Entangled lives: representations of dogs and human–dog relations in selected rural Australian memoirs 2001–2015

Abstract

<p>Memoir is a popular literary genre in Australia. Memoirs set specifically in rural Australia make up a small but significant portion of memoirs published in the 21st century. Rural Australian memoirs offer intimate accounts of the writers’ experiences on the land while documenting an agricultural way of life that figures prominently in the nation’s history and culture. Among a range of human and nonhuman characters typically represented in these memoirs, dogs frequently appear as significant others in the human narrators’ lives. Contemporary rural Australian memoir has, however, received limited scholarly attention, and Australian life writing scholarship more generally lacks commentary on writing about dogs. Recently published rural Australian memoirs present opportunities to explore life narratives about dogs and to consider how those narratives contribute to autobiographical identity and to understandings of human–dog relationships.</p> <p>This thesis draws primarily on rural Australian memoirs published during the first 15 years of the 21st century. It identifies rural Australian memoir as a distinct subgenre, differentiated by its predominantly rural Australian setting and the narrator’s portrayed agricultural way of life. Understandings around human–animal relations and relational narrative theory facilitate an examination of portrayals of dogs among the various relational others in the selected memoirs. Representations of human–dog relations in these memoirs show that dogs are valued and necessary companions for people living and working in rural Australia. Living at the junctions between humans’ and other species’ worlds, and between domesticity and wilderness, dogs are portrayed as helping people to navigate through the social isolation and physical hardships of life on the land in Australia. In contemporary rural Australian memoirs, the inclusion of dog characters reflects the importance of dogs to a way of life that is redolent of the nation’s settler past, helping to reinforce an identity linked to the bush.</p> <p>Dogs’ and people’s interwoven stories in contemporary rural Australian memoirs highlight the entangled lives of people and dogs within a complex and multispecies world. Intersections between people’s and dogs’ lives, as revealed in the memoirs, also highlight intersections between genre theory and animal studies theory. The findings of this thesis advance life writing scholarship by: identifying rural Australian memoir as a subgenre of literary and cultural value; recognising relational narrative about dogs as an authenticating element of rural Australian memoir and as a medium for exploring autobiographical identity and human–dog relationships; and confirming the interdisciplinary significance of life writing studies.</p>