My Brilliant Career Analysis

Running head: MY BRILLIANT CAREER ANALYSIS
MY BRILLIANT CAREER ANALYSIS
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MY BRILLIANT CAREER ANALYSIS1
Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin is the author of My Brilliant Career which was
published in the year 1901. It is the first novel written by Miles and she is one of the major
Australian writers of her own time. This book was written by Miles Franklin when she was a
teenager since during that time, she loved to write romance novels as a means to amuse her
friends1. It was only when her manuscript was submitted to Henry Lawson by Franklin, that
this novel got published. The novel is autobiographic in nature, since many of the characters
are perceived close resemblance to her family and friends and the life of a small farmer is
also portrayed in the story; how franklin suffered from a great deal of distress just like the
protagonist and it led her to withdraw herself from her writing career.
My Brilliant Career can be interpreted as a feminist story since it is basically a story
about a headstrong girl named Sybylla Melvin whose journey towards maturity is portrayed.
Melvin is an idealistic girl who was raised in poverty during 1890s in Australia. Her rich and
sometimes complicated encounters with her Aunt Helen, Grandmother Bossier, Harry
Beecham and Aunt Gussie helps her learn some important life lessons; when she is at the
point of her maturity towards the climax of the novel, Melvin is noticed to have developed a
philosophy of feminism which made her free herself from the “social straight jacket” that had
already confined millions of other women like her mother and her aunts. This heroin who
came from the Australian bush managed to free herself from the trap of “bourgeois” which
showed her a life with a wealthy and handsome person like Harry Beecham and instead she
chose a life of literature2.
Melvin has the ability to note the unfairness of the patriarchy that happens around her
and such a feminist story which was written in 1901, was way ahead of its time. The
patriarchy of her father’s alcoholism and his unwise decisions that ruined her family is one
such instance that made Melvin realize the profound level to which women are dependent
1 Franklin, Miles. My brilliant career. Broadview Press, 2007.
2 Garton, Stephen. "Contesting enslavement: marriage, manhood and My Brilliant Career." Australian Literary
Studies 20.4 (2002): 336.