Short analysis of the novel " Fringe of leaves" a novel by Patrick White.

 As far as A Fringe of Leaves by Patrick White is concerned, his postcolonial novel is set in 19th century and deals with shipwreck of Ellen Roxburgh. The story itself is based on a real event that involved Eliza Fraser.

 Undoubtedly, White’s novel is marked by complexity; he deals with numerous topics that are crucial to Australian identity as well as those that are universal: repressed sexuality, the role of nature and culture in human life, colonialism or the structure of the society. 

The latter topic may be perceived as profoundly important, since in A Fringe of Leaves White presents the reader a wide range of social groups as well as human behavior that is conditioned by the social status. 

The reader is able to decipher all kinds of interactions between members of main groups presented in the novel: English middle class, Irish emancipates or Aborigines. Interestingly, White refrains from giving ready-made opinions and statements; as a merely observer, he gives the reader carte blanche in creating their own estimations.

As stated before, the author presents different social groups that existed in Australia; those include the English middle class, that also remains diversified; the Irish emancipates, that largely consists of convicts transported to the prenatal colony; and Aborigines ,who are native inhabitants of the island. To start with the middle class, it is represented by several characters presented in the novel: Austin and Ellen Roxburgh as well as Miss Scrimshaw among others.

The story is compelling, a young country girl, Ellen Gluyas marries Austin Roxburgh, a sickly, frail man from the upper classes and is taught by him and his grateful mother to be a lady. 

Ellen loves her husband and tries to be who they want her to be, but when they are shipwrecked and she has to find the will and skills to survive in an aboriginal clan she becomes the sensual woman she has fought so hard to repress.

Austin is a most unsympathetic character.  Frail, fussy, selfish, demanding and indescribably dull.  He’s a snob, despite his patronising marriage, and he often hurts Ellen’s feelings through his insensitivity.  He always calls her Ellen: he doesn’t forget where she’s from.

Ellen Roxburgh and her husband Austin set out on a ship for England, after a visit to Austin’s brother, Garnet in Van Diemen’s Land, with whom she had a brief fling. We get the background of their lives and marriage. 

The ship hits a reef and the passengers are forced to escape in lifeboats. They spend a long time in the boats and the characters of the passengers are revealed, particularly Austin, who shows a strong instinct for survival. When they land, they are attacked by aborigines. 

Disaster strikes when the Aborigines arrive and take offence.  Austin is killed by a spear.  In an uncharacteristic act of bravery he had gone to the defence of Captain Purdew.  White depicts the violence as initiated by the Aborigines, who send a spear to the head of the procession of survivors , and a second spear to graze Purdew. 

 He, crazy though he is, entreats the crew not to retaliate, but they do, and he then gets a spear in the ribs and Austin gets one in the neck.  The rest of the crew are captured, stripped, led off and later found dismembered.  Ellen herself is stripped, beaten, dragged off and forced to nurse an infant covered in sores.  

She is given only scraps to eat, beaten into shimmying up a tree to beat out a possum, and eventually raped.  These scenes are loathsome and horrible, and her utter defencelessness so ghastly that one could hardly bear to read it.  She acquiesces to it all because she has no choice if she is to survive, but she finds the Aboriginal way of life disgusting.

Aborigines and many of them including Austin, are killed. Ellen is stripped and enslaved. The fringe of leaves of the title is the fringe she makes to cover herself. She is eventually rescued by a convict, Jack Chance who returns to the wilderness and returns to the Moreton Bay prison colony. Once back, she becomes an advocate for the downtrodden.

The novels plot might give the impression that the Aborigines are the bad guys and, to a certain extent, they are, but Ellen is not unsympathetic to their situation and their proximity to nature. Similarly, Jack Chance is portrayed sympathetically and the comparison with the sometimes stultifying life of “civilisation” is clearly given. The universe, as White clearly tells us at the end, is not ordered the way we think.