Reviving Eva in Tim Winton's Breath

Authors

Colleen McGloin, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

62763

Publication Details

McGloin, C. 2012, 'Reviving Eva in Tim Winton's Breath', The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 109-120.

Abstract

Breath by Tim Winton is an Australian surfing narrative. As a postcolonial novel, the novel's absence of indigenous representation and its portrayal of the central female character, Eva Sanderson, solicit a reading that attempts to make sense of the intersections between gender and race central to many such texts. In this paper, I explore the representation of Eva and provide a feminist reading of the novel that re-considers its racialized, gendered, and nationalist dimensions. It is Eva, I suggest, who provides the potential for reconfiguring white surfing masculinities, but whose over-determined masculinization and often misogynistic representation within the patriarchal logic that structures the work, hinder attempts to realize this potential. This attempt is further restricted by the text's erasure of indigenous people from the landscape .