My Brilliant Career feminist
How far are the film and novel versions of My Brilliant Career feminist in their interpretation?My Brilliant Career was a coming of age story based on the Miles Franklin's book of the same title. It told the journey towards maturity of an idealistic and headstrong girl, Sybylla Melvin who had been raised in relative poverty on her father's property in the Australian bush during the 1890's. Her journey was enriched and at times complicated by her encounters with her Aunt Helen, her grandmother Bossier, Aunt Gussie and Harry Beecham and by her life-learning experiences of squattocracy of "Caddagat" and "Five Bob Downs" to the humbler farmlands of the Goulbourne valley. At the point of her maturity and at the conclusion of the film, Sybylla developed a feminist philosophy that drove her to tear off the "social st
She hired Luciana Arrighi to decide on the location that would be most fitting to represent the harsh outback in time of drought and famine. Frank Hawden is portrayed to be patronising and arrogant and displays anti feministic tendencies, he expects Sybylla to fall in love with him because only of the fact that he is the only male around and he will inherit a great deal of money. The film blows the preconcieved idea of happy endings and women being protagonists only for their physical "assets" totally out of the water. The film shows the character of Sybilla to be less headstrong than the book permits us to imagine, this leads us unknowingly into the movie expecting her character to be ruder more narrow minded and less caring when Harry Beecham is concerned. This heroine of the Australian bush managed to untangle herself from the "bourgeois trap" of a life with handsome and wealthy Harry Beecham to choose a life of literature. Margaret quickly began work on the film version of My Brilliant Career and she poured her passion into it, in hope of one day capturing Sybylla on screen. raight jacket" confining women like her mother and aunt. So in one hand the book seems to be favoured more when feminist ideals are taken into account, it is, however, the movie that tends to create more hype as far as social expectations are concerned. It was to be nearly fifteen years before Margaret's Sybylla reached the screen. Feminism runs strongly through both the film and the novel but the fact the movie involved such as visual aspect into Sybylla's life provided the public with much more entertainment than the original book written by Miles Franklin. The film and the novel both contain characters besides Sybylla that hold both feminist and antifeminist ideals. Both the novel and the film hold feminist ideals through their interpretation through varying techniques and character portrayals. Margaret Fink when she first read "My Brilliant Career" was inspired so much that she felt that she had to show the world that a woman in the 1890's could question the social values of her time and gain respect, whether it be out of the community declaring that she was "strange" or inspiring other fellow females to stand up for what they think is right. But this was also the main reason that the producer Margaret Fink and her partner Gillian Armstrong were aprehensive that the film would fail at the box office due to the social expectation that the characters Sybylla and Harry should end up being married and living happily ever after.
Common topics in this essay:
Harry Beecham,
Brilliant Career,
Five Bob,
Frank Hawden,
Sybylla Harry,
Luciana Arrighi,
Sybylla Melvin,
Gillian Armstrong,
Miles Franklin's,
Margaret Fink,
brilliant career,
harry beecham,
film novel,
feminist ideals,
margaret fink,
australian bush,
hold feminist,
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Acceptance Essays
