Title: The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965

Author: Joan Stevens

Publication details: Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 1966

Digital publication kindly authorised by: Sylvia Johnston

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965

Established

Established. For too long the typical fate of a New Zealand novelist was to put forth one or two shoots, find the weather inclement, and fail to "become established". This happened to William Satchell, to Jane Mander, to Robin Hyde; a feature of the literary landscape today is the number of serious established writers. Dan Davin, James Courage, Frank Sargeson, Guthrie Wilson have already been noted.

Guthrie Wilson's first civilian novel, Julien Ware, 1952, is a study of class conflict in the feudal society of the Canterbury foothills. Julien, son of Tom the rabbiter on the abandoned Cecil run, the Torrens, longs to own it and make it green and fertile. But the Torrens will be inherited by Stella Cecil, living on the plains below on her father's other estate. The core of the novel is Julien's ruthless ambition, page 96 his affection for the soft kindly Beth, his marriage to the proud Stella, his gradual adopting of the money snobbery of the owner class into which he is battling. As a result, his vision of the land as a trust to be honoured is forgotten. Only in an interlude of war service, when Julien and the unregarded Beth become lovers, does he return to the truth of his dream, and plan to make the Torrens green. The war, however, ordains a different ending.

There is no doubt that Guthrie Wilson has here a good subject, with rich opportunities for sardonic observation of the world of wool cheques and social mountaineering. Julien, the outsider, should have been the centre of the tale, a personality whose ambition, love, and hate would really move us, and whose defeat would in some way arise from the whole pattern. This is not so. What effect did the author intend by having him killed at random in a war? If there is the implication that such is the end of earthly ambition, the irony is not made clear. Moreover, the ways in which Julien breaks into the land-owning class are only accidental, too reminiscent of the lost wills and rich uncles of Victorian melodrama.

These flaws prevent Julien Ware from being much more than an unusual love story told from the man's point of view. It is written with admirable economy, and evokes land and people without fuss. The characters, except Julien, are rather cardboard affairs, and the philosophising often seems false. Perhaps Guthrie Wilson was not himself sure quite what he was trying to do.