A Postcolonial Reading Of The Secret River

Since its publication, The Secret River has moved many readers and scholars. It has been considered as one of the outstanding works in the world. As a modernist writer, Kate Grenville greatly concerns the humanity and existence of human beings. As an Australian woman novelist, Grenville focuses on the communication and co-existence of the Aborigines and Whites in Australia. In The Secret River, Grenville tries to explore the people’s state of mind by describing the characters’ inner world.We are used to analyzing Australia early colonial conflicts from the perspective of the Binary Opposition. Many people tend to consider the conflicts to be the conflicts between the colonialism and the anti-colonialism; the conflicts between the black and the white. Most of us ignore a group of people——the white victims. Actually speaking, they are the really marginalized people. They are permanently expelled from the circle of the white mainstream society and are not accepted by the Aborigines. They are deserted by their suzerain as "rubbish". They disgust the colonists’ brutal activities though they themselves are the white who have to participate in the colonization. They want to be friendly to the Aborigines, but they have to join in the battle at last. After the slaughter, they are stuck with the sense of guilt.My thesis wants to study the novel from the perspective of post-colonialism, especially concerning the terms of "Orientalism","Subaltern" and "Other". By analyzing the white victims represented by William Thornhill, the value of my thesis is that we must concern the white victims as well as the Aborigines in Australia. Under the background of the Binary Opposition, concerning the white victims is helpful for Australian national communication and reconciliation.