Blokes Don’t Cry: Sentimentality and Masculinity in Colonial Australian Bush Poetry (2024)

Images of men dominate the Australian national imaginary. From the bushman to the bushranger, to the ANZAC – a particularly Australian brand of masculinity emerges from this iconography. These images are all united in their characteristics of practicality, ruggedness and bravery, held together by an almost religious devotion to mateship. This imagery works in constructing a myth, a masculine myth, that still today is continually reproduced and privileged within Australian narratives of identity. The classification of these images as “myth” does not, as Allan Kellehear and Ian Anderson argue, mean that they are “untrue”, but rather that “myths function to select and privilege certain experiences while marginalizing or ignoring other experiences” (1). Russell Ward began a criticism of this masculine myth in his 1958 work The Australian Legend, which remains the foundational text for criticisms of masculinity within Australia. In this study, Ward primarily argued that the “bushman” was foundational in Australian’s conception of themselves. In furthering this criticism of the implications of masculinity within the Australian national identity, Linzie Murrie notes that Australian identity should be understood “as a dynamic construction: a complex set of strategies and negotiations, of inclusions and exclusions, which enable and legitimate gendered power relations” (68). Subsequently, to imagine instances of raw emotionalism and sentimentality appears inconsistent, incompatible, and contradictory within this broader masculine mythology.

Yet, as this essay will detail, there exists various representations of sentimental bushmen in colonial Australian poetry that seemingly work in undermining the very masculinity it seeks to uplift. I define sentimentality as that of an “appeal to tender feelings”, representative of an array of emotions such as grief, sympathy, compassion (Solomon 9). As such, the denial or lack of portrayal of the emotional or sentimental bushman contributes to what Julie Ellison (20) and Jennifer Travis (43) have noted as a vast history in which men have sought to undermine and attack female emotionalism as to justify their own. Though as Australian historian Stephen Garton notes, there did begin a process of an everyday engagement in avoiding affect that began to define masculinities during the Victorian Era (54). This is a historical view consistent with Arthur Angel Phillips’ criticism of the iconic and prolific Australian poet Henry Lawson, he argued that his representations of the bush showed it ‘as it really was’, therefore lacking any sense of sentimentality. Phillips does argue that Lawson exhibits emotion but is quick to distinguish this from sentimentality. Whereby emotions were imbued with a sense of truth and naturalism, defining sentimentality as sensationalist, inauthentic, and excessive, an “emotionalism for its own sake, and at the expense of truth” (18).

However, an intervention into the dominant critical view on sentimentality like Phillips’ was challenged by June Howard in the late 1990s. In her seminal article, Howard attempts to destigmatise the term, arguing against the distinction and positioning made between emotion and sentimentality. She concludes that essentially all emotion is constructed as “neither the socially constructed nor the bodily nature of sentiment can distinguish it from emotion in general. Rather, expert ascriptions of sentimentality-like vernacular remarks-mark moments when the discursive processes that construct emotion become visible” (69). Sentimentality is thus a display of emotion that was overt and unmistakeable, void of any suspicion of artificiality. Cohesive to this definition is the function that sentimentality plays in eliciting emotional responses from its audiences, a fact important to artistic displays of sentimentality. The aim is not to simply represent sentimentality, but to promote it; to bring a tear to the eye or a lump to the throat of its reader (Bellanta 478). Eve Sedgwick has also noted the importance of sentimentality, avowing it as "the defining centre of [...] many judgements, political as well as aesthetic", of which "every issue of national identity, postcolonial populism, religious fundamentalism, high versus mass culture, relations among races, to children, to other species, to the earth, as well as most obviously between and within genders and sexualities"(180), positing its pervasive central role to our contemporary culture. Sentimentality, as important to the construction of national identity, is a particularly important fact that I aim to address within my essay. My use of the word sentimentality in the Australian colonial context is derived from Mellissa Bellanta. She remains the only scholar to consider male sentimentality within the colonial Australian context. Her scholarship is centred on uncovering and understanding representations of male sentimentality and contextualising them within the broader Victorian-era culture. Bellanta’s work can be organised within historical and cultural disciplines, which is where I diverge, seeking to create a discussion that is guided and informed by literature.

In uniting a vast history of gender critique, with an emerging Australian literary field, the genesis of my argument lies in how these representations of sentimentality in colonial bush poetry conversely work in both protecting and promoting the masculine social order that was being constructed in colonial Australia. This is achieved as the sentimental subject in colonial bush poetry was almost exclusively other men, allowing for the emotionalism of the bushman to avoid a charge of ‘feminisation’. This is due to the importance of homosocial relationships, or mateship, in mutually defining and protecting masculinity. This notion is articulated and will be investigated through Henry Kendall’s 1868 poem ‘A Death in the Bush.’ This understanding is furthered in Frederic Urquhart’s 1891 poem ‘Powell’s Revenge’, where its display of sentimental men not only protects their masculinity but also amplifies and promotes its dominance. This is achieved through the production of sympathy that is generated from bushmen on the frontier, given the tumultuous conditions. This display eclipses larger notions about colonial insecurities and anxieties, whereby bushman masculinity serves as the only force of control, in this sense affirming their masculinity. This criticism of these representations allows for the pervasiveness of the masculine myth within the Australian national identity to be meaningfully deconstructed.

As the bush almost instantaneously became a masculine space, women were considerably absent from sentimental representations in colonial bush poetry. Sentimental Bushmen and their masculinity were saved from being feminised given that the subject of the sentimental was another man. Henry Kendall’s “A Death in the Bush”, a long narrative poem that details the death of a shepherd in the bush, exemplifies this. The death of the Shepard propels the “rough, flinty fellows” to tears: This day, and after it was noised abroad ... That he was dead 'who had been sick so long', There flocked a troop from far-surrounding runs, To see their neighbour, and to bury him; And men who had forgotten how to cry (Rough, flinty fellows of the native bush) Now learned the bitter way. An assumption can be made from this poem that bushmen crying is an immense rarity, in claiming that they had “forgotten” how to cry. Distinguishable from the tears of women and effeminate men, the tears of the bushman are imbued with a preciousness. This infrequency and distinction of their emotion in this representation of sentimentality subsequently works in protecting their masculinity. This is also achieved as the sentimental subject is not only a man, but a man of the bush, and is thus imbued the vast masculine repertoire. The hardiness of this male subject, given that the bush was his cause for death, also works in rationalising the sentimental response. The description of the man as a neighbour within this context, is analogous with the Australian production of the “mate”, something which Ward affirms became “a consciously-held substitute for religion” (145). To mourn the shepherd is to mourn his masculinity and mateship. This display of mateship thus brings with it another set of considerations. Linzi Murrie notes that the important feature of mateship is its ability to mutually affirm masculinity, stating that “while mateship functions to protect the interests of men, or groups of men, through the exclusion of others, it also functions to protect the prevailing notions of masculinity through its capacity to authorise men's status as masculine” (74). As such, the man is not the sole the subject of sentimentality within the poem. He and the sentimental response to his death becomes representative of a vast and dominant homosocial order, one which naturally works in legitimising the masculinity of other men.

This view is consistent with Eve Sedgwick’s theory of Homosocial desire outlined in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Whilst Sedgwick acknowledges the term as a bit of a paradox, male homosocial desire refers to male application of intimacy and desire onto other men. Whilst homosexual desire is foundational to Sedgwick’s theory, my connection between mateship and homosocial desire is more closely associated with its implications of masculinity and power that she considers. She posits that it is through these bonds that male privilege is defended, simultaneously building it up, noting that “in any male dominated society, there is a special relationship between male homosocial (including homosexual) desire and the structures for maintaining patriarchal power” (25). In relation to mateship, Kendall’s representation of the intimate male friendship does this through both the exclusion and absence of women from the narrative. This notable absence represents the gendered exclusivity of mateship as the brutality of the bush can only be withstood by men. As such, as mateship consists of homosocial, this relationship outlined within the poem works in protecting their masculinity. Within ‘A Death in the Bush’, the death of the Shepard is representative of a vast and mutually defining masculinity that mateship consists of. As such, with the subject of the sentimentality being another man, their masculinity avoids feminisation of sorts. With mateship being a founding doctrine to the Australian masculinity, this display works in protecting the sanctity of the masculine myth.

Moreover, not only is masculinity and the myth protected within sentimental representations in colonial Australian poetry, but its dominance is also disseminated and promoted. As established in my introduction, sentimentality also consists of an attempt to inspire and incite emotive responses from audiences. When bush poets were most prolific in their writing in the late 1800s, Queensland was still largely a frontier landscape. As such, poetry arising out of the context dealt considerably with the conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people. In relation to poets of this period, Bellanta notes that “They… pressed their sentimentality into the service of settler colonialism: encouraging sympathy for white men, who suffered hardship and death in frontier localities, and discouraging sympathy for the Aboriginal peoples they dispossessed and/or killed.” The essence of this is best observed in the work of Frederic Urquhart, a former Queensland police officer and poet. Given his personal experiences working for the Native Police from 1882 to 1889 in various parts of the colony, his poetry dealt considerably with his personal experiences with Aboriginal opposition to settlement. Urquhart’s poem ‘Powell's Revenge’ is one of them. Found in the Carpentaria Times, the poem was written in response to the death of a Native Police officer and James Powell, a local cattle farmer, due to a clash with the Indigenous Kalkadoon tribe. As a result, Urquhart instigated a campaign that sought to disperse to tribe yet was met with violence from the local Queensland tribes: ... And there beneath a low bent tree They see a ghastly sight, And scarce could fancy it was he They knew was slain that night. And one spoke out in deep, stern tones, And raised his hand on high, 'For every one of these poor bones A Kalkadoon shall die'. Then mournfully they turn their backs Upon that lonely place, And ride away upon the tracks To give the murderers chase. ... See how the wretched traitors fly, Smitten with abject fear; They dare not stop to fight or die, And soon the field is clear-- Unless, just dotted here and there, A something on the ground, A something black, with matted hair, Lies without life or sound. Whilst this description displays the Aboriginal violence unremorsefully, importantly Urquhart works in centring the grief of the settler in their discovery of Powell’s “poor bones.” Whilst this representation of sentimentality hinders on the same principles I mentioned before that the male subject in a sense protects their masculinity, Urquhart’s poem also works in espousing and affirming the dominance of masculinity. Frontier violence, and Aboriginal clashes were central to the initial construction of Australian masculinity within the bush. Aboriginal presence inherently contradicted colonial ownership over the space in which they wanted to occupy. Thus, in staging the massacre as a “revenge”, it not only positions Aboriginal people as a threat to masculinity, but also naturalises Aboriginal violence as crucial to the protection of masculinity. Additionally, being a pioneer legend, Powell is also positioned as martyr, with his labours serving as the foundations to the nation that was developing. This settler violence towards Powell becomes metonymic for a larger colonial insecurity and anxiety both physically and figuratively, given the white man’s inability to adapt and control the landscape. Although inconsistent with the reality, emphasised within this sentimental display is the notion that the mythologised masculinity of the bushman is the only thing capable of establishing control over the tumultuous and unforgiving bush. As Lisa Feathertone notes “The mythologising of the Australian bushman — a study in healthy, strong and active masculinity, a working-man powered by his hard white body — implied a vitality widely considered necessary for the physical and mental conquest of the land” (73).

Despite this representation of sentimentality, the act of Aboriginal violence allows for the the verisimilitude of the tough bushmen to be retained and promoted. In aligning with Judith Butler’s understandings of gender performativity, where in relation to gender she theorises it as “doing” as opposed to be “being”, she states that: Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being. A political genealogy of gender ontologies, if it is successful, will deconstruct the substantive appearance of gender into its constitutive acts and locate and account for those acts within the compulsory frames set by the various forces that police the social appearance of gender (25). Whilst sentimentality within masculine gender performativity is not typically associated with established set of gendered acts, within the frontier lifestyle, Aboriginal violence is. This becomes one of the stylized acts emblematic of bushman masculinity.

Thus, within this poem the bushman’s performance is not threatened by his emotionalism, as both the retribution and violence become a part of the performance of masculinity. Further, due to their protective role in securing the frontier, the grieving bushmen within the poem becomes worthy of a sympathetic identification, as their violence becomes necessary for the security of the frontier and the colony. This production of sympathy thus allows for Australian masculinity to not only be protected, but also promoted, as their masculinity becomes eclipsed by larger insecurities of the settler colonial society and the subsequent Aboriginal threat to this.

Throughout this essay, I have sought to not only explore representations of sentimentality in colonial Australian bush poetry but also locate the relational connection sentimentality has with the masculine myth that dominates the imaginative national landscape of Australia. Observed with regard to two poems, this essay explores, through displays of sentimentality, the inference that the bushman’s masculinity is not only protected, but also promoted. Given that these poems continue in preserving the dominance of the Australian masculine myth, whereby its harmful social implications are difficult to quantify, my essay contributes to a larger critique of the role of masculinity in defining Australia’s national identity. This synthesis, which works to deconstruct the prevailing Australian gender order, therefore pushes for a loss in faith in the pantheon of masculine images and advocates for a more plural understanding of Australian identity.

Works Cited

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