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@article{196051,
author = {A. Aparna and Dr. C. Anita},
title = {Women At the Edges of Empire: Gendered Representation in Kate Grenville’s Colonial Trilogy},
journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
year = {2026},
volume = {12},
number = {no},
pages = {1-4},
issn = {2349-6002},
url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=196051},
abstract = {This article delves into the gendered portrayals in Kate Grenville's colonial trilogy, The Secret River, The Lieutenant, and Sarah Thornhill and explores how women are positioned in colonial historiography. Traditionally, narratives of Australian settlement have primarily focused on masculine aspects like exploration, conquest, settlement, and dispossession. However, Grenville's novels put forth the female experiences as part of colonization. Using postcolonial feminist theories, this article examines how Grenville has taken women out of their secondary roles as homemakers and given them a position in the colonial expansion.
This article studies the female characters as the representation of each side, showing their emotional and moral struggles that are often covered up by the official historical account. In fact, it also looks at transitioning a home into a political place where the colonial possession is justified through the everyday activities of the settlement and the feeling of belonging. Focusing on the women's roles as witnesses, caregivers, and storytellers, the article portrays how gender controls the frontier story by rewriting the hero myths of the empire and reflecting the ethical conflict behind the violence of the settler colonies.
The paper argues that Grenville's reworking of historical colonies challenges patriarchal historiography by giving primacy to emotions, recollections, and moral awareness. By using gendered lenses, her fiction lays the foundation as a challenging moral terrain which, in turn, adds to the ongoing discussions about history, gender, and national identity in the current Australian literature.},
keywords = {Postcolonial feminist, colonial possession, national identity, and Australia fiction.},
month = {March},
}
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