#3 Essay: How Does Time Winton Present Social Class in Modern Australia in 'Dirt Music’ and ‘Eyrie’?

OK, so it has been a while since I have written a purely academic essay, but having read so much from Tim Winton lately, I somehow felt compelled to write something with a little more gravity. Here goes...

How Does Time Winton Present Social Class in Modern Australia in 'Dirt Music’ and ‘Eyrie’?

In Dirt Music and Eyrie, Tim Winton draws upon his beloved Western Australia to create settings and characters that are rich and raw. And with that rawness comes an honesty about how he sees modern Australia: on one hand it can be beautiful like much of its landscape; on the other it can be far from perfect, perpetuating the very same Anglo class systems that the Australian Dream sought to destroy. Through his own language and characters there is no doubt that Winton presents a world in which different Australians can live a very different experience. In Dirt Music the life of lonely, middle-class Georgie often contrasts with that of her lover, Luther Fox, and his luckless, cash-strapped family. In Eyrie the same can be said of the disillusioned Tom Keely versus the troubled Gemma Buck, her little grandson Kai and the criminals who threaten their very existence. And yet for all its strong presence this contrast can also be complex and hard to define: where at points explaining it in terms of income, education or even behaviour seems adequate, at other points there are exceptions to all of the above. This reflects Winton's ability to create characters as nuanced as this subject matter, where no way of life is romanticized above another.

Direct reference to class by name is very rare in these two novels. In fact, it is Eyrie which features the only two such references, though they serve an important function. When observing the gruff way in which Gemma often speaks to six-year-old Kai, Keely observes that ‘she had a brusqueness of manner in her dealing with the boy that was frowned upon in the middle classes’. This is an observation which draws a clear, partly judgmental distinction between their two worlds. However, true to Keely's polite, often submissive character this musing takes place only within the narrative of his thoughts, avoiding the more direct form of dialogue. Far more direct is the second instance where Keely's mother, Doris, tries to warn her son against becoming overly involved with Gemma due to his temptation to 'romanticise the working classes.’ She then parallels this with her younger self as a social worker during Keely's childhood. It was work driven, we learn, by the foolhardy, self-interested motives she and Keely's father shared, and she tells us ‘I was young. Vain. Idealistic[...] I just wish I hadn't been so romantic about it [...] . I wish  we'd known more, done a better job.’ That she appears wise rather than cynical here is proven by the help she now gives to Gemma and Kai, providing them with refuge from danger but without getting overly involved. It is also important that we see her as wise and take her warning seriously: tension is created here exactly because we know Keely is a romantic and will ignore her. And sure enough, he does become increasingly - and regretfully - entangled in Gemma's dangerous world. This serves as a dual reminder: firstly that to deny or romanticise the issue of class difference is often an attitude ascribed to the middle classes. Also, it can be a very naive mistake.

Beyond this, references to class occur in ways that are less explicit but no less powerful. The way characters behave in both novels indicates choices that often make them a product of their upbringing. In Eyrie, we are set up from the start with information detailing the differences between Gemma and Keely, both as children and adults. Though they lived in the same street as children, Gemma reminds Keely - and us - that his experience of Blackboy Crescent was ‘different’ to hers, and we soon learn that she has a history as a neglected child from a poor family, also that being ‘a bit of a stunner’ in her youth allowed men to feel entitled to sexually abuse her. Keely, by contrast, always had his ‘nose in a book’, ‘went to uni and that’ and so in his adulthood, she adds ‘[t]hese days you're just a bit more [...] I dunno. Posh [...]’ Gemma also perceptively hits on Keely's snobbery, saying '[y]ou're embarrassed. Arent’cha?[...] About me [...] Bein seen with me. In front of yer mum.’ Keely's yet-again unspoken reaction, that he 'bridle[s] at this [...]', having 'this person he hardly [knows…] calling him out as some kind of snob', works simply as an admission, however private, of his awkward reaction to their social differences. Having all of this knowledge near the start of the novel equips us with an understanding of why either goes on to commit the acts they do, and thus how they are often predetermined to act in certain ways due to their social status.

In light of this, Winton draws a connection between poverty and domestic violence, seen in the household of Gemma's childhood, where her mother 'feared [the violence of] her dad’. This in turn links Gemma's experience of poverty to her own aggressive actions. These surface most when she and Kai are under threat from some deadly criminals, and when she finds Kai missing, she arrives at Keely's flat, kicking at the door to be let in, to the point that Keely sees it 'jump.. in its frame’. The force she uses, however, is not that of the bully but of the fierce protector, since Kai is all she has. Keely's observation about the door frame reflects his sense of shock at such aggressive behaviour, highlighting the difference between Gemma and himself. Yet her protectiveness over Kai can be seen as admirable in its reflection of deeply entrenched motherly - or grandmotherly - instinct, and the fact there are a few references in the book to her ‘crying’ or 'blinking back tears’ in the face of danger show her to be brave rather than fearless, toughened by her life rather than heartless. Her capability to be admirable is not lost on Keely. After she confronts the highly dangerous Stewie, Keely is in awe of her, at least for an instant ‘a little bit in love with her.’ Admiration often springs from someone else possessing a quality we wish we had, however, and Keely's gentle, submissive nature, born of the caring parenting of Doris and Nev, is often derided by Gemma as 'soft’. He is also far more conformist than she, repeatedly insisting that she ‘call the cops’ reflecting the normal, law-abiding solution in outsourcing a violent problem to those employed to deal with it. Unsurprisingly, Gemma's response remains ‘you know that's not gunna happen’, showing a deep mistrust of the police who no doubt have failed to help her in the past. The gap between her and Keely is widened still in their final solutions to the problem. When Keely takes matters into his own hands, his choice to send poisonous, anonymous notes to Stewie, simply highlights his educated naivete that the pen is mightier than the sword. Not only does this process prove to be long-winded it is ultimately ineffective, contrasting sharply with Gemma's quick decision to meet violence with violence and run Stewie into the water with her car. In this way there is a primitive nobility to Gemma's actions: they reconnect her, Keely and us, with a world of instinct from which civilised society often divorces us. And yet Doris's warnings are needed here lest we romanticise Gemma's stripped-down, working class priorities. In her dangerous world, where Keely is soft and the police are not to be trusted, there is a solipsistic nature to her survival reminiscent of Thomas Hobbes’ philosophy and his State of Nature theory. It suggests that in a pre-civilised world where we do not follow laws, life is violent and famously 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. Moreover, since Keely represents the fate of those who enter such a world unprepared, his story works as a cautionary tale.

Adherence to laws, like those which Keely embraces yet Gemma rejects, creates a code of accepted behaviour in the form of social norms. In this way the Foxes’ farm-labouring lifestyle - itself one of the original definitions of the term 'working class' -  is, therefore, similarly antisocial. In an early piece of dialogue between Georgie and Fox, Fox reveals that his father was a fish poacher, or shamateur, in response to their 'pretty lean’ financial situation. Georgie's response of 'So. The disreputable Foxes’, met with Fox's admission '[t]hat's us’ gives the overall picture of how widely known the family's bad reputation is. That this dialogue serves as our introduction to the Foxes’ history means that for us their reputation has literally preceded them and it mars everything we learn about them hereafter. What is more since, apart from Fox, they are all dead when the novel opens, we only access their story through a few flashbacks and so they are dubiously immortalised by this same reputation. This sets the Foxes very much apart from Gemma since in their case, antisocial behaviour does not stem from abuse or the threat of death; rather, it seems to stem from a poor rural upbringing and the attitudes it has engendered. So where we learn here that Fox has taken the shamateur role into the next generation, his brother Darkie was also influenced by his father's antisocial choices, even if he was not actually a criminal. The scene right before the family are killed by an accident in Darkie's pickup truck is the most revealing of Darkie's motives and choices. On one level, poverty has, we learn, forced them as musicians to accept a paid performance that night; it has also forced them to have to bring the children since, we assume, there is no money for a childminder. Yet where the Foxes’ hand seems forced by poverty the reactions of Fox in this scene are used to reveal that choices are at work, too. Through his musings we discover that Darkie and Sal want to get 'blasted’ after the wedding, and we see Darkie's drunkenness in his 'bloodshot eyes'. Where it could be argued that heavy alcohol use can be seen as something typical of poorer people, the role of the sober Fox is to reflect that such drinking is still a choice. Likewise, then, is his decision to drive against Fox's advice 'probl’y best if you don't [drive]', as is the ultimate decision, no doubt fuelled by alcohol, to drive dangerously across the bumpy track, the act which kills all but Fox. Other elements have played a part here, too. The family's life of toil on the farm has created a dangerously relaxed attitude to the operation of trucks and other machines, evident in Bullet's fatal request that his father 'fishtail’ the car for their amusement; the fact that Bullet knows the name of this trick implies how familiar they all are with Darkie's reckless driving. Finally, the remote setting of the farm permits such recklessness. That is, far from the watchful eye of the police or simply other citizens, he is 'free’ to bring death to his family since the laws that would prevent him from such behaviour can neither constrain him nor protect his passengers. Through Darkie, then, we see the fatal combination of a poor upbringing made worse by poor, self-indulgent choices, however typical of his class they may be. In this way, Fox's position of the sole survivor of the accident does two things. For one, it highlights the tragedy possible, since innocents die, with all the factors at play in Darkie's behaviour.  Also, it is symbolic in that it offers hope: the same poor upbringing can also offer survival, if the right choices are made.

In the characters’ sexual choices we see further evidence of class-based attitudes. When Georgie seduces Fox, he remarks to himself how she seems oblivious to their unlikely partnership, observing ‘Lady, you're all over the place, you've never seen a boundary in your life.’ That she has chosen Fox is outrageous in a sense, but other responses from Georgie do not indicate a complete disregard for norms. She reflects a regretful tastelessness to her behaviour, thinking 'how cheap it [is], bolting for someone else’, and as good taste is something held dear to middle class people then she is judging herself by that very yardstick. However there is less self-awareness when she comes across an old photograph of Sally Fox and is intimidated by the sexuality exuded by the unabashed Sally, remarking that ‘she envies those girls their slutty self-possession.’ That she sees Sally as one of 'those girls’ reflects the social otherness Georgie sees in her, though in being made to feel uneasy about this, Georgie's solution is to call Sally 'slutty': an easy label to use for a woman, especially one of a lower class, whose sexual confidence intimidates us. This is enhanced by the simultaneous envy Georgie also feels, denoting how constrained she actually feels by such attitudes since Sally is, or was, never tied to them. Consistent with this are flashbacks of Darkie and Sally displaying their outwardly sexual behaviour, she ‘kissing his neck’ in front of a carful of people, and more explicitly when in front of Fox in the kitchen, their passionate kissing involves Darkie 'tugging at her nipple.’ This complete disregard for Fox's presence reflects what we saw earlier with Darkie:  a total self-indulgence that excludes a concern for the opinions of others, this time shunning the expectation that sex should be private.

With the single Gemma, however, sex is less a self-indulgence and more a need requiring immediate fulfilment. The fact she selects Keely for this purpose does not mirror the sense of mutual attraction that Darkie and Sally have; Gemma's view of Keely as soft simply makes him an unthreatening - and compliant - partner. Like with Georgie above, Keely certainly has sexual impulses, as evidenced by the 'lust’ he feels when Gemma seduces him, and his constant admiration of her body, 'those legs!’ and 'the soft curve of her butt.’ But where Georgie looks back and shows slight regret for her ‘cheap’ behaviour, Keely passively procrastinates to the point where, if it were not for the assertive Gemma, sex would not happen at all. That is, he never initiates any of the sex between himself and Gemma, and in fact often delays it with doubts like ‘[y]ou've got work [tomorrow]’. It is this sense of propriety surrounding sexual behaviour that can create prudishness before or after the act: it either condemns fulfilment for Georgie or stalls it for Keely. For Gemma, however, it remains as logical and transactional as anything else she does, as we see in two of her dismissive post-coital comments, ‘I just suddenly wanted to’ and ‘I got what I came for.’ What is more, unlike with Darkie and Sally there is no sense of Gemma actually enjoying sex; in once scene it is brutal and ends with her ‘smack[ing] the back of [Keely's] head and [beginning] to sob’; it is as if for her sex is like that of an animal; it is a need, not a want, yet must be addressed as quickly as any of her survival needs all the same and once over with, is not reflected upon. However, for her it is also a way of keeping Keely where she needs him, in the way predicted by Doris, and she is using the only tool she has. Whatever the end game, sex for Darkie, Sally and Gemma fulfils a basic function that exists in the moment; pre or afterthought is the preserve - or curse - of the middle classes.

Beyond behaviour, the characters’ names expose qualities similarly tied to their social class. The majority of characters across both novels, whether main or secondary characters, exist via only one name throughout. In the case of adult female characters the least information is given away as they remain, throughout, simply Doris, Faith (Keely's sister), Gemma, Georgie and Sally. Other characters, as we have seen with Darkie, exist via nicknames, though again these remain their only names. The significance of these shall be returned to below, but it is important to note here that it contrasts with the case of the male leads in both novels. By their fellow characters, Keely and the poorer Fox are always addressed by their first names, respectively 'Tom / Tommy’ and 'Lu'. But by the third-person narrator of each novel this is not the case and they are referred to exclusively by surname, Keely and Fox, throughout. Moreover, the frequency with which these references occur far outweighs the number of times the reader ever sees them mentioned as 'Tommy’ or 'Lu.’ This exclusion of first name has a dual purpose: firstly, the idea of the omniscient third-person narrator comes into play here, since such repetition of these surnames, and any attendant associations, is something shared exclusively between the narrator and reader, omitting the characters themselves. Secondly, it is a naming technique reserved solely for Keely and Fox and not for any of their relatives who share, of course, the same surname, or 'family name’, so , for instance, Doris is never mentioned as ‘Doris Keely.’ And then there is concept of a ‘family name’. The term itself also carries connotations of family reputation, of which class is an inherent part. So where their siblings seem free of such associations, Keely and Fox seem the ones most tied to this surname. In turn, they seem the ones most doomed to relive their families’ fates through the next generation, all the more blindly since this association is made far more apparent to us than it is to them. And so, it is with a kind of dramatic irony that we watch their fates unfold. So as we have seen, we have Keely the naive, bourgeois do-gooder his parents once were, a fate notably avoided by his sister Faith who avoids ever being named as ‘Faith Keely’. In Dirt Music, Fox and his brother Darkie may equally have inherited the Fox family poverty; in response to this, of the two brothers it is actually Fox who appears well-read and keen to move beyond such constraints, as evidenced by the works of Hemingway and poetry that he loves to quote, and the exchange between him and Georgie:

Was...was Darkie a reader? [Georgie asks]

Nah.

And yet Darkie, never denoted as 'Darkie Fox', sidesteps at least the infamous role of criminal that seems to come with the Fox name; it is Fox who is the shamateur just like his father, as he explains to Georgie

The old fella used to cut through that Buckridge land, slip out with the dinghy and

liberate a few lobsters from the pros’ pots. Boil em up, sell em on the sly down the

highway.

And though Fox may have escaped death on one occasion he still has to flee town when his crimes are exposed. At this point we are already aware that he is well-read, that in the face of Darkie he has been the voice of reason and thus in many ways is the far less antisocially behaved brother. That his outcome as criminal therefore seems surprising next to Darkie's only reinforces how pre-determined it appears to have been. What is more, during this same conversation it is still Georgie, another character, who has to point out the connection, saying '[l]ike father like son.’ This ties closely with the parallels Doris draws between the choices of her son and herself and the result seems to be the same across both classes: Keely and Fox seem to be the last to know how deeply tied to their family's status they are, and by the time it is pointed out to them it is already too late.

In other characters, names bely social standing in different ways. Like all the adult females and his grandmother Gemma, Kai is only ever referred to by one name; however, this time it is other characters’ reaction to his name which is telling. In a private dialogue Doris and Keely scoff at it, and therefore his family's taste in names, as follows:

Kai?

I know [Keely] said guiltily.

I spose he could be Jet.

Or Koby.

Listen to us, [Doris] said.

For all its self-awareness, saying 'listen to us’ and admitting to snobbery 'guiltily’ does not erase the snobbery; it only makes Doris and Keely somewhat hypocritical which is simply a typical middle-class quality. In Dirt Music, the link between the Fox family's names and their status is simpler as they only really exist (aside from Sally) via their nicknames. In the case of Fox's brother Darkie this exaggerated informality is taken to extremes. Since we are given the impression that the Fox family are Caucasian through references to Fox’s 'blonde hair’ and 'blue eyes', whether or not Darkie is darker in looks is immaterial: his name could be considered offensive since it is a known racial slur dished out by Caucasians against those of darker skin. The fact that nobody in the family, including Darkie himself, ever take issue with his name suggests that the entire adult family are either unaware of its racist connotations or that they do not care. Either attitude typifies the values at times associated with less educated people. Darkie's own young children also have interesting nicknames, his son being 'Bullet’ and his daughter 'Bird’. On one level these are both names associated with the Foxes' rural lifestyle involving weaponry and wildlife but this association also works on a more chilling level: in the name Bullet we have associations with speed, hardness and violence, in Bird vulnerability and fragility. These qualities seem horribly prophetic of the violent truck crash in which both are killed. So, not only do these names seal their fate, in doing so they freeze the children forever in an identity, tied to their surroundings, from which they can never depart.

If Bullet's name links to weaponry, other references abound which wed the Foxes to their life of rural labour. Machinery and tools are not just part of work, they permeate all parts of life, so that in the atmosphere surrounding the house 'the air is sharp with kerosene and vinegar.’ Yet a more darkly unpleasant connection between man and machinery is made in the shocking truck accident scene. When Fox discovers Darkie's body after the accident, Darkie's arm is reduced to 'pulp' as if the product of a factory process, the rest of him so damaged it resembles ‘a kitbag full of loose tools'. Sally has 'bits of metal protruding from her trunk’, she and the truck having so horribly become one that they even share a 'trunk’, a noun shared by humans and cars but normally with a meaning distinct to each. A grisly by-product of all this death is, fittingly, the blood Fox steps in that has a 'tarry’ quality, as if it is a chemical. And if machines can end human life then so, grimly, can machines be animated to have a terrifyingly lifelike quality: it is human and animal comparisons that bring the upturned truck eerily to life, with an ‘evil turning of the rear wheel’ and a 'beetle-like underbelly’ which leaves Fox 'revolted.’ With the farm's watermelon crops we see the final, interchangeable link between what is produced and the humans that produce it: in an earlier family scene there is a personified ‘sigh’ noise to the melons that Fox cuts open, then when carrying the halves, it is

one [half] in each arm, like a midwife with glistening twins

The promise of new life shown by the 'glistening twins’ in this scene is short-lived, contrasted almost immediately by the truck accident scene. This serves to make the latter all the more shocking, but it also serves, again, as the scene which takes all of this imagery to its final, dark conclusion. When Fox finds Bullet's body thrown from the vehicle wreck, Bullet not only lies ‘in the paddock’ like a plant or animal, his head is 'rent like a canteloupe.’ It is as if, in this environment, man, machine and animal do not simply coexist, it is hard to tell where one ends and another begins, and the truck wreckage scene functions as the awful culmination of this relationship.

In this harsh environment, animal references take us beyond death and reflect qualities needed to survive. As mentioned, six-year-old Bird's name immediately links her to her rural environment every time we read it. And sure enough, there is evidence of her qualities while alive that make her seem diminutive and endearing just like a small animal: we learn she is vulnerable and innocent in that she is 'perfect'; we also learn that she is ‘sharp’ which suggests an acute awareness, like birds have, of what is going on around her. Yet it is actually through her death that her ties to rough farm life become even stronger. It is when Fox finds her thrown from the truck that she is lying 'like a fallen kite'. This is a bird, of course, but now specifically a bird of prey, and one whose small size makes it a quick and calculating hunter. But if being quick and wily can be seen as survival qualities needed in her world - one of poverty and adults who fail to keep her safe - then this potential is realised too late and there is a tragic sense of irony to her death.  A similar development of this idea can be seen In Eyrie. Here, we discover how Gemma as a child was similarly ‘adorable', projecting the same birdlike innocence and vulnerability as Bird. Doris says Gemma seemed 'like a little doll’ but then later explains how her projected innocence and endearingness were qualities she had cultivated as an abused child so that adults like Keely's parents would want to protect her. Doris describes the young Gemma as ‘cunning', but explains how the adult Gemma could equally use Keely for her own ends. She explains

To survive they cultivate you [...] They learn to manipulate you.

She also adds that 'no-one can blame a little girl for seeking comfort', reminding us that in her dangerous, impoverished world, Gemma had no choice but to become as ‘cunning’ and manipulative as Doris says. The survivalist nature of Gemma's behaviour shows the untapped 'kite-like’ potential Bird can never realise and so it is fitting that it is Gemma who survives into womanhood.  However, in being sly and ‘cunning’ Gemma's instincts are also like that of the fabled fox, and in this way she is perhaps more fox-like than the namesake himself. What Fox embodies are less the qualities of cunningness and more like those of the scavenging pest: he poaches both Jim's livestock and his partner, Georgie; despised by Jim for both crimes, Fox becomes hunted down, just like the animal, in a chase across the dangerous outback which nearly kills him. With a less cynical capacity for survival than Gemma, all that can save Fox is an open, generous heart that is actually very much human. His devotion to Bird has kept him up at night tending to wet beds and nightmares and so he becomes the true father figure Darkie has failed to be, loving the children ‘as his own. Sometimes it surprises him to remember they're not.’ His forgiveness of his brother, even of his final, deadly act of selfishness in the truck crash, shows an ability not to become hard-faced and turn against people since he still risks his life saving Georgie, the woman he loves, from drowning. It is this humanity and capacity for love that brings Georgie back to him in the end. Perhaps animal instincts tie these characters to an environment of poverty but in Fox's case, it is his humanness that sets him free.

Of all the language that exposes class differences, the characters’ own language does it the most clearly. Through dialogue we see how they choose to express themselves and through Keely, Doris and Georgie a use of standard English belies their educated status. Doris and Keely’s rapport is often based around a shared love of word games, for example:

You're exhausted [said Doris]. Here, let me finish this.

No, [Keely] said. I'm good.

I know you're good, she said. What I'm wondering about is whether you're well.

Too late in the day for a grammar lesson, Doris.

The playfulness of this banter, though, comes right after Keely has has almost fainted trying to wash some dishes. However lighthearted it may appear it is typical of such exchanges between these two:  a thinly veiled comment of concern from Doris about her son's well-being. Also typical is that the double-entendre to this conversation affords Keely the chance to avoid giving a straight answer. It is this smug evasiveness possible with wordplay that is so despised by Gemma, whose own straight-talking, less-educated dialogue contrasts so sharply with it. In another scene, a very drunk Keely may both impress us - and amuse us - with his ability to remain articulate but an unimpressed Gemma refuses to be condescended to, saying  '[g]et stuffed. The five-dollar words, they don't make you sound any smarter.’ In one sentence she does two things: she equates using high register language with having money, since these are 'five-dollar words'; she also cuts through his self-indulgence with language to contrast his waffling: a typically coarse imperative to 'get stuffed.’ She even turns Keely's educated label on its head when she says her own common sense and sharp ‘instinct’ comes from 'the University of hard knocks '. And if language signifies status, it is Gemma again who draws the distinction between the old Doris and the current one:

She's changed [Gemma says]

Well she's an old lady now [Keely replies]

Not that, she said. All this stuff. Way she talks. Kai, he's such a delightful child.

He shrugged [...] it was true, the vocab had moved up a

peg or two.

What Gemma can see far more clearly than Keely is that the elevation of register in Doris's speech mirrors Doris's more reserved attitude to the adult Gemma and 'the working classes’. Ultimately, putting linguistic distance and social distance between yourself and someone else is often one and the same thing.

The ugly pomp possible with high-register language is also not lost on those who use it. For all Keely's love of fancy language at times, his hatred of it when others use it is evident in his cruel teasing of his ex-wife Harriet:

Tom, we've covered this, she said briskly. In several fora.

Fora.

Stop it.

Keely saw what this was doing to her. She'd put herself in the same room as him and he was

doing this to her.

The hypocrisy we saw in Keely earlier returns here, reflecting a self-loathing common to those who tease or bully. It relates to an earlier passage where Keely runs into a young, ex-employee whom he mocks for his enduring sense of social conscience and also his choice of shopping: '[l] ook at you, buying organic. Like a trouper.’ The fact the young man is ‘stung’ in response means he is all too aware that he is being teased for being middle class and the reference to 'buying organic’ is a just signifier of that.

If standard English can be used to convey pomp and snobbery, to skirt around rather than to identify the truth, it is not surprising how much Gemma, Kai and the Foxes appear to favour the language of dialect, slang and expletive. In the case of expletives, there is a statistical difference in Eyrie between the number of times words like 'fuck’ are uttered by different classes of character. So, unsurprisingly, Gemma's use of the word far overrides Keely's. At its most basic level, this serves as a constant linguistic reminder of the two characters’ differences throughout the novel, apparent every time we see Gemma using the word. The use of Australian vernacular across both novels, however, is exclusive to lower-status characters. So, where dropped g's and word-merges like ‘ooright’ (alright) and ‘carn’ (come on) abound among Gemma and the Foxes they exist nowhere with Georgie, Keely and his family. This again works as an immediate symbol of class with every occurrence. But on another level, vernacular language attains a deeper purpose, where reading it is often not as lazy as its delivery might suggest. Ironically, it can arrest the reader and often demand more care to decipher. The result is that, rather than being skim-read as is possible with Standard English, words like ‘ooright’ attain a gravitas perhaps not afforded to them in everyday life. For Gemma, curt imperatives to Kai become even more no-nonsense when clipped, so the abruptness of ‘carn’ serves far better than its standard English alternative. Her dropping of words deemed extraneous not only makes more short and aggressive the sound of what she says, utterances like 'bloody tell me what to do’ reflect the urgency of someone who has no time - or words - to waste in a life of danger.

It would be tempting at this point to see Tim Winton as an author who deems one type of English as better than another, that the function of language should be celebrated over its form and therefore, that the language of one class of people is superior to another. But he resists this simple conclusion and, as I noted at the start, he resists romanticising either class as superior. While the language of the educated can be used in power play, there is equally unpleasant use for slang and the like among lower class characters. Darkie's name alone may be considered offensive, but his dialogue can be more so, evidenced in his references to 'blackfellas’ and ‘Abos', both derogatory terms for indigenous Australians. That he, a Caucasian, never says anything explicitly negative about these people is immaterial, since it is already language dripping with connotations of white oppression and abuse. This is picked up on by Sally in her chiding remark 'give over, Darkie', though it is unclear here whether she is unimpressed he has used the terms at all, or simply in their children's presence. A link to this exists in the case of Gemma, who more angrily references ‘abos', 'boongs’ and ‘cheap Chinks', all in terms of their encroaching upon the land where she used to live, and the employment she has tried to find. In this instance she, too, is chided; in her case it is by Keely who orders her to 'stop it'. And where Keely can be hypocritical, it is hard to imagine many readers of Winton disagreeing with his distaste for such language. Whether wilful or not, the ignorance it exposes cannot be celebrated as a positive human quality. Moreover, in deriding groups of people it reveals Gemma and Darkie to be as capable of snobbery and prejudice as anyone else.

If language can denote class, then through Fox and Kai we see its power to help characters transcend class, too. For Fox slang-based utterances like ‘youse’ (‘you’ in plural) and ‘fair dinkum’ may well remind the reader - and Georgie - that to some extent he will always be a Fox. However, there is no point in the novel where he adopts the offensive terms used by his brother, and though we may assume he uses it, there is not even any point at which the name 'Darkie’ actually appears in his dialogue; the only denotation of Darkie in Fox's speech occurs at the one point we learn Darkie's real name, 'William.’ In these ways Winton creates a distance between the language of Fox and that of other lower class characters, a gap widened still when we see the elevated language Fox is in love with. For all his day-to-day use of slang, the 'literary litmus test’ set by another character, Bess, belies his knowledge of Virginia Woolf, Shelley, Melville and Anne Sexton: all writers studied in universities which, unlike Keely, Georgie and the like, he has never attended. The aspiration, though, is nonetheless present in Fox. In this same hopeful way we see it in the much younger Kai; Keely is constantly awed by the fact the six-year-old is 'so bright', fascinated, like Keely himself, with latinate animal names and the language of fact:

Extinct, [Kai] whispered, as if tasting the word, trying it on for size.

However, for Kai there is an even bigger gap between language used and language loved. His speech is also peppered with grammatical errors common to dialect ‘I knew you was real...I seen it.’ For a typical six-year-old this could be seen as endearing, but for a child with his intellect it serves more as a reminder of the kind of English he is overridingly exposed to, and which he copies uncorrected, since it mirrors the way Gemma speaks, for example, ‘I wanted them rats'. As if to make concrete this same reminder, the various scenes where Keely and Kai share their love of words are often cut short by Gemma with abrupt orders like ‘Ooright, you two...lights out'. It is as if Kai's exploration of his own potential is constantly interrupted by Gemma and the language of command and transaction, where words loved for their own sake have no place.

Perhaps Winton's own view on the value of language and aspiration, and how it relates to class, can be seen in how he presents the endings of both novels. In Keely's choice to escape and take Gemma and Kai with him to start a new life, there is a sense that two worlds can coexist rather than compete, and that Kai is the embodiment of this coexistence. With Fox we see something similar in the fresh start possible with Georgie, who lets him 'swim her up [from drowning] into the rest of her life.’ But again Winton avoids simplistic or naive conclusions since these endings are otherwise left open and there is no explicit reference to a happy ending, only hope. This is fitting because as we have seen, there is an ugliness to both classes in these novels, shown to us so powerfully that to imagine its dissolution would be to miss the point. The final message here, however, is expressed by an author as clearly in love with language as any of his characters, be that the language of poetry or dialect. It is that there can be snobbery and weakness on one side of societal boundaries, danger and ignorance on the other; both, though, can be overridden by a belief in humanity.  

Erica Barlow