Bernadette Brennan

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419 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard May 2018 last heard 29 May

Bernadette Brennan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Bookshelf · Summer Bookshelf celebrating Australian writing · 22 Jan 2021 podcast

And it gets published in 1901 when Miles Franklin is a little older.

Now that actually, I mean, she is one of the first cautionary tales about Australian celebrity.

I think she found out the hard way about what happens when you put the dirty linen out in public.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I'm glad that you mentioned that toxic relationship with her mother, which is just truly awful.

But it's also so strongly about class.

And so for those who haven't read it before,

Sibylla is one of half a dozen kids in this dreadfully poor situation.

Her father's drunk.

Her mother was well-born, but made the mistake of marrying for love and now is living out this nightmarish existence and taking it out on her kids.

At some point, Sibylla is invited to her grandmother's house and her beautiful, elegant

Aunt Helen is there.

Helen also made the mistake of marrying for love and her bounder husband basically just deserted her.

So she had to return home to the shame of a life of a deserted wife.

And she would, she's very...

keen that Sabilla doesn't make the same mistake.

But what happens to Sabilla is that she's introduced to the world of art and literature and ideas and paintings and beauty and piano music and

conversation and dancing and the art of, you know, middle class, upper middle class Australian society, which she clearly knew existed because she'd learned of it from her mother, but not had tasted it.

And so there's this exquisitely cruel period of her life in this book where she's living an absolute dream.

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