‘A Talented Daughter of the Mallee’: Myra Morris Meets Regional Readers

Abstract

Myra Morris (1893–1966) was a prolific author of poems, short stories, novels and children’s books. Best known for her short stories, which were published in a wide array of Australian periodicals, Morris’ novels have been less celebrated. This article considers The Wind on the Water (1938) set at the ‘Four Mile’ hotel near ‘Brown’s Town’ in the Mallee region, which was serialised in the Australian Women’s Weekly and as a popular ABC radio broadcast after publication. Due to its generic romance elements, the novel’s quietly radical critique of the cruel subjection of women and animals has been largely overlooked. When discussed with book groups in the Mallee region, the novel offered a springboard for discussion of womens’ intimate relationships, class dynamics in small towns and considerations of inheritance. Although it was over ninety years old at the time of these sessions, readers of different genders and ages tended to identify closely with the novel’s protagonist and her thwarted efforts to find fulfilment and create a better future for her children. We argue that Morris’ novel might be regarded as a crucial antecedent of a number of contemporary novels about sensitive women seeking beauty in small Mallee towns. Her own early experiences in country towns may have contributed to her understanding of the lot of rural women who slaved to maintain their households in precarious conditions. The more complex renderings of the Mallee offered by Morris’ novel, along with the readers’ response to it, show how places are continually being made by the stories told and read about them.