Distinctively visual can be something that is visualized, foreseen or thought of. It can be portrayed through forms of language or texts that create images affecting interpretation and shape meaning. Language used throughout the text can provide visual examples of setting, characters, place and time.
For my text I have chosen the short story ‘The Drovers Wife’ by Henry Lawson providing a vivid image of the unique landscape of the Australian outback through the hardship of the drovers wife in an unforgiving and harsh environment.
The ‘drovers wife” is a short story about a bush woman who lives with her four children whilst the husband is away droving. There is a constant danger of a snake in her house that reminds her of the tough challenges she had to face as a woman alone in the bush. She fought droughts, floods, bulls and drunken men.
We also learn about her personality and her girlish dreams she had before her marriage. Somewhere near dawn, she is finally able to catch the snake with the help of her dog, Alligator. This is a story about life in the bush and the different challenges that a woman has to face without the presence of her husband.
The image we perceive of the drovers wife is on a strong hardened battler against the harsh unforgiving environment of the Australian bush. These images are given to us through the use of alliteration, “no undergrowth, nothing to relieve the eye, nineteen miles to the nearest civilisation” only emphasising our image of the drover’s wife as a women who is isolated in the Australian bush, alienated from the rest of the world.
The struggle faced by a life style in the bush can be seen through the juxtaposition, “thunder rolls and rain comes in torrent, the drought of eighteen ruins him” this illustrating the unpredictability of a life style in the Australian outback, that things can turn from bad to worst in a matter of seconds.
Bush life in the outback is depicted as being incredibly harsh, lonely, stressful and dehumanising. The reader visualises the bush as being parched and barren through images given to us by “dried up looking children” and “gaunt, sun browed bush women” which is used to describe the drovers wife.
With the help of the anecdotal humour in “they are cunning but a woman’s cunning is greater” only further emphasising the shear mentality that bush women such as the drover’s wife need in order survive a life style in the
