The Australian Gothic Through the Novels of Sonya Hartnett

Melbourne author Sonya Hartnett, adapts and updates the Australian Gothic within narratives that focus on individual subjectivities to bring to scrutiny the abuses that children suffer due to the invisibility of normative, hegemonic and conformist discourses. This study argues that Hartnett re-locates the colonial trope of the lost child from the wild setting of the bush to cultural topographies in the modern Australian context. The study’s theoretical approach combines concepts from phenomenology, cultural geography and spectral studies to form an hauntology which is articulated and applied to detailed analyses of eleven of Hartnett’s novels set in Australia. The conceptual framework is explained in chapter one and the remaining chapters group Hartnett’s novels thematically and in relation to the settings inhabited by her young protagonists. This structure enables the consideration of the dialectical relationship between places ‘exterior’ to the subject such as the Australian suburb or country town and the psychological ‘interior’ of the mind. Furthermore the study proposes that phenomenological experiences of place, space and time are central aspects of Hartnett’s work that function interdependently and impact upon identity.