'Sixty Lights' as a Postmodernist Exploration of the Human Experience Molly Rose York 11th Grade

In the suffocating times of the Victorian era, authors adhered to strict and stifling methods of writing due to the restrictive and stigmatic conformity engulfed by Victorian society. Postmodernism conjured a form of radicalism in literature, altering the world of writing indefinitely. The utterly brilliant construction of a postmodern text, engenders it’s audience to explore an alternate perception of the human experience. Gail Jones, an Australian novelist and academic, employs the notion of post-modernism throughout a critical construction of her novel, ‘Sixty Lights’, published in 2002. The narrative follows a non chronological storyline of the lives of Lucy and Thomas Strange - two orphaned and estranged children. Jones creates a pastiche effect by exercising the technique of metafiction in the novel through continuous intertextual references of ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte and ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens. Jones implements fragmentation repeatedly throughout the novel as well as infusing generic conventions specific to the postmodern genre, which takes effect to undermine traditional methods of writing. Through the exploration of the postmodern genre, ‘Sixty Lights’ presents the audience with insight into...