Barbara JefferisResenhas

Barbara Jefferis (1917-2004) was an Australian author. She was married to the journalist John Hinde, a fact which is relevant to her profile because he established the $50,000 Barbara Jefferis Award in her memory, with prize criteria that were dear to her heart. It’s an award that is made to the author of the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society. Both he and she, I suspect, would have been disappointed by the remarks of this year’s chief judge, Sandra Yates, who was reported in the SMH as saying of the entries that a surprising number featured domestic violence, death or the subjugation of women and that the first three books [she] read from the longlist saw one woman burnt at the stake, one woman pushed off a cliff and the other a victim of domestic violence:

“We were surprised, I have to say, that so many even in the longlist seemed to have such dark, negative portrayals of women in them,” she said. “We [women] don’t need any more books about our capacity to endure, I think we have established that.”

So I am not the only one sick-and-tired of the current crop of misery memoirs and novels featuring women as victims…
Barbara Jefferis wrote radio dramas, serials, docos and prize-winning fiction featuring empowered female central characters, but Three of a Kind is a biography of three women from the same family who broke the mould. This is the blurb:

This is a biography of three remarkable women from one Australian family, set against the social and economic background of their time. From successive generations, living and working between 1850 and 1920, each was talented, resolute and spirited; each had a career at a time when careers for women were rare.
Susan Brown, born 1819, was a successful actress for sixty-three years; her daughter Harriet Wooldridge acted briefly then bore a large family; her granddaughter Mary Card was a teacher, writer and finally a hugely successful designer of crochet patterns, known world-wide.
Barbara Jefferis, better known for her nine published novels, here brings the lives of these women into close focus, revealing how they have been neglected in recorded histories but showing how their individual lives, when explored are full of interest and implications.

Wikipedia, of course, did not exist when Jefferis wrote this bio… I bet she would have been pleased to see the entry for Mary Card both there and at the ADB Online. I’m not surprised that Harriet Wooldridge doesn’t have a presence as her career was brief, and motherhood, even of a very large brood, doesn’t rate as significant at Wikipedia. But Susan Brown should be there: she had a remarkable career. (It’s possible that she is, somewhere, because her stage name was spelt so many different ways, (Watson, Wooldridge, or Watson-Wooldridge or Wooldridge-Watson). So far I can only find US and UK actors of that name.)
Although there is a great deal about the career of Susan Brown a.k.a. Wooldridge (& its variations), it was the section about Mary Card that I liked best. Inspired by the example of her mother and grandmother, she wanted to be independent, and she first set up a small private school called the Astolat Ladies College, one of a surprising number in Melbourne after the passing of the 1870 Education Act that made education, secular, compulsory and free. Jefferis doesn’t use the word ‘snob’, but explains that the explosion of little private schools was due to two things:

the lack of preparatory schools for the Public Schools, and the determination of middle-class parents that their children should be educated anywhere but in the State School.

Mary Card’s school was very successful but after just a few years she became profoundly deaf and could not continue to teach. She then tried her hand at writing and her occupation is listed in the 1903 and 1912 electoral rolls as ‘journalist’. But it was another form of writing which made her famous around the world. To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/11/08/three-of-a-kind-by-barbara-jefferis-bookrevi...