The Well – Elizabeth Jolley (1986)
NUMBER: 87
Genre: Fiction; Origin: Austrian; Pages: 150
Satisfaction rating: 8.5
OVERVIEW:
Miss Hester Harper, middle aged and eccentric, brings Katherine into her emotionally impoverished life. Together they sew, cook gourmet dinners for two, run the farm, make music and throw dirty dishes down the well.
One night, driving along the deserted track that leads to the farm, they run into a mysterious creature. They heave the body from the roo bar and dump it into the farm’s deep well. But the voice of the injured intruder would not be stilled and, most disturbing of all, the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.
MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:
Late in the story an author enters the stage, the author mentions that she is ‘writing a perfectly horrific little drama set, do you see, in a remote corner of the wheat. Very regional. It’s strictly a novella. In writing it I have to keep to certain rules which have been accepted in literary circles. I’m in trouble already…’
What’s nice about this passage is that Jolley critiques her work while not undermining the story, nor blunting its climax. This winner of the Miles Franklin award is a tight piece of writing, a powerful study of isolation and obsession played out in a power struggle spanning two distinct generations. Far beyond me to say more than this power struggle results in a fascinating character study of both the dominant (but lame) Hester and submissive Katherine, or is it vice versa?
I particularly like the comments by Stephanie Trigg from the Australian Book Review which said ‘(The Well) is a detective novel without a detective, a thriller without a conclusion’. While this might not be to the liking of all readers, I embraced the surreal nature of the story, wonderful.
However, if reviews leave you wanting, Jolley’s exploration of this power struggle and representation of family has been the subject of much academic focus, here’s some great ones (well, the titles are great at least):
Bagworth, Pamela. “The Maternal Metaphor: A Study of ‘the Mother’ in the Novels of Elizabeth Jolley.” Diss. [PhD] University of Western Australia, 1993.
Carr, Julie Elizabeth. “Subversive Movement: Representations of Dance in Elizabeth Jolley’s Fiction.” Diss. [MA] La Trobe University, 1992.
Craig, Jennifer. “‘Tangled Utterly in Female Arms and Legs’: The Role of Creativity in Elizabeth Jolley’s Fiction.” Diss. [Honours] University of Sydney, 1987.
Cranston, C. A., “Deformity as Device in the Twentieth-Century Australian Novel.” Diss. [PhD] University of Tasmania, 1991.
Dougherty, Joy. “The Subversion of Phallocentric Discourse in Two of Elizabeth Jolley’s Novels through Their Use of ‘Point of View.’” Diss. [Honours] Griffith University, 1989.
FURTHER REFERENCES:
Read more on Wikipedia
Read more at the Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection
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