The Language of Music: Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach
Abstract
All Garner's novels and stories present female experience as a discourse of the possible rather than a narrative of simple conflict although this possibility always hinges on the dialectical resolution of contradictions. The Children's Bach focusses this discourse, along with its view of love and power, on women's alienation from language. The principal vehicle for this focus is the characters' varying experience of music, which itself offers a way of exploring the complex issue of a gender related experience of language.
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Published 1 October 1990 in Volume 14 No. 4. Subjects: Gender - Literary portrayal, Language, Music, Helen Garner.
Cite as: Ashcroft, Bill. ‘The Language of Music: Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 14, no. 4, 1990, doi: 10.20314/als.9279f600e0.