Henry Lawson: Joe Wilson’s

Courtship

Distinctively Visual

Distinctively Visual

As part of this study you will be asked to explore the ways the images we see and/or visualise in texts are created.

You will consider how literary form and structure and the language used

in different texts create these images, affect

interpretation and shape meaning.

Distinctively Visual

The scenes created by Lawson allow the reader to appreciate a place they have

never seen. He draws on personal experience to depict a bush lifestyle that

is fast disappearing.

Distinctively Visual: elements conveyed

through …

Context Audience Form

Imagery Symbolism language

Henry Lawson

Who is he?

What are his views?

What does he value?

Look at the Historical Context of the text to gain insight into Lawson and his work.

Joe Wilson’s Courtship

The story is romantic personal reflection on the ritual of courting

told by an older and wiser Joe Wilson as he looks back on his past.

Parallels can be made with Lawson’s own marriage to Bertha

and their later acrimonious divorce. It is also reinforced by comparing it to Black and his sour relationship

with his wife.

Joe Wilson’s Courtship

Themes:• love, romance, physical and social anxiety, mateship and courtship.

Joe Wilson’s CourtshipSocial Anxiety: • is the fear of

interaction with other people that brings on self-consciousness, feelings of being negatively judged and evaluated, and, as a result, leads to avoidance.

Joe Wilson’s CourtshipCourtship: • Is the period during

which a couple develop a romantic relationship before getting married Joe looks back on the time when he meets and falls in love with Mary.

Joe Wilson’s CourtshipMateship: The harsh environment in which convicts and new settlers found themselves meant that men and women closely relied on each other for help. In Australia, a 'mate' is more than just a friend. It's a term that implies a sense of shared experience, mutual respect and unconditional assistance.

Joe Wilson’s Courtship

•First Person, Past Tense, linear narrative.

Narrative Style:

Joe Wilson’s Courtship

• Australian Bush, people moving from farm to farm for work on horseback.

• Haviland is a “few miles out of Solong,” a “little farming town”.

Setting

Joe Wilson’s Courtship

• It was a two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate … There was a wide, old-fashioned, brick-floored verandah in front, with an open end; there was ivy climbing up the verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other, and a grape-vine near the chimney.

Setting: Haviland

Joe Wilson’s Courtship

• Lawson uses direct speech, and the bush vernacular of the time to convey meaning.

Language

Characterisation:

• Joe tells us, 'I remember the first glimpse I got of Mary'. Joe is shy and inexperienced when it comes to love and romance. He often mis-reads the actions and reactions of Mary and looks towards Jack for advice.

• 'make the most of your courting days, you young chaps'

Joe Wilson: Narrator 

• Jack is referred to as a bit of a drunk and a gambler - all traits inherited from his father

• Jack is a 'married man' and Joe tells us he is 'privileged' in that because of this he has a better understanding of what women want and what they mean.

• Jack gives Joe much advice about Mary and tries to 'push' them together

Jack Barnes:

• Mary is the subject of Joe's courtship.• Mary is living with Black 'the squatter' at Haviland• She is called 'Possum' because of her large bright eyes

Mary Brand:

Characterisation:

• I was between twenty-one and thirty then … You don't take much stock in birthdays in the Bush. I'd knocked about the country for a few years, shearing and fencing and droving a little, and wasting my life without getting anything for it. I drank now and then, and made a fool of myself. I was reckoned 'wild'; but I only drank because I felt less sensitive, and the world seemed a lot saner and better and kinder when I had a few drinks”

Joe Wilson: Narrator 

Humour

• “I volunteered to help her. I held down the line while she threw the things over and pegged out. 'There's only a few more things in the basket, Miss Brand,' I said. 'You can't reach--I'll fix 'em up.’ She seemed to give a little gasp. 'Oh, those things are not ready yet,’…''Oh, it's no trouble,’… and I made a reach into the basket. But she flushed red, with temper I … and snatched the basket away.

Pegging out the clothes

Joe Wilson’s Courtship

• “There are many times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he is put into … knickerbockers, for instance, and “comes a man to-day”, as my little Jim used to say. When they're cooking something at home that he likes. When the “sandy blight” or measles breaks out amongst the children.…”

Opening Sequence

Symbolism

• Joe believed that Mary was looking after him – her actions her meant that she was interested. Joe had made a mistake.

• “Next day I found one of the skillion rooms scrubbed out and a bed fixed up for me” …“Next day there were sheets on my bed” … “And next day there was a little table in my room with a crocheted cover and a looking-glass.

• “I saw the half-caste cook tidying up your room this morning.'

Cleaning Joe’s Room

Symbolism

• The vines may have deeper meaning: a rose could be symbolic of love, ivy a symbol femininity and marriage, the grape vine of friendships and the connectedness to nature.

• “there was ivy climbing up the verandah post on one side and a baby-rose on the other, and a grape-vine near the chimney.”

• “so it was in the frame of vines that I first saw her.”

• “I've had a fancy to wonder whether the rose-bush killed the grape-vine or the ivy smothered 'em both in the end”

The ivy, rose and grape vine

Literary Devices

• "do you remember the first glimpse you got of your wife?" - "I remember the first glimpse I got of Mary"

Rhetorical Question: 

•  Joe describes Mary as a 'filly' and then mentions that she 'trotts' around

Extended Metaphor:

• Jack 'yarning' with Mary

Vernacular: 

Literary Devices

• Jack tells Joe to use the window as a 'looking glass to view Mary. he says its 'as simple as striking matches' - Jack tells Mary the Joe 'is as tough as fencing wire'

Simile: 

• Joe tells us that on seeing Mary, "my heart suddenly commenced to gallop"

Personification: 

• “Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps”

Repetition