Helen Heney: Australia's Founding Mothers.

Nelson, Melbourne, 1978, 288 Seiten mit 72 Bildern. Gebunden Leinen.

The significance of the part played by women in founding the colony at Sydney Cove and in bearing the first generation of Australians is shown dramatically in this account of the various roles played by bond and free from the departure of the First Fleet until the end of Macquarie's governorship. The British Government took on itself a heavy responsibility when it transported women of child-bearing age to a colony of sex-starved men. Most of the convict women suffered ruthless sexual exploitation; all the involuntary exiles — whether wives of officials or prisoners — suffered unappeasable nostalgia and homesickness in a remote and hostile land. Yet they survived and their children flourished. Helen Heney brings to life the ebullient London prostitutes who so bothered and shocked their gaolers; the well-behaved prisoners who formed the majority; the quarrelsome or steady de facto wives; the free women who helped or ignored the disadvantaged. Here, too, are Margaret Catchpole and Mary Reibey, as well as the wives of officials (Mrs Richard Johnson, Mrs Samuel Marsden, Elizabeth Macarthur, Anna Josepha King, Elizabeth Macquarie), and Bligh's fiery daughter, Mary, who remains an enigma. Many peculiarly Australian attitudes have stemmed not only from the environment but from the influence of the convict and emancipist women who mothered the first native-born. In this interpretative history, Helen Heney throws new light on what it means to be Australian.".