A Clearing in the Forest (pp. 125-185) Part 3: A Clearing in the Forest (pp. 125-185)

Summary of Events Sal travels willingly but reluctantly away from Sydney: willing because it is what Thornhill desires and their love is strong and important to them both, but she feels she’s going further away from ‘home.’ Quote: (p.127) ‘Sal strained backwards, staring at the cluster of buildings … that they were leaving’, and even as they move away from the land she still does not face forward. This is a reminder that while Thornhill is looking forward, Sal longs for the past. Their arrival at Thornhill’s Point symbolizes their experience there: Thornhill is excited. But, he immediately sinks in the mud on the shore. This reflects the difficulties / challenges he faces.

Symbols / Motifs / Themes / Language P. 127 – melancholy fall of a rooster – jackass: mockery Setting: p. 127 – cold breeze, p. 129 somber water P. 130 – Will’s character has changed but Sal’s has not – …”realized how far he had travelled. He was a different man now from the one who had been silenced, …. It was a place of promise to him now, the blank page on which a man might write a new life.” P. 132 – bird - mocking

Important Quotes: P. 133 – whole paragraph devoted to the word ‘mine.’ This relates to when Thornhill finally stands on his land. It’s a central point in the text. Very relevant for the theme of land. P. 134 – ‘The black bird wachted him from its brance. … he saw how cruel its curved beak was, with a hook at the end that could tear flesh.” P. 134 – “Now there was a place where a man had laid his mark over the face of the land. It was astonishing how little it took to own a piece of land.” P. 136 – his land: “making a life where only the flicker of their own fire was human. Snug as a flea in a dog’s ear, he announced. In the skeptical silence that followed, the rueful bird let out its cry of regret.” P. 138 – Description of Setting : alludes to ‘blackness’ and land – fear and danger , the gun. P. 138-139 – Fear – feeling of being watched by the natives.

P. 140-141 – the ‘daisies’ – “He had dreamed of this place, had allowed himself to love it too soon. All the time he had dreamed, forced himself against wind and tide and fatigue, driven by longing, all that time it had been too late. Some other man had set his foot here, worked it with his pick. Like every other hope, this one had been snatched away from him.” ‘Da says it were moles.’

P. 141 – Dick verbalizes Thornhill’s fear that the land has already been cultivated. “It’s them savages. Planting them things like you would taters.” Thornhill denies this. He frequently denies or hides truths which he imagines might unsettle or hurt Sal and his family. Dick (along with Blackwood) seems to be one of the few European characters who can understand the Aboriginal people. P. 142 – second (apart from ‘Strangers’ encounter) interaction with the indigenous people P. 143 – Thornhill “could not read their faaces.” P. 143 – “…a bird made a twittering as if amused, and a quick breeze sang through the leaves.” P. 144 – Thornhill couldn’t understand the men’s words “he began to feel like an imbecile” – to make up for that feeling he started talking like ‘gentry’ P. 144 – “My place now, he said. You got all the rest.”

Early Contact Thornhill’s first extended interaction with Aboriginal people on his land takes place in two languages, with neither party able to understand the other’s words, and ‘too little language to go around’ (p. 146) The encounter begins with words but ends with low-level physical violence which is the beginning of much conflict between the Aboriginal people and the settlers. Though the Aboriginal words are unintelligible to Thornhill, he comprehends their basic meaning: ‘Go away’ (p. 147)

Strained relationship: Will vs Sal Sal domesticates their new space. – feels like she’s in a prison (p. 150 – marked off each day on the bark of a tree) Will continues to hide any evidence of the conflict with the Aboriginal people. But, (p. 152) “They all felt watched” – alignment of the setting with the natives – “…the figure became nothing more than a couple of angled branches” He feels that denial might erase the conflict: ‘the blacks … might not exist if no one said the words: the blacks’ (p. 152) This silence between them begins to put a strain on their relationship, so that when William finds an Aboriginal rock engraving of a fish and his own boat, the Hope, he feels unable to show it to Sal. (p. 154)

Colonisation The engraving is a symbol of colonization. The engraving of the Hope, represents the arrival of European settlers, overlapping the fish, and thus the Aboriginal land and culture. This moment also marks Thornhill’s realization that although the land might seem ‘empty’, it is occupied by Aboriginal people in the same way that a ‘master of the house’ occupies ‘a parlour in London’ (p. 155)

Sal vs Will vs Racial Conflict When Sal hears of the violence of some of the settlers against the Aboriginals, she makes Will promise not to behave in such a way. P. 157-159 This is significant, because he fails to keep the promise. He breaks it, ironically, because he believes that eradicating the Aboriginal people will be the only way to keep Sal happy on Thornhill’s Point.

Talk of killing P. 162 – other residents congregate at the Thornhill’s and talk about thefts from Indigenous P. 163 – “Sagitty Birtles was constantly being robbed by the blacks.” “thieving buggers – learned them a lesson - …’Like the bleeding flies… kill one, ten more come to its funeral.” P. 164 – “They’s vermin, he said, the same way rats is vermin” P. 168 – the daisies: Blackwood – “You dig them up, means they go hungry.” … P. 169 – ‘Honest men’ – meeting between Governor and black man – no settlers down river. P. 169 Blackwood: “But when you take a little, bear in mind you got to give a little” – was it a warning or threat?

Class Prejudice When Will returns from Sydney with two convicts – including Dan Oldfield who they knew in London – Sal and Will are for once in agreement about their attitude to the past: Dan reminds Will how he would always be known as a convict in England; for Sal, Dan represents a part of her history she’d rather forget. They both refuse to let Dan ‘presume on the past’ (p. 176) .

William Thornhill P. 177 Will and Sal are the masters of Dan Oldfield, a recently emancipated convict. They get a kick out of being the ‘masters’ “The reality was that they had power almost of life and death over Dan Oldfiel, and something in them both was enjoying it. His own pleasure in it, as he had bullied Dan on the wharf, had come as a surprise to Thornhill: he had not known that he had it in him to be a tyrant. A man never knew what kind of stuff he was made of, until the situation arose to bring it out of him.”

Will Thornhill as a ‘gentleman’? Dan is working for the Thornhills and Will is overseeing it like a master: p. 179-180: “He was… strolling as a gentleman might from the Old Swan to Temple Stairs, jingling the coins in his pocket and waiting for the watermen to beg for his custom.”

Sal gets sick and nearly dies When Sal falls ill with milk fever and nearly dies, her recovery is associated with Blackwood’s visit, during which he talks with her about the old country P. 183 “Sal was only the wife of an emancipist.”

Questions: What makes Thornhill realise that the land is not empty? What does this section reveal about the settlers’ understandings of, and preconceptions about, ‘ownership’ of land?