be the next day, in order to steal writing time in the evenings. She is able to briefly enjoy the pleasures of literature, visual art, and music when she stays with Grannie and Aunt Helen in Caddagat. As she enters Grannie’s house, Sybylla sees “three things for which I had been starving [pictures on the walls, books, and a piano]. An impulse to revel in them immediately seized me.” The way Franklin describes Sybylla’s desire for artistic and intellectual stimulation as starvation suggests how strongly she needs these outlets. When she must leave Caddagat to teach the M’Swat children, she is devastated to leave these marvelous resources, which, along with a more leisurely existence, have comprised the best time of her life: one in which she felt she could freely enjoy the arts.

Ultimately, Sybylla learns that the life of a peasant and the life of the mind are mostly antithetical. She recalls how her parents were once patrons of the arts but now, having “no use for them, had lost interest therein.” Though they once loved literature, they actively “discourage” Sybylla from exploring such “frivolous” pursuits. It is preached to her daily “that the little things of life were the noblest.” She is taught to endure and accept. Even aunt Helen, who lives in much more comfortable circumstances than her sister Lucy, reiterates that lesson to Sybylla when she protests her assignment at Barney’s Gap with the M’Swats. Being around people who are content to remain ignorant is intolerable to Sybylla. Though Franklin did eventually have a writing career, Sybylla equates her longing to publish her work with “Hope, sweet, cruel, delusive Hope . . . [that one day] my dream life would be real.” By the end of the novella, Sybylla seems convinced that her circumstances will prevent her from achieving her dream.

Her desire to become a writer sets Sybylla apart from the other women of her community in late 1890s Australia; however, it is her antipathy toward marriage that makes her truly rebellious. When Grannie writes to Sybylla’s mother to express concern for the girl, she highlights how important it is that Sybylla marry well. She worries that “she may be in danger of forming ties beneath her” if she were to stay in ’Possum Gully during her teenage years. Sybylla reflects that Grannie is “of the good old school, who believed that a girl’s only proper sphere in life was marriage.” Though she is not surprised at her grandmother’s priorities, Sybylla herself is completely against the idea of marrying: “I determined never, never, never to marry.” More than one man expresses interest in marrying Sybylla when she is at Caddagat, but it is only Harold Beecham whom she even considers. When Uncle Julius notices her flirtations with Harold, though, she tells him, “I never intend to marry. . . . I wish you would get me something to do, a profession that will last me all my life, so that I may be independent.” Her freedom from any and all constraints is the most important thing to Sybylla. She fears that marriage would be a “yoke” that would chain her to her husband.

When Harold proposes, then, it is surprising that Sybylla accepts a temporary engagement with conditions. Even before they are officially engaged, Harold grows jealous of Sybylla’s flirtation with other men, which only proves her suspicion that marriage would mean that she would belong to Harold. She does not want to accept the ring he offers, because it would make them “irrevocably engaged,” but she eventually takes it anyway. Sybylla blames “the social laws” that decree “a woman’s sphere is marriage.” Time and again, Harold and her family members are appalled that she spurns the idea of marrying a man with property and money, as if those are the only concerns that could determine her happiness. By the end of the novella, Sybylla must turn Harold down one last time, simply saying, “I do not mean ever to marry.” For Sybylla, it is the institution of marriage itself and all that it connotes that makes it impossible for her to acquiesce to such a union.