Travelling North: Analysis of Major Characters

Author: David Williamson

First published: 1980

Genre: Play

Locale: Australia

Plot: Social realism

Time: 1969–1972

Frank, a retired construction engineer and widower, more than seventy years old, from Melbourne, Australia. He has taken his lover, Frances, north to live in a small cottage in a remote tropical area in Queensland, where he intends to escape people and examine the meaning of his life. A disen-chanted former Communist and an atheist, he is an assertively self-assured man governed by his own rationality. He sees the world in terms of measurable quantities capable of explanation or analysis. Direct and opinionated, he does not relate to people easily. Estranged from his artist son, Frank still remains on good terms with his daughter, Joan. Untrou-bled by guilt, he dismisses the guilt held by Frances regarding her disapproving daughters, whom he sees as exploitative. His tall and athletic physique exudes an energetic vitality, which increasingly diminishes as the infirmity of a discovered heart ailment strikes. His illness causes a progressive withdrawal into himself that makes him difficult to live with, but eventually his condition makes him realize his dependence on other human beings. Frank is the initial motivator of the action as the coldly rational and dominant half of a complex love affair with a loving woman whose qualities and temperament contrast sharply with his own. When Frances leaves him temporarily, he arrives at the self-discovery that although he has “always loved mankind in general,” he has been ungenerous to some of those he has been “involved with in particular.” Effecting a reconciliation with Frances, who has now become the controller of the action, Frank puts aside his anticonventional prejudices for marriage. Frank, as a result of his life with Frances, has a monumental revelation about himself.

Frances, a slim and attractive woman of about fifty-five whose home has been in Melbourne. She is the divorced mother of two married daughters. With her lover, Frank, she has traveled north to distant Queensland. She is distressed that her daughters, Sophie and Helen, question her relationship with an older man who is taking her to northern isolation. Recalling her disinterested mothering of them as children, she feels guilty about their apparent domestic unhappiness. Her loyalty to Frank is in part an effort to compensate for her past irresponsibility. Gentle and reticent as well as restless by nature, Frances is a sensitive, emotional person who holds an undefined openness to life and people. For her, questions exist to be answered. Her temperament complements and contrasts with that of Frank, for she represents the warm and initially passive half of a complicated relationship whose difficult odyssey forces her to become a more complete woman. Restless in the north and dismayed by Frank's irascible self-absorption, exacerbated by his discovered infirmity, Frances returns south to her daughters only to realize that they, and all people, are responsible for their own lives. She reunites with Frank, who also has reached important self-realizations and pleases her with his decision to marry her. Reaching a final fulfillment with Frank shortly before his death, Frances gains a more defined and guilt-free concept of herself.

Helen, Frances' youngest daughter, an attractive housewife in her late twenties. She and her children have been deserted by her husband. Direct and somewhat neurotic, she has not forgiven her mother for placing her with a relative when a child and considers Frances' departure for Melbourne yet another betrayal. Helen strongly disapproves of her mother's affair with Frank and warns her of becoming an older man's nursemaid. Stimulating Frances' guilt feelings, she functions with her sister as a secondary antagonist to the two major characters.

Sophie, Frances' thirty-year-old daughter, who is a pretty suburban wife with impractical and self-absorbing career expectations that create domestic unhappiness. Gentler and better adjusted than Helen, she is more sympathetic toward her mother's relationship with Frank.

Saul Morgenstein, a disenchanted but wry Queensland physician who correctly diagnoses Frank's illness. His medical advice is vindicated after Frank's stubborn insistence on treating himself runs its course. Affectionate toward Frances and tolerant of Frank, Saul becomes a close family friend.

Freddy Wicks, a jovial widower and neighbor to Frank and Frances in the north. A World War II veteran and a nationalist who supports Australian participation in Vietnam, he proves to be a good neighbor despite Frank's trenchant opposition to his views. His acceptance by Frank, with that of Saul, indicates Frank's realization of his need for other people.

Joan, Frank's daughter. She is an intelligent woman in her early thirties whose liberal ideas support those of her father. She openly accepts Frank's liaison with Frances.