The Wife as protector
Even though the emotional life of the Drover's Wife is clearly self-doubtful, as we understand from her monologues, she is clearly a symbol for the ultimate love which seeks to protect loved ones from harm. Her difficult emotional relationship to reality and self-esteem comes because she is pitted against nature and death, forces that far surpass the abilities of human beings. As a protector, she is doomed to failure, because death is inevitable. She strikes the head of the snake, but the snake bites her heel, to use a Biblical analogy.
The bush as wilderness
The woman lives with her children in a little hut in the Australian bush. She is in wilderness territory, which is the symbol for chaos. In the domain of chaos, she is "East of Eden," so to speak, pitted as various world legends have inevitably described, "against the snake." Like a hero ventures into the wilderness to slay a dragon and save a princess, this mother literally lives amongst wilderness and battles the serpent for her children's survival. The bush is a symbol for the chaos of nature and the battle of survival.
The viper
The snake is not only symbolic, it is deeply archetypal. That means that in every part of the world, from the earliest myths to the most recent myths, snakes are constantly used as imagery. This play actually shows why that connection is so strong. The woman faces a deadly snake, a dangerous animal that is fast and sly, and very difficult to catch, and that makes her challenge extremely difficult. The snake represents symbolically exactly what it means to the woman literally: the threat of death and the difficulty of choosing the right decisions in each moment to protect her family from the chaos of the wilderness.
Rain and hope
The question of hope is a central deliberation in the Wife's personal monologues. She face emotions of confusion and sorrow, but recently the situation has gone from sad and painful to quite dangerous and dire. Not only must she think about her own health and safety, but she must contemplate whether it will rain. If it rains, her children might have better chances at a good life out in the country, but if the rain continues to tarry, the risks of death become worsened. She feels that a wildfire could break out any time, and they would of course not be able to out run it; they are surrounded on all sides by dead trees and dry brush.
The son versus the serpent motif
This common mythic trope comes up in many places. For instance, the son faces a serpent in any hero story where a young knight fights a dragon. In the Bible, the snake and woman are pitted against each other for the sake of her offspring, in the Fall of Man sequence of Genesis's creation myth. The archetypal battle of life is for one's children to survive into their adulthood so they can have children of their own. That is symbolized in this play by a mother striving to protect her son from a deadly snake, even if it costs her her own life.
