The Price of Freedom in The Childrens Bach and Joan Makes History :: Childrens Bach Essays

The Price of Freedom in The Children's Bach and Joan Makes History  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   It has been suggested that the "modern woman's quest for emancipation in contemporary Australian literature is shown to have been a failure"2. I believe that this suggestion is invalid. Not because the statement is true or untrue, but because the concept of women's emancipation is so fraught to begin with. To emancipate is "to free from restraint of any kind, especially the inhibitions of tradition"3. While it is obviously true that the emancipation of women from some traditions and restraints would be beneficial, both individually and to the society as a whole, to step completely outside of the bounds of society can be read not only as freedom, but as exclusion. If women achieve exclusion from society is that to be seen as a success or a failure? In my opinion it is not exclusion but equitable integration that is the road to true emancipation for women. However, the idea of integration also brings with it the idea of compromise, and how can a freedom wrought through compromises be seen as either a complete success or total failure? The issue of what constitutes successful emancipation for women has been explored in two contemporary Australian novels: The Children's Bach4 and Joan Makes History. In this essay I will explore the contradictions and confusions discovered through Athena's and Joan's searches for personal freedom, and the mixture of failure and success in the freedom they eventually find when they go 'home'. The Children's Bach "If I hadn't been a feminist I quite probably wouldn't have become a writer"5 says Garner, indicating the importance of feminism in her own quest for self identity and freedom. Her definition of feminism is "a simple matter of being intelligently for women and women's freedom to develop as decent human beings"6. And although she considers marriage "an institution that is not set up with the welfare of women in mind"7, she also recognises a "powerful urge in people ... to marry"8. It stands to reason then, that in her fiction she would explore the possibilities of the tradition of marriage with the view of finding ways it will allow women to develop into "decent human beings". With these attitudes mind, it becomes apparent that there is nothing incongruous in Garner's heroine Athena searching for freedom, and finding a version of it in her own marital home.