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While the lives of Aboriginal women are not the main focus of The Secret River, Grenville attempts to include many different perspectives and experiences that Aboriginal women lived during the beginnings of settler colonialism. Women who are a part of the Aboriginal community residing on the Hawkesbury River include one that Sal names "Polly" (Grenville 206). Will Thornhill confronts an Aboriginal woman who is unafraid of him and mostly ignores him (Grenville 200). Other key Aboriginal women players include Blackwood's wife and Smasher Sullivan's sex slave (Grenville 216, 262). We do not get the actual names of any of these women in the novel.
Nor do we get a lot of context about the lives of these characters. Told from the perspective of white settler colonists, even the observations about these women characters are expected to be unreliable, skewed, or outright false. Therefore, much of this section will be based on research and predictions about what the lives of these Aboriginal women characters may have been like.
Bodies
For the Aboriginal women in The Secret River, their bodies are not a source of shame. Revealing their physical selves does not carry the stigma or scandal that it did for European culture at the time (Edmonds 117). (Of course, this excludes Smasher Sullivan's sex slave whose nakedness was likely from the malevolent abuse rather than cultural practice.) Aboriginal tradition also celebrated women's bodies for their ability to bear and raise children (Edmonds 146). And since this sometimes occurred with white men, some scholars consider Aboriginal women's bodies to be a form of contact zone (Edmonds 16).
Grenville's Aboriginal women characters exhibit a drastic contrast in portrayals of sexuality. For Smasher Sullivan's sex slave, her sexuality is used to objectify and erase her, a tool for systemic oppression (Dimri 190). It is a symbol of immorality, as even loyal husband Will is tempted to take her (Grenville 263). Aboriginal women's bodies are dehumanized and discarded yet again when they are ruthlessly slaughtered by the white settlers (Kossew 16). Yet for Blackwood's wife, her sexuality humanizes her and gives her a role in this predominantly-white community (Grenville 216). Either way, Aboriginal womens' sexuality is only presented in contexts that benefit white men, which hopefully Grenville intended to be problematic.
Duties
In The Secret River, the main duty we see the Aboriginal women fulfill is to collect food (Grenville 206). If men were unsuccessful with hunting, which was often the case, women would be the main food providers by collecting plants, eggs, and shellfish. Women would also make clothing and tools. Since aboriginal communities were also founded in collectivism rather than individualism, the Aboriginal women characters would have been more motivated focused on supporting their whole community rather than just themselves or their household.
With this being said, it is important to note that the Aboriginal women living with the rest of the Aboriginal community seem to have more free time and a better quality of life than both Sal in London and the settler colonist women (and possibly the Slippers Lady too). This distinction may contribute to why Will Thornhill realized that in a way, the Aboriginal community lives like gentry.
Power
Aboriginal culture does not regard land as something that can be owned or bought, so Aboriginal women in the early 19th century would not think about their power in terms of property ownership (Dawson 98). And in a collectivism-based culture, organization and playing to each person's individual strengths were of vital importance. These features led to Aboriginal women's autonomy and authority over certain tasks (Dawson 18). Perhaps the Aboriginal women characters also regarded themselves as having some power in being connected to their land. As Will sadly reflects at the end of the novel, he will never be as connected to the Hawkesbury River land as the Aboriginal people are (Grenville 344).
The same could be said for having power come from the strength of their community supporting them, which makes it even more tragic that Smasher's sex slave was stripped from all that. Lastly, the Aboriginal women characters have some more power than Sal in the sense that the cruelties of settler colonialism are not hidden from them. This may be out of necessity for their survival, but it may also be because their coping capabilities and general intelligence are more respected in their culture.
Significance
When it comes to her Aboriginal women characters, Grenville is trying not to speak for a culture that is not hers. At her best, she attempts to expose Aboriginal women as multidimensional beings and to highlight their suffering but also their joys and strengths. She especially asserts that Aboriginal cultures were and are not 'savage' or 'primitive.'
Further, Grenville contrasted the way the Aboriginal women live and perceive themselves with that of the white women. The standards, ideals, and norms regarding women's bodies, duties, and power are very different between different cultures and classes, which leads to complexities in the way characters view each other. For instance, Will thinks most Aboriginal women are ugly because the way they express their bodies and their physical features are different from what he is used to. Yet he does desire the sex slave for a moment, so maybe he gives up some of these culturally-conditioned notions? The same can be said for Sal, who looked down on the Aboriginal women until she visited their camp and realized they performed most of the same domestic duties she did (Kossew 16).
And still today, Aboriginal women are not written about much in academic environments. When conducting my research, I found the least scholarship on this group. Maybe Grenville particularly wanted to highlight Aboriginal women stories for this reason, although some have argued that she did not give her Aboriginal characters enough personalities, character development, and voice. These can lead the characters to come off as unrelatable and still "the other." In the future, hopefully we will see better representation of Aboriginal women characters and other women characters from the time period of The Secret River and all the complexities of their bodies, duties, and power.
Image: Aboriginal women from tribe in Zeilgherry Hills
Link: https://postimg.cc/6T9xTwHZ