NORMAN LINDSAY
Key Study: Redheap (1930)
Norman Lindsay’s Redheap is a comedy set in a small mining town in country Australia. Dealing primarily with the trials and tribulations of nineteen-year-old Robert Piper as he struggles with his adolescent fate (to be perpetually bored, misunderstood and sexually frustrated), Redheap also holds up to light the narrow values of small-town society and how farcical they are when applied to real life. A renowned artist as well as an author, Lindsay has illustrated his novel with pen-and-ink caricatures that depict his characters’ personalities and emotions quite as much as their physical appearances.
In the character of Robert, Lindsay has thoroughly explored the world of adolescence, showing not only how the teenage mind works but also how it appears to others long past this trying age. For example, ‘He [Robert] really wished to get up to avoid the annoyance of being forced up, but the wish, of course, narcoticised the effort’[1] is a droll and astute observation of a typical teenage dilemma (sometimes referred to as the I’m-so-bored-I-could-kill-myself-but-I-can’t-be-bothered syndrome). Robert’s main form of amusement comes from a ‘club’ of four or five young men like himself; they smoke, drink, brag about the quantity of beer it takes to make them drunk, discuss their favourite girls as if they were ogling them through a butcher shop window, and generally feel themselves to be authorities on life.[2] Collectively, they overcome their boredom with the world by making themselves nuisances to the public. There is no real purpose to many of their pranks (‘ “What about ringing the fire-bell?” ’[3]); rather, they are merely a mindless, often destructive means of killing time, on par with vandalism. Another aspect of Robert’s adolescence is his fascination with girls; with his sexual awakening comes a frustration and a desire for experience above all else, illustrated by Robert’s juvenile romantic fantasies about the parson’s daughter[4], as well as his attentions to fat, unappealing Ruby Cassidy, the publican’s daughter.[5] At home, Robert tries to embrace the kitchen-maid only to have his advances firmly repudiated[6]; he continues to dream about the parson’s daughter but lacks the confidence to propose a rendezvous.[7]
The eventual relationship between Robert and Millie (aforementioned parson’s daughter) commences as awkwardly as does any typical teenage romance. Robert’s amorous advances are shunned coyly until he uses the three magic words.[8] Of course, once his kisses are accepted, Robert begins to consider himself quite the lover. He describes the affair in a letter, giving himself the affair of a Don Juan while managing to sound as pompous, condescending and insincere as possible.[9] Millie, too, demonstrates vanity in this regard, with a strong belief in her own powers of attraction, manipulation and control over Robert.[10] After he loses his virginity, Robert is extremely pleased with himself, to the extent that he is spurred to write a poem commemorating the occasion.[11] However, the news of Millie’s pregnancy horrifies and despairs him, as he has never considered this possibility seriously.[12] He is frank in his admission that should it come to this, he will run away rather than deal with his responsibilities – a choice that highlights his own childish terror of things beyond his control.[13] Fortunately for both Robert and Millie, Millie’s mother comes splendidly to the rescue; she arranges to take her daughter away for an abortion and recuperation.[14] Both Robert and Millie are satisfied with this resolution, and Robert concludes his adolescence on a jubilant note: he is going to university, there to embark upon an ‘affair with Madame Life’.[15]
Lindsay’s other characters include Hetty, Robert’s eldest sister; the doyenne of the household, Hetty dominates over her family with her beauty and self-assured persona, and in the presence of a prospective husband, holds them up to ridicule so as to enhance her own dignity.[16] Yet for all her good looks, charm and social confidence, Hetty has no sexual experience and is an innocent in terms of both sex and love.[17] Her strong advocacy of social propriety masks a horror of sexual freedom. She is appalled to catch her sister Ethel kissing a married man, but her denunciation of Ethel’s conduct reveals that Hetty has never had an affair of the heart – this is the real reason for her anger. Hetty’s generation is a sexually repressed one, summed up best by Ethel in response to Hetty’s accusation that Ethel gives ‘everything’ to men. Ethel replies: ‘ “And you give nothing and get it.” ’[18] Ethel understands and responds to love and desire naturally, as neither her sister Hetty nor her brother Robert are capable of doing.[19] She is determined to live life as she pleases, and to love without being a slave to love.[20] Ethel has no consternation in lying to her betrothed, Dr. Niven, about her affair with the married Jerry Arnold; she is a practical person in terms of the heart, rather than subscribing to the dated ideas of honour so widely accepted by the rest of her society.[21]
Uncle Jobson is the bane of the Piper family; it is concluded that he must be a relative – though no one knows exactly what the connection is – because ‘no family in its senses would have selected Uncle Jobson merely as a guest.’[22] He inflicts his opinions, prejudices and bad habits relentlessly upon the family, even going so far as to root through the dustbin for a heel of bread, to prove that the kitchen-maid is wasteful.[23] He possesses nine belltopper hats, which are his pride and joy, and leaves them piled up in the kitchen passage owing to lack of space in his own quarters.[24]
Grandpa Piper is apparently deaf, senile and afflicted with memory loss, yet certain of his actions hint that all is not what it seems. He often stands mutely in the kitchen for no discernible reason – but this is soon explained when he runs off to Melbourne with the kitchen-maid.[25] Upon his recapture the family discovers that Grandpa has spent over seven hundred pounds during his spree, much to their horror.[26] When Uncle Jobson rants and raves at Grandpa over his antics, Grandpa again appears deaf and oblivious – but shortly afterwards he is discovered standing on Uncle Jobson’s hat, while the eight other belltoppers have also been crushed beyond repair.[27] A last significant character is John Bandparts, Robert’s tutor. He is exceptionally enlightened of his times, and discusses puberty and adolescent sexuality quite frankly with his pupil.[28] He holds up Robert’s arrogance of youth and deflates it rapidly by telling Robert, in no uncertain terms, to save his bragging for his mates, as they will be the only ones interested.[29] Yet Bandparts also sympathises with the adolescent condition; instead of condemning Robert over Millie’s pregnancy, he takes Robert’s part firstly by informing Millie’s father (saving Robert the fear and embarrassment)[30] and secondly by obtaining Robert’s mother’s permission for Robert to go to university, thus ensuring Robert’s escape from a humdrum existence in Redheap town. Bandparts also heaps scorn on society’s ideas of good and evil, i.e. what is considered decent; of Millie’s mother’s championship of her daughter, he remarks, ‘ “If she had been a good woman, she would have kicked her daughter into the streets.” ’[31]
The small-town society depicted in Redheap is full of outdated provincial values, ideas and prejudice, which Lindsay denounces satirically and remorselessly. For example, Hetty Piper’s hospitality in inviting guests to Sunday dinner is really part of a ploy to attract potential husbands, as revealed by ‘the understanding that stray bachelors in a country town are the natural property of families with good-looking daughters.’[32] Also ridiculed are the social niceties that make it a capital crime for Robert to be seen in company with Ruby, the publican’s daughter – nothing will suffice but a family tribunal must be held immediately to determine and eradicate the cause of Robert’s lower-class preferences![33] A further indication of Lindsay’s skill as a comedian is his humorous discussion of John Bandparts’ alcoholism, which avoids offence as it does not diminish or trivialise the nature of his disease.[34] Through the medium of Bandparts’ conversations with Robert, Lindsay deals with issues of puberty and adolescence in a manner that, devoid of the euphemisms generally used in connection with such subjects, is refreshing and insightful.[35] Through the conflict between Hetty and Ethel, Lindsay poses the idea that expression, rather than repression of love and desire, is natural, and that society is foolish to believe that such a concept is improper, i.e. that a decorous hands-off courtship is the only acceptable means of demonstrating love. Lastly, Lindsay deals very frankly with the issue of pregnancy out of wedlock, and in doing so casts a derisive light on the rules by which a person’s worth is determined. Millie’s father is a minister and thus beyond reproach, but his reaction to Millie’s pregnancy is distinctly un-Christian; he is concerned only with the fact that his daughter has flouted the conventions of society. It is Millie’s mother – a disreputable drunkard shunned by the town – who comes to her rescue.[36]
In conclusion, it is not difficult to see why Redheap was banned for twenty-eight years after its first publication. Vivid, shrewd and inimitably funny, Lindsay’s novel provides a meaty and ingenuous insight into the often baffling world of adolescence; more significantly, it deals with sensitive issues by hauling them into the limelight and consequently exposing the insularity and hypocrisy of a society determined to sweep its unsavoury elements firmly under the proverbial rug. On the strength of both its humour and its honesty, Redheap is a classic that will not be forgotten in time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lindsay, Norman. Redheap. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1979. First published in 1930.
[1] N. Lindsay, Redheap (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1979), p. 8
[2] Lindsay, p. 46-48
[3] Lindsay, p. 55
[4] Lindsay, p. 13
[5] Lindsay, p. 28
[6] Lindsay, p. 96
[7] Lindsay, p. 63
[8] Lindsay, p. 122
[9] Lindsay, p. 126
[10] Lindsay, p. 127
[11] Lindsay, p. 153
[12] Lindsay, p. 289
[13] Lindsay, p. 293
[14] Lindsay, p. 304-05
[15] Lindsay, p. 318
[16] Lindsay, p. 19
[17] Lindsay, p. 163
[18] Lindsay, p. 271
[19] Lindsay, p. 214
[20] Lindsay, p. 283
[21] Lindsay, p. 288
[22] Lindsay, p. 32
[23] Lindsay, p. 43
[24] Lindsay, p. 33
[25] Lindsay, p. 195
[26] Lindsay, p. 242
[27] Lindsay, p 248
[28] Lindsay, p. 80
[29] Lindsay, p 85
[30] Lindsay, p. 298
[31] Lindsay, p. 308
[32] Lindsay, p. 14
[33] Lindsay, p. 68
[34] Lindsay, p. 77
[35] Lindsay, p. 80
[36] Lindsay, p. 304-05
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