Relative Reasonableness

Kate Grenville is one of the most outstanding writers in Australia. The Secret River (2005) is generally regarded as her masterpiece. Since its publication, it is admired by critics and readers around the world. In 2006, it was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and short-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Man Booker Prize. In this historical novel, Grenville tells a story about an exile based on the history of her family. The main research work of this thesis is aimed at the relativity between borrowing and developing in the context of the history and the prior texts.Based on the perspective of New Historicism, this thesis firstly analyzes "the historicity of texts":how the text reflects the objective historicity of social background on the one hand, and how the author proceeds literary creation from family history to be a part of Australian history on the other hand. Then, from "the textuality of histories", it analyzes intertextuality between the novel and the prior texts, and clarifies how the author finds her own viewpoints on the issue of racial violence through an anecdote. Grenville devotes a major section of protagonist’s growth and exile experience, and skillfully involves her family history into national history. From a microscopic perspective, the formation of Australian society is discovered. With the development of the story, the perception about national problems spreads out before readers, making the story well joined, which really achieves coherence and unity with regard to the narrative. Through the analysis, readers can observe and consider in a particular circumstance whether it is deliberately arranged or not that would reflect some of the ways of thinking and the social environment. Only when the objective coexists with the subjective in some relative reasonableness can achieve effective reading and writing. Otherwise it will lead to a rather extreme point of view. Narrative can be reasonable without variance with the historical facts. Associating to a more faraway history and also modern life, the scope of one story has been extended to a larger degree, and the significance will be far beyond a single work.