Assessment of Rosalie Ham's Novel "The Dressmaker"

Rosalie Ham's novel "The Dressmaker", published in 2000, is set in the 1950's in an Australian outback town called Dungatar. In the novel, Ham utilises genre conventions such as Gothic, romance, detective story, and revenge tragedy conventions to intrigue the reader's expectations of the novel and allow them to better understand it. This essay will demonstrate how Ham employs these conventions in "The Dressmaker" through the use of imagery and figurative language. In the opening paragraph of the novel, imagery is used to convey the stylistic conventions of the Australian gothic genre. Ham's use of descriptive language in the opening paragraph creates image of the haunted house element of the gothic genre, where the house on top of the hill that is "seen from the surrounding plains- a shaky beacon in a vast, black sea..." illustrates how it is geographically isolated from the rest of the town "cast[ing] a shadow over the town" which portrays a sense of darkness. Although Mad Molly's house is not literally haunted, the stylistic way that it is illustrated in the opening paragraph is identified as Australian gothic. Furthermore, Tilly believes herself to be cursed, which is another distinctive feature of the gothic genre that is focused on in Ham's novel.

Ham depicts this in the novel through the use of descriptive expressions such as "it's guilt, and the evil inside me- I carry it around with me, in me, all the time. It's like a black thing- a weight…" (184), here Tilly expresses her belief of being cursed, the uncertain sense that she is somehow a murder, the word "evil" creating a sense of the dark element of the gothic genre. This is further portrayed by the juxtaposition of Tilly with "Morgan Le Fay" and a "Banshee" (192), which Tilly refers to herself as, thus carrying on with this idea of the gothic convention of a curse, that is really just imposed on her by the people of Dungatar. Further, Ham portrays elements of romance in "The Dressmaker", this romance is later interrupted to create meaning and impact in the novel. "The Dressmaker" offers compassion and kindness and love through the characters Teddy, the football hero and Tilly, the outcast who get together. Tilly and Teddy share a real love and Ham promotes this in the novel, "Teddy held her as though she were crystal and she smiled" (178). However, this romance between Tilly and Teddy is interrupted by his tragic death. Ham, therefore, may be demonstrating that this normal romance convention employed is not the focus of the novel, the focus being the mother and daughter relationship.

Thus, the purpose of the romance convention may have been in order for the reader to realise the central focus of the novel. In addition, Ham demonstrates the feature of detective story conventions in her novel through the use of comic imagery. The detective conventions of this novel use humour and acts more like a parody, the district inspector acting as the detective and Sergeant Farrat his assistant. This is evident in the conversation between Tilly and the district inspector, "The district inspector was captured by Tilly's plunging décolleté…" (263), here the Pettyman case that the inspector was there to solve is made less serious, through this use of humour in the novel. Thus, the use of the detective story in the novel is used as a comic effect in a sense to lighten the hopelessness of the town's lack of law and order. Finally, the novel shifts to the genre conventions of revenge tragedy where Tilly's grief and outrage after the loss of her mother drive her desire for revenge as she states to her mother, "Pain will no longer be our curse Molly, it will be our revenge and our reason" (236). Ham thus demonstrates the revenge conventions of the novel by expressing Tilly's emotions and inner turmoil with the town. Ham also presents Tilly's achievement of revenge through the descriptive imagery of hate, jealousy and ambition of the town which draws them to fall victim to themselves. For example, Beula gets hit with the radiogram that Tilly had thrown out her window, which had "dented her forehead, broke her nose and gave her mild concussion" (244) and when Tilly hears about Beula's situation she "looked up to the heavens and smiled" (247). Thus, Ham provides Tilly with a satisfying revenge giving the readers a sense of poetic justice being achieved.

To conclude, the genre conventions consisting of Gothic, romance, detective story, and revenge tragedy conventions in Rosalie Ham's novel "The Dressmaker", published in 2000 allows the readers to feel intrigued with the expectations of the events of the novel, enabling them to better understand it. The genre conventions presented in this essay has demonstrated how the author has employed them in the novel through the use of imagery and figurative language.