The Washerwoman's Dream

I am astonished I hadn’t come across this story earlier as it is definitely the sort of topic I like to uncover about the often-unsung women from history (see my blog The History Bucket).
 
Originally the subject of an academic thesis by Hilarie Lindsay, this is her fictional reworking of the life of Winifred Steger (nee Oaten), an Englishwoman who came to Australia as a child with her father in the late 1880s.
 
Without repeating them here, the facts of her life can be found in a number of online biographical sources (see below), and the book pretty much follows those facts, but it is fictionally embroidered with the finer details of what life was like in late 19th and early 20th Century Australia for women who had their own enormous battles with a cruel and often unforgiving land and the rough men who tried to tame it.
 
We follow Winifred through many traumatic events, from her mother abruptly abandoning her on the quay the day the family was to sail to Australia to her neglected and lonely childhood in a prickly pear infested shanty in remote Queensland, then on to a shotgun marriage to a callous German man and her subsequent forced abandonment of her four children and finally through to her ultimate alliance with an Indian trader and members of the Moslem faith that resulted in a remarkable new world opening up to her.

Although she had the minimum of schooling, Winifred’s relief lay in her writing, much of it left unpublished, but she did gain a small modicum of success for her short pieces in the newspapers.
 
Due to a temporary eye issue, I listened to the audio version instead of attempting the print edition. Audio is often a problem, especially when the narrator is putting their own spin on a variety of accents that are rarely noticeable in print form. I found this particular narration somewhat jarring, with the Scots, Irish, Cornish, Cockney, French, German, Aboriginal and other accents not always consistent or true to region or nationality. The Indian and Afghani accents had me cringing occasionally, being reminded of those awful sing-song parodies by Peter Sellers. On the positive side, I liked the detailed descriptions of living conditions in the dusty vistas of outback Australia and Winifred’s experiences on Hajj, visiting Medina and Mecca.

The anti-female attitudes of the men, both Christian and Moslem, were at times unpleasant but accurate. While most of the men in Winifred’s life had proprietorial and prejudicial attitudes towards any woman struggling to assert herself, some of the women were no better. It takes great character to rise above what Winifred had to endure and survive to the age of almost 100.
 
Recently described as “an Australian classic”, this is certainly a book worth reading, mainly for the picture it paints of what life was really like for women pioneers and to learn about the challenges of inter-racial marriage at a time when it was much frowned upon.(If there is a choice, I’d recommend reading the book, rather than listening to the audio version.)
 
Four stars for the content, three for the narrated version.

Links on Winifred Steger:-

​Biography

Wikipedia

Books


amazon.com (audio version)

Booktopia

amazon.com.au

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