Grenville on the frontier

Rather than read The Secret River as 'true history' by cordoning off its departures from the historical record (or, as Clendinnen advised, by returning it to the fiction section), we might instead think of it as a critical appropriation of frontier mythology. The genre that best captures this critical appropriation of the national myth is the historical romance. The romance form is released from the demands of historical accuracy implied by realism. The so-called liberties the novelist takes with the historical record no longer need excusing, for they mark the points where a historical defense of progress is mounted. The old criticism of the historical novel as costume drama does not apply to historical romance, which restores the boundaries"”between past and present; fictional and historical"”that Grenville's empathy tries to overleap. By restoring these boundaries we can see how The Secret River uses the distance provided by an imagined past to address the social issues of the present, namely Aboriginal recognition. In this reimagined version of frontier life, the convict settler Thornhill is infused with a wider consciousness of his actions than any settler could possibly have had. With their eyes on Grenville's exorbitant methodological claims, historians dismiss this infusion as mere projection: the cosmopolite in pioneer dress. But if the narrative goal is not the past but its inheritance in the present, including its mythologized presence in current discourse, then the charge of anachronism doesn't stick. Grenville's most important tool lies not in the archive or even in her empathy but in myth. The Secret River does not attack the pioneer legend as racist and sexist ideology (after feminist and postcolonial scholarship), but rewrites it, updating the national myth to bring it into line with the cosmopolitan orientation of the present. The narcissism of settler subjectivity is exploded in a critical retelling of the national myth, providing orientation in the present with an expanded sense of national belonging. The progressive achievements of social inclusion that have characterised the political scene since the Whitlam era are thereby included in the national story.