The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway

First published: 1989

Type of work: Autobiography

Time of work: The 1930’s to the 1950’s

Locale: New South Wales and Sydney, Australia; Europe; and the United States

Principal Personages:

• Jill Ker, the author as a girl and young woman
• William Innis Ker, her father
• Evelyn Mary (Adames) Ker, her mother
• Robert Ker, her brother
• Barry Ker, her brother
• Angus Waugh, a neighbor of the Kers
• Geoff Coghlan, the manager of Coorain
• Miss Everett, the headmistress of Abbotsleigh school
• Nina Morris, a friend of Jill
• Peter Stone, another friend of Jill
• Milton Osborne, and
• Rob Laurie, her friends in the history honors program
• John Ward, the head of the history department at the University of Sydney and Jill’s academic adviser
• Alec Merton, an American businessman and Jill’s friend

Form and Content

Jill Ker Conway was born on a sheep ranch in the grasslands of New South Wales, Australia, was educated in Sydney, came to North America to continue her graduate studies in history at Harvard, taught and was an administrator at the University of Toronto, and became president of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her autobiography, The Road from Coorain, tells of the beginning of her life journey from her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in Australia until she departed for the United States. This thoughtful look at Conway’s formative years gives insight into the position of women in Australian society during the first half of the twentieth century and her personal struggles in dealing with the expectations of women’s role in this cultural milieu.

The autobiography begins with background about the Australian land and tells how Conway’s parents came to Coorain, the sheep station they owned. She relates events of her life in chronological order. The first four chapters cover her childhood at Coorain through a drought that devastated the sheep ranch and claimed her father’s life. In the fifth and sixth chapters, she and her family try to cope with their loss, their relocation to urban life in Sydney, and Jill Ker’s preparatory school education. The last three chapters relate the turning point of Jill Ker’s self-discovery as she attended the University of Sydney and broadened her horizons during a European tour. The book concludes with her departure for the United States to study at Harvard University.

The narrative of this period of her life serves as a framework for a reflective book that confronts a number of issues. Conway writes with a perceptive eye for detail and an evocative style that captures the characters of both rural and urban Australia. Within this setting, she views the position of women from two perspectives. First, she is constantly aware of opportunities for and limitations on women in Australian culture through the tension in the relationship between herself and her mother. Second, the position of women is paralleled in the subordinate provincial status of Australia to Great Britain and the cultural differences between these two lands. These analytical observations enable Conway’s book to transcend the particular events of her life while at the same time endowing women’s issues with a personal humane dimension.

Context

In many ways, The Road from Coorain is part of a substantial tradition of autobiographical writing by Australian women. Conway’s work, however, has several distinguishing features. First, it excels as a work of literature through the construction of dramatic narrative and a descriptive prose style that makes the setting especially vivid. As a result, this autobiographical account enables readers to relate to the universal character of Conway’s experience, which has been described by Carolyn Heilbrun as “the despair of an ambitious young woman facing a constricted female destiny.” Second, Conway analyzes issues concerning women that she confronted as she grew to maturity. This analytical quality helps to provide an objective evaluation of women’s place in the society in which Conway was raised. The Road from Coorain achieves its impact in women’s studies from this integration of literary and historical features.

As a historian, educator, and writer, Conway has written and edited numerous books and articles on women’s intellectual history and women in education, including The Female Experience in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century America: A Guide to the History of American Women (1982) and Women Reformers and American Culture (1987).

Bibliography

Conway, Jill Ker, ed. Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women; an Anthology. New York: Random House, 1992. Drawing on her own experience with autobiography, Conway has edited a collection of selections from the memoirs and autobiographies of American women from Jane Addams to Zora Neale Hurston.

Conway, Jill Ker, and Susan C. Borque, eds. The Politics of Women’s Education: Perspectives from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Conway includes the essay “Rethinking the Impact of Women’s Education.”

Conway, Jill Ker, Susan C. Borque, and Joan W. Scott, eds. Learning About Women: Gender, Politics, and Power. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. Contains Conway’s essay on “Politics, Pedagogy, and Gender.”

Dixson, Miriam. The Real Matilda: Women and Identity in Australia 1788 to the Present. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. This book analyzes the circumscribed position of women in Australian society and places these attitudes in historical context.

Hooton, Joy. Stories of Herself When Young: Autobiographies of Childhood by Australian Women. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1990. This book examines the literary tradition of autobiographical writing by Australian women. It contains an extensive bibliography of those autobiographies.

Lees, Stella, and June Senyard. The 1950s: How Australia Became a Modern Society, and Everyone Got a House and Car. Melbourne, Australia: Heyland House, 1987. A re-creation of popular Australian culture at the time that Jill Ker was studying at the University of Sydney.