The wolf bane is blooming again: Gothic desire in R.H. Morrieson’s the scarecrow
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Date
2016-10-01
DOI
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Publisher
Australasian Association of Writing Progams
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Abstract
R.H. Morrieson’s fiction has received little scholarly analysis in New Zealand, but
when it has, it has been common to consider it as part of a tradition emerging during
the middle decades of the twentieth century that sought new modes of writing with
which to best express the realities of a post-World War II world. Peter Simpson argues
that as a post-provincial novel, Morrieson’s The Scarecrow (1963) ‘turns the typical
pattern of provincial fiction – sympathetic individual versus hostile society – upside
down. The isolated individual – the Scarecrow – is viewed as a threat to the community
from outside’ (1982: 59). Yet the pattern that Simpson notes here as belonging to the
post-provincial novel belongs to another mode of fiction: the Gothic, which frequently
involves a communal effort to vanquish an evil threat, such as in Bram Stoker’s
Dracula (1897). By considering The Scarecrow as a Gothic novel, post-provincial
writing in New Zealand can be seen as not just building on a local tradition of literary
realism, but as engaging with a popular international tradition as well.
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Keywords
New Zealand Literature, Gothic, R.H. Morrieson
Citation
Text: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 2016, 35 pp. 1 - 13 (13)