Mateship and the Female Body in Barbara Baynton's “Squeaker's Mate”

According to Peggy Brock, many of the discussions taking place today regarding the re-inscription of aboriginal women into Australian history and the legislation regarding land custody fail, for instance, to acknowledge ancient matrilineal concepts present in their cultures (8). In that context, a special category of hero was the selector, or small farmer of nineteenth century Australia. he "free selection" system was an attempt at land reform and incentive to the settlement of the large unoccupied areas in the interior by the governments of the Australian colonies, in which land was leased at relatively low prices. Besides droughts, loods, bush ires and plagues, the poor quality of much of the soil made available to selectors and the unfair competition between selectors and "squatters" (wealthier occupants of the largest and best lots), oten ended up in the selectors' failure to meet government and bank conditions. According to Kay Schafer, far from being merely descriptive of the adverse conditions faced by women, Baynton's narratives imply that women are "appropriated to positions of inferiority within the discourses of religion, politics and mythology; and sacriiced through [the dispersement of these discourses] to the dominant symbolic order"(149). [...]much more than an "appendage" (Barret 87) - in semiotic terms the recurrent 's along the text is signiicant - or a fragile and dependent wife, she is far superior to Squeaker, both in moral and physical aspects. he husband's unlattering nickname is a itting allusion to his weak and idle personality, as much as to his low intellect and physical appearance.