to live with her grandmother and aunt by her mother who despairs of Sybylla's defiant attitude. At her grandmother's, Sybylla meets a rich, very eligible young man who seems almost too gentlemanly to be true.
Sybylla was an entirely engaging character who has firm ideas about what she does not want in life, which is marriage. She sees herself as ugly and odd and cannot believe that any man can really love her since all men want pretty, compliant wives. The book is early feminist fiction and it's a fascinating look at young women and their opportunities or lack thereof in Australia at the dawn of the 20th century. A worthy book by the woman whose bequest endowed the Miles Franklin Award, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Australia.
Sybylla was an entirely engaging character who has firm ideas about what she does not want in life, which is marriage. She sees herself as ugly and odd and cannot believe that any man can really love her since all men want pretty, compliant wives. The book is early feminist fiction and it's a fascinating look at young women and their opportunities or lack thereof in Australia at the dawn of the 20th century. A worthy book by the woman whose bequest endowed the Miles Franklin Award, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Australia.
March 13, 2017
I was expecting a much more enjoyable read than this since I have mainly enjoyed the Australian novels I have read in the past. This is a classic and there is no doubt that this writer had talent and I can see why she later made a career out of writing, but this novel, which was written when she was 16 has a protagonist who was apparently ahead of her time (yes and no, since there were others of that time with the same commitment to not marry, and even before her time, although it was certainly rare), but overall I found her rather selfish and short sighted. This and her treatment of one of the characters spoiled what might have been an enjoyable read, once I got past the beginning of the book, which I really didn't like. There were entire stretches that I enjoyed, and I thought it would be a three star read, but, alas, they were not enough of the book to make it so.
There is no summary here, because there is one on the book description.
There is no summary here, because there is one on the book description.
November 16, 2012
About a year ago I realised, with the exception of Nick Cave, I'd never actually read any books by Australian authors and that I should probably fix that. I throughly enjoyed this book. I couldn't quite believe it was written by a 16 year old. It was sort of the anti-Little House on the Praire. Here being a poor agricultural worker was very hard work, people went hungary and people lost what little they had very easily. There were drunken fathers who ruined lives and kindly neighbours who helped out. The book was also a little the opposite of Jane Austen as while there was a wealthy landowner who fell for the young heroine she definitely did NOT fall in love with him back and spent most of the book trying to escape his marriage proposals. I have to say I really enjoyed the character of Sybylla. She was highly opinionated. She was disatisfied with life and wanted more, music, literature and culture. Yet she gave up on these things to maintain her own independence. She was a very strong willed person and yet the same time suffered from very low self esteem, to the point where it crippled her ability to make good descisions. She came across as somewhat manic depressive, blissfully happy and then having a depressive breakdown. Yet her emotions were very real and her discussions very frank. I loved the way she spoke very openly about the problems of her life and the society she was living in. From the sexism, to the drinking to the droughts. If she reminded me of anyone it was a little of Claudine from Collette's novels. Though perhaps slightly more intelligent and insightful. But I think the two of them would have made a truly fantastic couple. This really was a fantastic book and I have already bought a copy of the sequal and am really looking forward to reading it.
October 4, 2022
Gosh she likes to make things so freaking hard for herself. Sybella Melvin is potentially one of the most unlikable characters I have ever met. That book is the definition of a headache, it has no obvious narrative arc, hardly any character development and I think my eyes nearly rolled out of my head every time that stupid girl said “Oh! Why can’t I be like other girls?”. Why 2 stars you ask? I have no idea, the writing was not bad and Harry was a highlight. Christ, what the actual hell is wrong with Syb, she just sucks and wallows in self-pity. I warn you, this book is not the feminist trophy so many claim it to be, it is drib, mundane and worse of all, boring.
May 5, 2020
3and a half stars. I don’t remember reading this at school, if I did it didn’t leave an impression. Sybylla is both a wonderful and an awful character, she’s an overwrought, self obsessed teenager one minute and almost wise the next. I enjoyed reading this book though not for her but for the slice of Australian life in the 1890s that she describes . The hard life of all those on the land whether they be wealthy or poor is shown so well. I’m quite impressed that Miles Franklin didn’t go for the obvious ending. She stays true to her lead character being unique for a woman of her time.
Shelved as 'abandoned'
September 15, 2021DNFing at 14% because of the poor audiobook quality on Librivox. When the novel is in first person, my head can't process each chapter being narrated by a different reader, some of whom are outstanding narrators and some, below average. Might reread this some day because the heroine is quite a rebel for her era and whatever content I heard sounded appealing.
March 18, 2019
The author based this story of a young girl struggling to become a writer despite her lowly circumstances. The movie starring Judy Davis inspired me to read this novel. Both are excellent.
November 25, 2019
Me ha sorprendido mucho la autora, una novela muy bien escrita, aunque en ocasiones se nota que la autora solamente tenía 16 años cuando la escribió, algunas veces la narración es un poco exagerada, dramática, de un hecho, que en apariencia, no tenía mucha importancia podía montar un escándalo. Su protagonista, Sybylla, en algunas ocasiones me ha recordado a Jane Eyre, aunque no llega a estar a la altura de Jane. A veces me parecía un personaje un poco superficial. Algunas de sus acciones y decisiones me parecían un poco caprichosas y sin coherencias, aunque para ser justa la protagonista era una adolescente así que tampoco se le puede pedir que tuviera un comportamiento adulto y coherente, ya sabemos como son los adolescente, ya sea en el siglo XIX o en el XX jajaja
La novela es autobiográfica, de hecho es tan fidedigna que tras su publicación, al ver a las personas que hirió con ella, prohibió su reedición hasta después de su muerte. Sybylla, es una muchacha que su familia no la comprende, y a veces ni ella misma, no consigue conformarse con la vida que le ha tocado. Por un mala decisión en los negocios la familia acaba arruinada y viviendo en un remoto pueblo de Autralia que la sequía hace que la vida sea de lo más dura. Antes de trasladarse a ese pueblo Sybylla había vivido rodeada de libros, música, personas cultas, esos primeros ocho años de su vida la dejo marcada, y no le fue posible adaptarse a esa vida sin libros. Su madre no la comprendía, pensaba que era una niña caprichosa, desagradecida... Pero ella no podía hacer más, por mucho que lo intentará necesitaba ese alimento para el alma.
-Madre, ¡eres muy injusta y muy cruel! -exclamé-. No me comprendes ni una pizca.yo nunca he pensado que pudiera dar el golpe. No puedo evitar ser así, no puedo evitar que el sucio trabajo manual me sea odioso, porque me es odioso, y cada día lo odio más, y tu puedes rezar y rezar hasta que se te ponga la cara negra, pero yo lo odiaré más que nunca. Si tengo que pasarme toda la vida haciendo lo mismo, y si tengo la mala suerte de vivir mucho tiempo, lo odiaré tanto al morir como lo odio ahora. Estoy segura de que no es ninguna fantasía haber nacido con inclinaciones por cosas mejores. Si volviera a nacer y pudiera crear mi propio molde, sería la persona más bruta y más basta imaginable, para no sentirme nunca sola. O nacería idiota, y sería mucho mejor todavía.
Al final su madre la envía con la abuela que vive donde nació ella y puede volver a tener eso que tanto necesitaba. Ahí floreció, al llegar a casa de su abuela era una niña insegura con su físico, su madre no hacía más que repetirle que era una niña feucha con muy mal carácter. Su abuela, tía y tío le dieron el cariño que necesitaba. Seguía teniendo sus inseguridades, algunas veces, cuando un chico se interesaba por ella desconfiaba de ese interés, no comprendía como algún hombre podía fijarse en un mujer tan poco insignificante.
(...) En realidad, comprendí que ser una niña era bastante agradable, hasta que tomé conciencia de una espantosa verdad: ¡era fea! Esa verdad ha amargado toda mi existencia(...) Y junto con esa infernal marca a hierro eché fama de ser muy lista. ¡Peor, mucho peor! ¡Chicas! ¡Chicas! Las que tengáis corazón y, por tanto, deséeis la felicidad, y con el tiempo casa propia y marido, no os labréis
nunca reputación de chica lista. Os expulsará de la carrera matrimonial con tanta efectividad como si hubiera corrido el rumor de que tenéis lepra. Por tanto, si intuís que os aqueja el mal de tener algo más que una inteligencia normal y corriente, disimulad, ponedle un cepo a vuestra cabeza, estudiad la forma de parecer poco listas; es vuestra única oportunidad. Si una mujer es guapa se le aceptan todas sus carencias. Puede ser insulsa, mentirosa, poco carta, disciplente, cruel, y hasta lista; mientras sea bien parecida, los hombres la aguantarán, y como en este mundo los hombres son << el perro de arriba>>, ellos son el poder ante el que hay que agachar la cabeza. A una mujer poco agraciada nada se le perdona
Sybylla es una mujer, a pesar de su juventud y su educación conservadora, feminista. Desde siempre me ha sorprendido como autoras que han nacido en una época que el femenismo no existía y ni se le esperaba consiguieron crear protagonistas con un marcado femenismo. Volviendo a Sybylla, es una chica que quiere independencia, que no quiere casarse, que tiene sueños y que se siente frustrada por no poder alcanzarlos. Una mujer que a pesar de su corta edad es fiel a sus principios, que cuando puede elegir la salida fácil para tener una vida mejor elige ser leal a ella misma, y escoge la vida dura pero sin traicionarse.
-¡Ala impresionante carrera! -exclamó mi abuela, agarrándose a la expresión-. ¡Una carrera! En eso piensan ahora todas las muchachas en lugar de en ser buenas madres y esposas y en cuidar de la casa y hacer lo que Dios manda. Lo único en que piensan es en salir de picos pardos y en darse prisa, y en echar a perder su cuerpo y alma. Y los hombres son lo bastante malos para animarles -sentenció, mirando a Evarard con severidad
La novela es autobiográfica, de hecho es tan fidedigna que tras su publicación, al ver a las personas que hirió con ella, prohibió su reedición hasta después de su muerte. Sybylla, es una muchacha que su familia no la comprende, y a veces ni ella misma, no consigue conformarse con la vida que le ha tocado. Por un mala decisión en los negocios la familia acaba arruinada y viviendo en un remoto pueblo de Autralia que la sequía hace que la vida sea de lo más dura. Antes de trasladarse a ese pueblo Sybylla había vivido rodeada de libros, música, personas cultas, esos primeros ocho años de su vida la dejo marcada, y no le fue posible adaptarse a esa vida sin libros. Su madre no la comprendía, pensaba que era una niña caprichosa, desagradecida... Pero ella no podía hacer más, por mucho que lo intentará necesitaba ese alimento para el alma.
-Madre, ¡eres muy injusta y muy cruel! -exclamé-. No me comprendes ni una pizca.yo nunca he pensado que pudiera dar el golpe. No puedo evitar ser así, no puedo evitar que el sucio trabajo manual me sea odioso, porque me es odioso, y cada día lo odio más, y tu puedes rezar y rezar hasta que se te ponga la cara negra, pero yo lo odiaré más que nunca. Si tengo que pasarme toda la vida haciendo lo mismo, y si tengo la mala suerte de vivir mucho tiempo, lo odiaré tanto al morir como lo odio ahora. Estoy segura de que no es ninguna fantasía haber nacido con inclinaciones por cosas mejores. Si volviera a nacer y pudiera crear mi propio molde, sería la persona más bruta y más basta imaginable, para no sentirme nunca sola. O nacería idiota, y sería mucho mejor todavía.
Al final su madre la envía con la abuela que vive donde nació ella y puede volver a tener eso que tanto necesitaba. Ahí floreció, al llegar a casa de su abuela era una niña insegura con su físico, su madre no hacía más que repetirle que era una niña feucha con muy mal carácter. Su abuela, tía y tío le dieron el cariño que necesitaba. Seguía teniendo sus inseguridades, algunas veces, cuando un chico se interesaba por ella desconfiaba de ese interés, no comprendía como algún hombre podía fijarse en un mujer tan poco insignificante.
(...) En realidad, comprendí que ser una niña era bastante agradable, hasta que tomé conciencia de una espantosa verdad: ¡era fea! Esa verdad ha amargado toda mi existencia(...) Y junto con esa infernal marca a hierro eché fama de ser muy lista. ¡Peor, mucho peor! ¡Chicas! ¡Chicas! Las que tengáis corazón y, por tanto, deséeis la felicidad, y con el tiempo casa propia y marido, no os labréis
nunca reputación de chica lista. Os expulsará de la carrera matrimonial con tanta efectividad como si hubiera corrido el rumor de que tenéis lepra. Por tanto, si intuís que os aqueja el mal de tener algo más que una inteligencia normal y corriente, disimulad, ponedle un cepo a vuestra cabeza, estudiad la forma de parecer poco listas; es vuestra única oportunidad. Si una mujer es guapa se le aceptan todas sus carencias. Puede ser insulsa, mentirosa, poco carta, disciplente, cruel, y hasta lista; mientras sea bien parecida, los hombres la aguantarán, y como en este mundo los hombres son << el perro de arriba>>, ellos son el poder ante el que hay que agachar la cabeza. A una mujer poco agraciada nada se le perdona
Sybylla es una mujer, a pesar de su juventud y su educación conservadora, feminista. Desde siempre me ha sorprendido como autoras que han nacido en una época que el femenismo no existía y ni se le esperaba consiguieron crear protagonistas con un marcado femenismo. Volviendo a Sybylla, es una chica que quiere independencia, que no quiere casarse, que tiene sueños y que se siente frustrada por no poder alcanzarlos. Una mujer que a pesar de su corta edad es fiel a sus principios, que cuando puede elegir la salida fácil para tener una vida mejor elige ser leal a ella misma, y escoge la vida dura pero sin traicionarse.
-¡Ala impresionante carrera! -exclamó mi abuela, agarrándose a la expresión-. ¡Una carrera! En eso piensan ahora todas las muchachas en lugar de en ser buenas madres y esposas y en cuidar de la casa y hacer lo que Dios manda. Lo único en que piensan es en salir de picos pardos y en darse prisa, y en echar a perder su cuerpo y alma. Y los hombres son lo bastante malos para animarles -sentenció, mirando a Evarard con severidad
October 1, 2016
This was an interesting book. I read it on the recommendation of an Australian blogger I follow because I have not read much, if any, Australian literature.
Therefore, I do not know whether Franklin's book reflects Australian culture or just or her own thoughts and ideas.
Amazingly she wrote this while a teenager. The writing is wonderful. Her descriptions of farm life and the Australian countryside are fantastic! But then again, that might explain the immaturity of the protagonist.
The story takes place in the 1890s and is about a young girl, Sybylla, who is sixteen and hates her life. Well, don't all sixteen year old girls.
But Sybylla is slightly different. She hates living on a farm, hates the work, hates the people she's surrounded with. She's a "thinker" and they're not. Her mother is beautiful, but thinks the highest ideal for a woman is to marry and have children. This is anathema to Sybylla who has dreams of a brilliant career. I'm not sure in what, writing or music I suppose.
Her family's farm goes under and Sybylla shakes her fist at her father and at God and all of life. Her mother talks of sending her out to work somewhere. But then her grandmother invites her to come live with her. She meets her aunt Helen who persuades her she is not as ugly as she believes herself to be.
Her life is full of tea parties, dinners, and flirtatious young men. To most of them Sybylla is rude if not out right odious. Her Grandmother and Aunt Helen find her behavior shocking but her Uncle Jay Jay thinks its hilarious.
There is one man, Harold Beecham, who stands up to her challenge, although why he bothers with her I don't know, because she acts like a perfect imp to him. And I'll stop right there so as not to give away anything.
I really did not understand this novel. Sybylla is a nasty brat with no redeeming character as far as I can see.
The story is supposed to have a wonderful feminist message. Well, if hating men and believing the only way a woman can be strong and independent is to never get married or have a family, and thinking you're smarter than everyone else, it does.
But I wonder where that thinking comes from. I am strong and independent and the greatest joy I receive in my life is my family. I wouldn't give my husband or son up for anything.
In my view, strong and independent by Sybylla's terms means to be self-absorbed and rude.
I'd be interested in other people's opinions because it is possible I'm missing something.
On a side note, Miles Franklin was so upset to realize that readers thought she was basing her story on her real life that she removed the book and did not allow its publication until after her death.
Unfortunately for her, she got to expose her immature teenage years to the world while the rest of us get to blissfully forget about them.
Therefore, I do not know whether Franklin's book reflects Australian culture or just or her own thoughts and ideas.
Amazingly she wrote this while a teenager. The writing is wonderful. Her descriptions of farm life and the Australian countryside are fantastic! But then again, that might explain the immaturity of the protagonist.
The story takes place in the 1890s and is about a young girl, Sybylla, who is sixteen and hates her life. Well, don't all sixteen year old girls.
But Sybylla is slightly different. She hates living on a farm, hates the work, hates the people she's surrounded with. She's a "thinker" and they're not. Her mother is beautiful, but thinks the highest ideal for a woman is to marry and have children. This is anathema to Sybylla who has dreams of a brilliant career. I'm not sure in what, writing or music I suppose.
Her family's farm goes under and Sybylla shakes her fist at her father and at God and all of life. Her mother talks of sending her out to work somewhere. But then her grandmother invites her to come live with her. She meets her aunt Helen who persuades her she is not as ugly as she believes herself to be.
Her life is full of tea parties, dinners, and flirtatious young men. To most of them Sybylla is rude if not out right odious. Her Grandmother and Aunt Helen find her behavior shocking but her Uncle Jay Jay thinks its hilarious.
There is one man, Harold Beecham, who stands up to her challenge, although why he bothers with her I don't know, because she acts like a perfect imp to him. And I'll stop right there so as not to give away anything.
I really did not understand this novel. Sybylla is a nasty brat with no redeeming character as far as I can see.
The story is supposed to have a wonderful feminist message. Well, if hating men and believing the only way a woman can be strong and independent is to never get married or have a family, and thinking you're smarter than everyone else, it does.
But I wonder where that thinking comes from. I am strong and independent and the greatest joy I receive in my life is my family. I wouldn't give my husband or son up for anything.
In my view, strong and independent by Sybylla's terms means to be self-absorbed and rude.
I'd be interested in other people's opinions because it is possible I'm missing something.
On a side note, Miles Franklin was so upset to realize that readers thought she was basing her story on her real life that she removed the book and did not allow its publication until after her death.
Unfortunately for her, she got to expose her immature teenage years to the world while the rest of us get to blissfully forget about them.
January 25, 2018
Sybylla is headstrong, feisty, opinionated and independent. At the start of the book she is a teenager growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s in a very poor household with an alcoholic father and a mother who has come from money and is now living in poverty.
To Sybylla's relief, her much wealthier Grandmother asks to take her for a time to "straighten" her out and Sybylla finds a much more comfortable life, until she is ultimately forced to take a role as a governess and decide what her future 'career' shall be. Wife? Governess? Spinster daughter?
I absolutely loved the time and place. It is so different to the Australia I know, but also had the familiar descriptions of oppressive heat, dry ground and smell of eucalyptus. The writing is very well done and is interesting to think about how Ms Franklin was able to get support from Henry Lawson to have this published with what must have been quite a controversial main character for the time.
As the book reached its conclusion, however, I really found Sybylla quite irritating. I was hoping for a bit more personality growth and maturity and I was actually left really disappointed with the ending. Although I suppose that is what also makes this a unique book as the ending was quite unusual for the time and unexpected.
A classic I am glad to have finally read!
To Sybylla's relief, her much wealthier Grandmother asks to take her for a time to "straighten" her out and Sybylla finds a much more comfortable life, until she is ultimately forced to take a role as a governess and decide what her future 'career' shall be. Wife? Governess? Spinster daughter?
I absolutely loved the time and place. It is so different to the Australia I know, but also had the familiar descriptions of oppressive heat, dry ground and smell of eucalyptus. The writing is very well done and is interesting to think about how Ms Franklin was able to get support from Henry Lawson to have this published with what must have been quite a controversial main character for the time.
As the book reached its conclusion, however, I really found Sybylla quite irritating. I was hoping for a bit more personality growth and maturity and I was actually left really disappointed with the ending. Although I suppose that is what also makes this a unique book as the ending was quite unusual for the time and unexpected.
A classic I am glad to have finally read!
August 20, 2021
”Being misunderstood is one of the trials we all must bear.”
My Brilliant Career is a 1901 novel written by an Australian author in her teen years and held from publication until after her death. This autobiography tells of the author’s early life hardships and disappointments meandering its way through happier times once she goes to stay with relatives.
The writing for me was all over the place. At times it was insightful with lovely quotable lines and vivid descriptions to confusing transitions with choppy paragraphs.
I liked her character despite her vanity and conceit. I couldn't help but get the sense Sybylla was a woman born out of her time and situation. She had presents of self and direction others her age lacked. She thirsted for knowledge and worthy skills. And while never traveling far, she acted like she knew where her life was heading.
If asked I would claim that I liked the book, yet I cannot muster any interests to finish the last 40%. It is also revealing that today my 3-week loan of the book ends without me having read the mere 246 pages.
With more than 60% of ratings for this book being more than 3-stars, it is clear I’m an outlier reader. Perhaps I just lack the insight to grasp the worth of this book. I dunno.
My favorite quotes:
My Brilliant Career is a 1901 novel written by an Australian author in her teen years and held from publication until after her death. This autobiography tells of the author’s early life hardships and disappointments meandering its way through happier times once she goes to stay with relatives.
The writing for me was all over the place. At times it was insightful with lovely quotable lines and vivid descriptions to confusing transitions with choppy paragraphs.
I liked her character despite her vanity and conceit. I couldn't help but get the sense Sybylla was a woman born out of her time and situation. She had presents of self and direction others her age lacked. She thirsted for knowledge and worthy skills. And while never traveling far, she acted like she knew where her life was heading.
If asked I would claim that I liked the book, yet I cannot muster any interests to finish the last 40%. It is also revealing that today my 3-week loan of the book ends without me having read the mere 246 pages.
With more than 60% of ratings for this book being more than 3-stars, it is clear I’m an outlier reader. Perhaps I just lack the insight to grasp the worth of this book. I dunno.
My favorite quotes:
”You will find that plain looks will not prevent you from gaining the friendship love of your fellows –the only real love there is.”
”In poverty you can get at the real heart of people as you can never do if rich.”
”It would be from fair to middling if there was love; but I laughed at the idea of love.”
...
August 14, 2019
I was reminded of Louisa Mae Alcott while reading this book. The two authors, neither of whom ever married, are best known for one semi-autobiographical novel which eclipsed their other efforts. Both women were also early feminists and wrote some of their work under male pseudonyms. Also, in both My Brilliant Career as in Little Women, there is a romantic element that will probably frustrate many readers since it defies conventional expectations. It did frustrate me!
It’s hard to say, since I knew going in that Franklin wrote this book as a very young woman, but I think it is evident it was written by a young adult. There is quite a lot of teenage angst, mood swings and emotive language. The story is of Sybylla who at age 16 is sent from her father’s unsuccessful dairy farm to her maternal grandmother’s home. Her life with her family in Possums Gully is a grind where the children work long hours only to see their father drink away any profits the farm makes. On the other hand, at her grandmother’s, where her mother grew up, life is fairly cultured and lively which Sybylla soaks up like a sponge, so starved was she for books and music and company.
Sybylla is a great heroine, even though the reader will want to shake her more than once. She is, however, in her wish to live a life beholden to no man but completely on her own terms, a very modern heroine and one to be admired. Also, the book is very much worth reading for Franklin’s loving descriptions of the Australian landscape.
I wish I could have read an annotated version so I could have more easily accessed the Australian English in the book like jackaroo, cockie or bobberie.
It’s hard to say, since I knew going in that Franklin wrote this book as a very young woman, but I think it is evident it was written by a young adult. There is quite a lot of teenage angst, mood swings and emotive language. The story is of Sybylla who at age 16 is sent from her father’s unsuccessful dairy farm to her maternal grandmother’s home. Her life with her family in Possums Gully is a grind where the children work long hours only to see their father drink away any profits the farm makes. On the other hand, at her grandmother’s, where her mother grew up, life is fairly cultured and lively which Sybylla soaks up like a sponge, so starved was she for books and music and company.
Sybylla is a great heroine, even though the reader will want to shake her more than once. She is, however, in her wish to live a life beholden to no man but completely on her own terms, a very modern heroine and one to be admired. Also, the book is very much worth reading for Franklin’s loving descriptions of the Australian landscape.
I wish I could have read an annotated version so I could have more easily accessed the Australian English in the book like jackaroo, cockie or bobberie.
November 16, 2023
Well, Sybylla Melvyn, I stayed with you, to the end!
Fiesty, opinionated, and torn between offers of lives she didn't want, but to which she was expected to limit herself. She didn't. She showed them!
There are things you wonder about after a book is done. . .there are things the author wanted a reader to think about and ponder over. I'm pretty sure I'm in a different range than Miles Franklin wanted me. I'm guessing she wanted me to be pleased and proud that Sybylla was taking her choice and marching off free to do as she could, and I am. Am always for equal choice, and there was little of that for women in 1901, anywhere in this wide world.
I'm wondering about the many pages dedicated to the build up of her options of the different marriage contracts - seems rather a tease. . .I appreciate her launch to freedom and am pleased she's voting with her feet. I am not disappointed with her choice, just wanted to see her love for the arts she is pursuing displayed . . .ah well.
So, am a tad disgruntled, say -2 stars worth, leaving 3 sturdy ones for Sybylla As Is.
Fiesty, opinionated, and torn between offers of lives she didn't want, but to which she was expected to limit herself. She didn't. She showed them!
There are things you wonder about after a book is done. . .there are things the author wanted a reader to think about and ponder over. I'm pretty sure I'm in a different range than Miles Franklin wanted me. I'm guessing she wanted me to be pleased and proud that Sybylla was taking her choice and marching off free to do as she could, and I am. Am always for equal choice, and there was little of that for women in 1901, anywhere in this wide world.
I'm wondering about the many pages dedicated to the build up of her options of the different marriage contracts - seems rather a tease. . .I appreciate her launch to freedom and am pleased she's voting with her feet. I am not disappointed with her choice, just wanted to see her love for the arts she is pursuing displayed . . .ah well.
So, am a tad disgruntled, say -2 stars worth, leaving 3 sturdy ones for Sybylla As Is.
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December 19, 2014I liked it. I've always avoided this book being under the misunderstanding that it was a dry and dusty tome. (ie boring!) I'm glad I gave it a go, as it is certainly not boring. Sybylla is an odd girl, kind of like Anne of Green Gables with a fervent feminist streak. It's nice to see a romance written by a young girl that doesn't have a cloying, happy ending, and I admire her resolve to do the "right" thing by Harold in the end, even though that may not be what he thinks he wants. I'm quite certain I could never have been that committed to an ideal given similar lack of opportunities, but perhaps if I'd had to grow up in the stultifying world of colonial Australia things would be very different. The book is definitely a bit childish and melodramatic, but I think it shows nicely the way that feminism and female suffrage were viewed at the time of Federation, from the point of view of someone who lived through it.
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