The Drover's Wife (Play) Literary Elements

Australian western/Feminist drama/Historical drama/Stage Play

Australian-English

A two-room shanty in the Alpine country of New South Wales, Australia in 1893.

The play does not feature a narrator, but the audience is encouraged to view the events through the point of view of the title character.

Ominous and unpredictable with extremities varying according to the dramatic intensity of individual scenes and plot twists.

Protagonist: The drover’s wife. Antagonist: white male patriarchy.

Individual incidents that recur over and over in slightly divergent ways coalesce thematically to reveal that the primary conflict is between the autonomy of the drover’s wife over her body and being and the white male population which assumes a rightful shared claim of ownership over that property as a result of patriarchal white privilege.

The play reaches a multilevel climax with the death of Yadaka, Danny disclosing that he has always know the true fate of his father, the decision of mother and son to head for the cave and the final intimation that the son will seek vengeance against the perpetrators of atrocities committed upon his family.

“DANNY : [ quietly and with trepidation ] There’s boots under the woodheap.” The stage directions which instruct the reading of this line foreshadows not only the revelation of the fate of the drover, but also that Danny is already aware of that fate.

“And when ya’re old enough, son…I’ll introduce you to Robert Parsen and John McPharlen” is the understated ending of the play in which it is intimated that Danny will wreak vengeance upon the men responsible for raping his mother and lynching Yadaka.

The entire narrative of the original story by Henry Lawson from which the play has been adapted is alluded during a short monologue by the drover’s wife which summarizes the story.

The directions for staging the production mandates that center stage is dominated by a chopping block with an axe buried in it. The threatening presence of the axe becomes imagery evoking the period setting as it becomes significant for a variety of reasons: it is a murder weapon yet also the tool for liberating Yadaka from the prisoner collar around his neck; it is a symbol of the pioneer spirit but also a symbol of the destruction of the environment required for that spirit to bring progress and civilization to the wilderness.

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The narrative of the play is paralleled with Henry Lawson’s original story without being a straightforward adaptation. It is technically a sequel since the events take place after those in the story and those events are related after the fact in the play. The parallels include the appearance two different black man who chop wood, a reference to an attempted assault in the story becomes a full-out rape in the play, and the appearance of a literal snake in the house in Lawson’s text is transformed into the metaphorical serpents of the white men who invade the home in the play.

In describing the carcass of a dead animal, mortality becomes personified: “Flies and birds havin’ a fine time with the head. Smell of death is strong out there.”

Throughout the script, characters are described—not as stage directions to the actor, but actually as part of the description of character action—as “clocking” the movements and reactions of another character which serves to intensify the prevalent mood of paranoia and suspicion.