SOURCE: Roberts, Heather. “Mother, Wife and Mistress: Women Characters in the New Zealand Novel from 1920 to 1940.” Landfall: A New Zealand Quarterly 29, no. 3 (September 1975): 233-47.

[In the following essay, Roberts suggests that the female characters populating New Zealand fiction between 1920 and 1940 can be divided into three major categories: those who fulfill traditional female roles of wife and mother; those who intrude into traditionally male domains; and those who reject traditional roles in favor of a new place in society.]

Joan Stevens has called the novelists of the period from 1920 to 1940 ‘The Forerunners’¹ and the women characters portrayed in their fiction are the precursors of the women in New Zealand fiction after 1940. The three strands that can be traced through the novels of this period are apparent in New Zealand fiction before 1920, but there is not a sufficient body of literature on which to base a satisfactory analysis of women characters.

The novelists of this period portray three different types of women characters. Firstly, there is the woman fulfilling the traditional role of wife and mother. Secondly, there is the woman who should fill that traditional role, but is also an intruder into masculine strongholds. Thirdly, there is the woman who rejects the traditional role and seeks new functions for herself. One finds women authors writing of the first and third type, and male authors writing of the second type. It is significant that there is a sufficient body of writing of each type, especially in a literature that is not, in its totality, very large.

All three types of women reflect the changes which the position of women was undergoing at this time. The women who fill the traditional roles are a reaction to the women of the third type who challenge that role and undermine the security of those who had accepted being a wife and mother as natural for a woman. In the same way, the ‘liberated’ woman is a reaction to a long history of women in fiction seen primarily as wives and mothers. The woman as an intruder into male domains reflects the changing roles of both men and women.

It is interesting to note that no novel considered here portrays a woman in the role of friend. Especially, no novel characterises a woman as friends with another woman. Contrast this with novels being written in England at the same period, when Virginia Woolf, for example, was concerned to portray relationships between women, as well as between men and women. Does the isolation of women, caused by men turning to other men for companionship, make the women thus rejected incapable of forming fulfilling relationships with anyone? Or are the women in these novels incapable of forming relationships with other women because they have been conditioned to compete with other women ‘to get a man’ and cannot therefore consider a relationship of trust and respect with another woman?

Women in their traditional occupations are found most often in novels which could be classified as family sagas. These novels were not written with the intention of exploring women's role, but because of the nature of their subject matter they do make comment on the place of women in the society they portray. The intention of these novels is not serious. They are written primarily as entertainment—an intention not to be dismissed too lightly however.

In these novels, the authors unhesitatingly place women in certain roles because of their sex. If they stray out of the occupations which it is considered right and proper for a woman to have, there is always some unavoidable circumstance which leads them to do so, and they always hanker to be a wife and mother, and return to those roles (or assume them for the first time) as soon as possible. Thus Genevieve Pencarrow, born into a family where ‘Women had only one career … marriage … Girls must marry.’² takes up law and enters her father's law firm when it appears that there will be no Pencarrow to carry on the illustrious family name in the legal world. Scanlan sees Genevieve as ‘the new woman’ behaving in what seems to her (Scanlan) as a ‘masculine’ way. ‘Men could keep their business and emotional lives in separate compartments, each ruling in its proper sphere. But women were more single-minded. They could not so readily divide their interests. Training through the centuries had accomplished much for man. Woman had not yet achieved this regulation of her affections though its coming was already heralded and her adaptability was soon to be tried.’³ Genevieve fails to bear out the promise she offers in terms of carving out a new role for a woman. After ten years of waiting she marries Robin Herrick and ‘retires’ to be a wife and mother, a far more acceptable role to her family, and presumably to Scanlan, who finds it easier to portray Genevieve as a wife than she did to portray Genevieve as a lawyer. The reader is in fact never told what Genevieve did in the law firm, though in a later novel it is quite clear what her husband Robin does there.⁴ Scanlan obviously found it too difficult to imagine a woman actually doing work which hitherto had been almost solely a masculine occupation.

Similarly Heather Burnside in Heather of the South⁵ and Mary Morley in Castles of the Soil⁶ take on the running of their respective farms because the men in their families fail to do what is expected of them. Heather Burnside, whose femininity is constantly suggested by her exquisite piano-playing (always a feminine accomplishment in these novels) is rescued from her fate as a farmer by a rich neighbour. Mary Morley is not so lucky—her story provides the moral of Heather of the South. Instead of marrying a man who enables her to escape her ‘unnatural’ role, Mary Morley marries a scholarly impractical man who forces her to continue managing the farm because of his own incompetence.

A rather different approach from that of the three previous novelists is adopted by Joyce West in Sheep Kings.⁷ West deals with four generations of King women. The first King wife wins her husband by showing him how to build a house in the Maori style. The second King wife, Elvira, loved her husband with whom she has tried to share the breaking in of a rough farm, and returns to the family home declaring: ‘When you get married you lose your individuality. I want to work to do things, things that are of use, not just ornamental.’⁸ Unfortunately, because the family farm is prosperous and well-run already, Elvira is consigned largely to a conventional role of hostess and lady of the house. Her granddaughter, Valentine, enters more into the life of the station because it falls on difficult times during the Depression. In marrying a neighbouring farmer she declares: ‘I will prove myself as good a woman as my grandmother.’⁹ (Not a good omen, possibly, in view of what happened to her grandmother.) West's portrayal of the women's role in this novel approaches nearest to what must have been the position of women in a pioneering society.

The idea of mateship, of men together without women in an ideal relationship, though more strongly developed in Australian history and literature, is nonetheless present in New Zealand's concept of her own identity. A pioneering society breeds the idea of masculine solidarity out of the reality which exists in the attempts of men (and women) to break in new ground. A society only recently removed from its pioneering past as New Zealand is, continues the idea of mateship into a life which has become increasingly more comfortable physically, more urbanised, and where the roles of the sexes are more sharply distinguished than they were in a pioneering life. In a more urbanised life, attempts are made to formalise a relationship which grew up casually out of circumstances that existed on a farm, in a mill-town, or on the gold-fields. Hence the creation of male-only domains such as working-men's clubs, Jaycees, rugby and racing clubs. Novels are written which glorify the relationship between men, omitting women as far as is possible from the life that is represented.

The novels that present the ideal of mateship written during this period, were published within twelve years of one another, beginning with Hector Bolitho's Solemn Boy in 1927 and ending with John Mulgan's Man Alone in 1939. The writing of a considerable number of novels on the same topic during such a short period is due to the increasing move from country to town life, and the movement from a pioneering, rural society to a more industrialised, mechanised life. The novels represent, therefore, an attempt to capture something that had begun to disappear by the time they were written.

These novels are important to a discussion of women in New Zealand fiction during the period 1920-1940, in that by concentrating on men to the virtual exclusion of women, the authors tend to say more about women than if they had presented a woman as the main character. In these novels, such is the emphasis on masculine life that women characters are merely stereotypes like Pauline Marsh, Dorothy Winter and Myrtle Lawrence in C. R. Allen's A Poor Scholar;¹⁰ or troublemakers like Rua Stenning in Man Alone.¹¹ Sylvia Feldon in Alan Mulgan's Spur of Morning is seen by the other characters as a ‘freak’ because she ‘has a mind sharper, gayer, and far more reflective’¹² than those of her sisters, and appears to have the author's attention; even at times his literary attention. But this is not really so. Sylvia is included in the novel because she represents that class of people with whom Mark Bryan, the hero, has to contend in his rapid rise to fame. The story is essentially one of class struggle, the rags-to-riches account of the son of a shoe-repairer. The fact that Sylvia is a woman adds some conventional romantic interest to the main point of the novel, but she holds little attraction for either Mark Bryan or Alan Mulgan apart from that. This is shown by Sylvia's reason for accepting Mark's proposal of marriage: ‘What did one do if romance fled? The man had his work in the world, but what about the woman?’¹³ Though Mark, having lost his Parliamentary seat, marries Sylvia, his original verdict on women still holds good: ‘Mark had always been scornful of girls. They were poor creatures, and in this … a man to be a man should be a nonconformist.’¹⁴

In the other novels of this genre, no pretence is made to present a sympathetic or complete picture of a woman. Women are used insofar as they are useful to the portrayal of the male character about whom the novel is written. Man Alone is the epitome of this type. Women are not so much unimportant in this novel; rather they are a symptom of evil. Johnson, though essentially a loner, is able to form friendships with men, most notably with Scotty. With women he is incapable of forming a permanent or happy relationship. Mulgan's attitude towards women is uttered by the returned soldier who speaks to Johnson on the boat: ‘“It's home again for me mate … and there'll be the wife and the kids and all there waiting to meet us.” He spoke without enthusiasm.’¹⁵ The first woman Johnson meets is a prostitute who deserts him once he has bought her a drink. Most important in the novel is the relationship which develops between Rua and Johnson. This relationship, which grows out of inertia and boredom on both sides, breaks up ‘The companionship and interest he had … with Stenning in their work on the farm.’¹⁶ The trouble that Rua causes drives Johnson into the bush, and eventually back to Britain. It is another woman who drives Johnson out of Britain to the Spanish Civil War—his brother uses his wife's anger about Johnson as an excuse to suggest Johnson leave England. Johnson remembers her as ‘pale and mean with dislike of him.’¹⁷

Not so harsh in its treatment of women, and more positive about masculine friendship than Man Alone is Hector Bolitho's Solemn Boy.¹⁸ Timothy Shrove lives in a completely unreal world as far as love of women is concerned. Timothy marries Grace, an actress. The misunderstandings that exist between them, Timothy dismisses as being the peculiarities of the feminine psyche. ‘He supposed that women were strange creatures, beyond the ken of men; beyond the ken of psychological novelists.’¹⁹ When the marriage collapses, Timothy remembers his friendship with John Fielding, who was killed in World War I. ‘John was really the only person who had ever mattered. That love had been pure and true, without any hideous physical or sexual anchors to hold it to earth upon which slimy things crawled and lived.’²⁰ In the end, this relationship emerges as the only positive relationship possible. The relationship which exists between a man and a woman because of its sexual nature, is inevitably destructive. Bolitho does not blame Grace, but his sympathy for and concentration on Timothy's side of the story lead one to condemn Grace. Because the reader never understands why Grace feels as she does, it is difficult to have much sympathy for her.

In both novels of C. R. Allen—A Poor Scholar and The Hedge-Sparrow²¹—the important things of the heroes' lives go on in predominantly male enclaves. Women are useful as mother or wife, but as little else. Similarly, John A. Lee's Children of the Poor and The Hunted²² deal with a world which is masculine in its orientation. Lee's sympathy however with Rose Porcello is as great as the sympathy he has for Albany. The mechanics of the novel do not allow him to concentrate on her inevitable decline into prostitution. It is significant, however, that in writing didactic novels, Lee chose to concentrate on a male rather than a female character. From the brief references to Rose's history during The Children of the Poor it is obvious that her story is as horrific as Albany's. Why did Lee choose a male protagonist—because he thought that thus he would win more sympathy for his cause? Because he had a sneaking envy of Rose's ability to earn money from prostitution and escape the law, as Albany was not able to do? Or simply because Lee himself is a man?

Because these novels are a group, written on the same theme within a short time of one another, rather than being an isolated few novels written over a longer period of time, they establish a theme which had emerged previously in New Zealand novels, and which gains strength from this time on.

The concern with a purely masculine world has created a feminine ‘backlash’ in that there emerges from 1920 onwards another group of novels written by women about women. These novels tend to be aggressive in their femininity, more than the previous group are aggressive about their masculinity. Writing from a position of strength, as the novelists of male life are, allows one to be less vociferous in the utterance of an ideal.

The novels in this section are preceded in their subject matter by Sir Julius Vogel's Utopian novel A.D. 2000 or Woman's Destiny. Vogel's reason for writing his novel could well be the reason that any of these novels were written. ‘First it has been designed to show that a recognized dominance of either sex is unnecessary, and that men and women may take part in the affairs of the world on terms of equality, each member of either sex enjoying the position to which he or she is entitled by reason of his or her qualifications.’²³ The novel that comes chronologically at the end of this group provides what could be a fitting preface to any of the other novels: a quotation of a ‘little Chinese poem’:

“How sad it is to be a woman
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.”(24)

Certain themes recur throughout the novels: the meaning of marriage for women, the experience of childbirth, the relationship between mother and child, the idea of equality between men and women on a personal rather than on a general level, and the role that women are to occupy if society is changed—most of the women in these novels are caught between the traditional roles of wife and mother, and a new role which has not yet been clearly defined.

There are few happy marriages in these novels. Most are like that of John and Augusta Hannay: ‘Two people, solitaries, dreamers, winning out of their first environment, find a dog-chain twisting their ankles together … One day an ageing man looks around, and finds himself wrestling with an ageing woman, her face seamed with tears.’²⁵ Some of the novels—for example, The Story of a New Zealand River, The Passionate Puritan, and Bushman Burke—end with the promise of a happy marriage, but after reading a novel which details the defects of marriage, one wonders if happiness is possible in such an institution.

Marriages based on equality in these novels are doomed to failure. Anna and David Hawke in Show Down have a marriage that approaches perfection: ‘We knew passion that was almost too quick to bear … And we knew love that was gentle and friendliness that was fun and rows that were inevitable. And through it all we felt that nearness of one another that linked us up with life and all the things that you can't express but only feel.’²⁶ Before the marriage each agreed to tell the other of any infidelity. Therefore when David has an affair with Mary, the local telephone operator, he tells Anna of it. But the honesty which has formed one of the basic ingredients of the marriage, causes its destruction. Anna is unable to understand David's affair, and in what seems like retaliation, begins her own liaison with Howard, a neighbouring gentleman farmer. This relationship exacerbates the cultural and social difference which exists between David and Anna, but which have hitherto been submerged in the happiness of their marriage.

Similarly, the marriage between Valerie Carr and Dane Barrington in Mander's The Strange Attraction is destroyed by the agreements made by both about the marriage. Dane, who regards marriage as ‘a convenience in a crazy world’²⁷ persuades her that she won't have to be a domestic or look after him, or have children.²⁸ They arrange their lives so that neither impinges on the other—each has a separate study, bedroom and part of the verandah. They share the sittingroom and bathroom. The domestic chores are done by two Chinese servants. ‘It seemed that never in her wildest dreams could she have hoped for a more harmonious atmosphere in which to try to write.’²⁹ The situation becomes less than perfect when Dane becomes more ill and depressed, and Valerie finds herself wishing to care for him. But the servants cut her off from her husband. She reflects ‘What a grim Nemesis it was that should have brought her the kind of thing she supposed she wanted. One of her reasons for hating marriage had been the boring and ugly physical intimacy of so much of it … And now she hated what she had thought she desired. It seemed so cold and unhuman. It made her feel she was failing him in vital ways.’³⁰ Finally Dane writes to her and asks her to leave. Because of the inflexible position each has placed the other in in order to be married, the marriage collapses.

More orthodox marriages are no happier however. Augusta Hannay realises in doing what was expected of her—marrying and having children—that she has extinguished part of her own personality. ‘All her life from girlhood, she understood now, had never been lived at all, unless a woman is nothing but the machinery for producing and manipulating her children … Drudging in little houses, bringing up children, heckling John to make him what he wasn't, and didn't want to be—that wasn't life.’³¹ Ironically Augusta, despite her own experience, tries to persuade Eliza that ‘getting a man’ is important.³² It is the destruction of the illusions that surround marriage that often causes its unhappiness. Margaret Messenger in The Butcher's Shop thinks that the loss of passion for her husband after a few months of marriage is normal. However it means that she is susceptible to the sexuality of the new station manager, Glengarry. Her affair with him destroys the precarious balance of her marriage.

It is in Allen Adair that the shattering of illusions about marriage is most clearly seen. Marion marries Allen on the following understanding of marriage: ‘Marion was quite ready to accept from her church the right to be happy in marriage, provided it was never mentioned. And then she was really in love with Allen to the limit of her sentimentality and health. She had never, of course, looked into herself. She had only looked into the love stories in the newspapers. You married and you and your husband were one. No secrets. Protecting love. Undreamt of bliss. All that. The reward of virtue.’³³ That this is an insufficient basis for marriage is shown by what follows. Marion and Allen lead very separate lives, neither understanding the other. This becomes hostility when Marion accuses Allen of having an affair with another woman. ‘Poor Marion was suffering disillusionment as much as her husband was. Fed on romantic nonsense she had dreamed of the you-know-everything-about-me-dearest harmony that she was sure was the proper thing between husband and wife. She had dreamed of eternal love-making, of impossible deference, of an endless duplication of words and emotions. Of change, of individuality, of subtlety, she had no grasp whatever.’³⁴ Allen is no less deluded about marriage. He marries Marion because ‘the life force had got him.’³⁵ He has no more understanding of Marion than she does of him.³⁶

It is necessary at this stage to consider both the characters' and the novelists' attitudes to intercourse—the physical act which symbolises the bond made in marriage between a man and a woman. In very few instances is intercourse seen as a pleasant or desirable activity. Most women, if they think about it at all, regard it as Alice Roland does—as a duty. On Alice's first night home after staying in Auckland, Tom calls her to bed. ‘She clenched her hands. She had been away from him for a month. She knew that he had been thinking all afternoon of this hour. She knew that he would not consider the fact that she was tired to death. … In his eyes she would not be equal to her job.

She gave one hopeless look, like that of a trapped creature. …’³⁷

Though the women characters dislike intercourse, these women novelists have different attitudes to it. Some are as prudish as their characters about it—so Jane Mander in The River only hints at the extent of the relationship between Asia and Ross. The most explicit passage of Mander's about intercourse occurs in The Strange Attraction when Valerie Carr spends a night with Dane Barrington: ‘Valerie was full of the glory of this lifting of herself off the earth. She had never supposed that the man existed who could bring love to her clothed with the beauty and delicacy of some romantic dream.’³⁸ Jean Devanny is rather more explicit about the physical attraction which exists between her characters. So the first meeting between Margaret Messenger and Glengarry, the new station manager, is described thus: ‘He came straight to her. His eyes were like coals of fire in his head … She was responding to his madness … They were prey to elemental instincts, sharing with the habitat of the lair and the dweller in the temple the throb of creation's invincible urge.’³⁹ But even Devanny, the frankest of the novelists, cloaks the physical act in much purple prose.

Mention in the novels of intercourse serves two purposes. Firstly it is used to point out the suffering of women in marriage signified by their lack of enjoyment of intercourse with the men to whom they are bound. Secondly, it is used by the novelists to show the extent of their own liberation from a convention which prevented the mention of any physical relationship between a man and a woman.

The question of marriage is of fundamental importance to the place that women are to have in society. The role that women are cast into by marriage is seen by Devanny thus: ‘man … had decreed that woman the passive should be shut up in a house with man the virile and the latter have instilled into him this hideous man-made formula: This female is given to you by the law. She has no desires of the flesh except those inspired by you. Body and soul she is yours. And to the former this more hideous: You are the Mother; but first you are the Wife. To fulfil the primal function for which your body craves you must have food and clothing. And we will give you food and clothing on condition that you submit yourself entirely to the man at all times and at all seasons.’⁴⁰ This is the view of Escott, Hyde and Mander also, and explains why there can be no happy marriages, conventional or unconventional.

The suffering of women in marriage is exemplified by their attitude to childbirth. This is seen always as a hideously painful experience (as it presumably was, physically, at that time.) In the description of Dawn Devoy's first experience of childbirth, Dawn is seen thus: ‘Blue shadows were beneath her eyes, blue lines traced round her lips which snarled back from her teeth as each slow pain gathered, rallied to a poignant crux and left her suddenly …’.

‘Another tremor shook Dawn's body; this time a rending spasm which seemed to drag the bones back of asunder.’ As the labour progresses—and it takes many hours—‘She screamed; the awful horrid scream of a tortured animal.’ ‘She felt vaguely how attenuated was her hold on life … How she feared to breathe even, lest she dissipate some of her pitiful strength … Was this really pain? … Human imagination could compass nothing like this.’⁴¹

Not only is childbirth physically painful, it is anathema to many of the women because it ties them more strongly to a situation in which they are unhappy. Thus Alice in The Story of a New Zealand River ‘thought of the babies to come, the worst nightmare of this future life. …’⁴² Most of the women in the novels would share her sentiments. But just as marriage seems inevitable, so does childbearing. Very few women are able, as Valerie Carr is, to avoid giving birth. One suspects that even had they known how not to get pregnant, they would have considered it unnatural to have deliberately avoided it.

Though all the women in these novels are unhappy in the traditional role of wife and mother, they are wary of the new roles offered to them. Alice Roland's attitude to Asia's determination to earn her own living shows this. Not only does Alice object because she sees Asia enjoying the freedom she (Alice) never had; she objects also because she sees in Asia's decision to work the beginning of a new life-style that will help Asia avoid the unhappiness that Alice has known. In the same way Alice's worry about Asia's affair with Allen Ross is caused by Alice's knowledge that she too could have been as happy with David Bruce in a relationship which would have been inconsistent with her role as wife and mother. It is Asia's opportunity to make a choice as to her future that separates her from Alice, to whom at the same age there were seemingly no choices.

The same feelings of envy and hope are present in Augusta Hannay's attitude to Eliza's future. Augusta sees Eliza—intelligent, with a job on a newspaper which promises something more than most women's jobs do—as having the sort of life which she (Augusta), tied down to marriage and children, could not have. Despite these feelings, Augusta is anxious that her daughters get a man⁴³ and in this respect she has more sympathy for Carly who waits years for Trevor Sinjohn who finally rejects her, than she does for Eliza's neglect of marriage. Though Augusta ‘hated marriage’⁴⁴ she is drawn to it for her daughters because she knows what it is. Any alternative is too foreign and different.

It can be seen from the two examples quoted here that for different generations there are different attitudes and different expectations. The daughters force their mothers to re-examine their attitudes to their own lives, while they (the mothers) go on expecting that their daughters will repeat the pattern of their mothers' lives. The hope for the future is definitely with the younger generation—Asia and Eliza Hannay—when two generations are juxtaposed as they are in The River and The Godwits Fly. When only one generation is presented, as happens in Jean Devanny's novels for example, youth has no more cause for hope than any other age group.

The thorny question of class here obtrudes itself. Are the predicaments of the women here described simply those of one class in New Zealand society, or are they seen to be endemic to the situation of all women? Cherry Hankin notes that in the novels written by women before 1940 the women characters were ‘predominantly middle class. …’⁴⁵ This classification would apply also to women characters written by men during this period. As Dr Hankin notes in her article, it is very often the case in New Zealand novels that middle class women marry working class men.⁴⁶ The situation of women characters in these novels is a middle class situation because it is the middle class who is literate enough, articulate enough, and very often physically comfortable enough to consider such abstract ideas as what a woman's role should be.

One factor which binds all the novels considered in the article together, is the striking physical appearance of the main women characters. This does not mean beauty or prettiness necessarily, but it does mean that all the women are physically attractive. So Heather Burnside in Heather of the South has ‘little clearcut features and a queer elfin beauty … Her eyes were a deep flowing blue … Her dark hair, bobbed and waving over her ears, her straight short nose, and vivid little mouth. …’⁴⁷ She is very like Valerie Carr in The Strange Attraction who ‘stood tall and straight. … She was supple and loose-limbed. … Her vitality had run from her limbs into her amber hair.’⁴⁸ Asia Roland too is ‘beautiful … she had a fine white skin, delicately tinted, eyes with the subtle draw of deep pools, and masses of soft gold hair that waved with a dozen tints as she moved.’⁴⁹ Sylvia Feldon in Spur of Morning has ‘a body more supple and lovely than those of her sisters.’⁵⁰ Judith Silver in the novel of that name by Hector Bolitho is described thus: ‘Her shoulders and her arms and her black hair were beautiful and her expression was calm; her eyes were steady and sad.’⁵¹ Though the novels differ greatly in other ways in their characterisation of women, a stereotype is built up through the novels, of a certain physical presence which is bestowed on all the female characters.

From this point onwards the three types of women that I have described become more frequent in New Zealand novels, and as the volume of literature increases, the three strands can be more clearly defined. Women occupy other roles than those described here, and they assume other roles as one reads novels written more recently. The three roles examined here are evident in the period under review, and continue to be evident in novels written after 1940.

Notes

1. Joan Stevens: The New Zealand Novel, 1860-1965 (Wellington, A. H. and A. W. Reed) 1966, page 35.

2. Nelle M. Scanlan: Pencarrow (London, Jarrolds), 1932, page 301.

3. Nelle M. Scanlan: Tides of Youth (New Zealand, Whitcombe and Tombs) 1958 edition. First published 1933, page 95.

4. Nelle M. Scanlan: Winds of Heaven (London, Jarrolds) 1934.

5. Rosemary Rees: Heather of the South (London, Herbert Jenkins Ltd) 1924.

6. Beryl McCarthy: Castles in the Soil (New Zealand, A. H. and A. W. Reed) 1939

7. Joyce M. West: Sheep Kings (Wellington, Harry H. Tombs Ltd) 1936.

8. ibid, page 61.

9. ibid, page 256.

10. C. R. Allen: A Poor Scholar (New Zealand, A. H. and A. W. Reed) 1936.

11. John Mulgan: Man Alone (Auckland, Longman Paul) 1939

12. Alan Mulgan: Spur of Morning (J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, London) 1934, page 96.

13. ibid, page 308.

14. ibid, page 58.

15. J. Mulgan. op. cit, page 8.

16. ibid, page 105.

17. ibid, page 197.

18. Hector Bolitho: Solemn Boy (London, Chatto and Windus) 1927.

19. ibid, page 230.

20. ibid, page 290.

21. C. R. Allen: The Hedge-Sparrow (New Zealand, A. H. and A. W. Reed) 1937.

22. John A. Lee: Children of the Poor (T. Werner Laurie, London) 1934. The Hunted (T. Werner Laurie, London) 1936.

23. Sir Julius Vogel: A.D. 2000 or Woman's Destiny (London, Hutchinson and Co.) 1890. p. 328.

24. Robin Hyde: The Godwits Fly (Auckland, Auckland University Press. Oxford University Press) 1970 edition. First published 1938, page 107.

25. ibid, page 47.

26. Margaret Escott: Show Down (Auckland, Auckland University Press. Oxford University Press) 1973 edition. First published 1936, page 45.

27. Jane Mander: The Strange Attraction (John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd. London) 1923, page 176.

28. ibid, page 176.

29. ibid, page 239-240.

30. ibid, page 261.

31. Hyde, op.cit. page 175.

32. ibid, page 135.

33. Jane Mander: Allen Adair (Auckland, Auckland University Press. Oxford University Press) 1970 edition. First published 1925, page 64.

34. ibid, page 151.

35. ibid, page 59.

36. ibid, see page 78.

37. Jane Mander: The Story of a New Zealand River (Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, Christchurch), 1973. First published 1920, page 19.

38. Mander: The Strange Attraction, op.cit. page 163.

39. Jean Devanny: The Butcher's Shop (Duckworth, London), 1926, page 126.

40. Jean Devanny: Dawn Beloved (Duckworth, London), 1928, page 319-320.

41. ibid, page 207-209.

42. Mander: The Story of a New Zealand River, op.cit. page 14.

43. Hyde, op.cit. page 135.

44. loc. cit.

45. Cherry Hankin: ‘New Zealand Women Novelists: their attitudes towards life in a developing society.’ in World Literature Written in English, Vol. 14, No. 1, April 1975, page 165.

46. ibid, pages 149, 155, 157.

47. Rees, op.cit. page 16.

48. Mander: The Strange Attraction op.cit, page 3.

49. Mander: The Story of a New Zealand River, op.cit. page 163.

50. Alan Mulgan, op.cit. page 96.

51. Hector Bolitho: Judith Silver (Alfred A. Knopf, London), 1929, page 143.