How Heightended Contrasts Of Setting Create Meaning In A Fringe Of Leaves By Patrick White

Perhaps the most apparent feature of each of the settings within A Fringe of Leaves is their physical description. Such a description reveals to the reader not only the imagery of the scene, but also the main characters’ points of view on the setting, and the connotations, or meaning, that the setting beholds. Tasmania, which lies outside of the protagonist Ellen’s comfortable setting, is described from Ellen’s point of view as being “by turns cultivated and wild” and violent. She describes the landscape as having a cultural feature, “An occasional stone cottage or hut built of wattle-and-daub”, which is dominated by a wild feature, “the tiered forests towering above them”. While she is in Tasmania, she seems to believe that the landscape is consciously attempting to bestow violence upon her, such as the “Ruts” of the carriage in which she, Austin and Garnet traveled, which “frequently threw the passengers together with a violence which seemed almost personal in its intent.” By allowing Ellen to encounter this uncomfortable environment, and by giving the reader an insight into her reflection upon the situation’s physical attributes, this exposes to the reader deeper meanings the setting may exhibit, with reference to the protagonist Ellen and her progressive self-discoveries.

By creating a contrast between the values and attitudes of this dominant society of the particular time in history – and Ellen’s dependence upon it for structure and stability – and settings within the text which contain societies who do not conform with such social restraints, the novel creates an even greater contrast between Ellen’s response to her comfortable environment, and that to each of the uncomfortable environments she is positioned to encounter during her journey. When Ellen has been shipwrecked ashore the Australian mainland, she is faced with a society of people who exhibit values and attitudes far different to those of her own Anglo-Centric society. The Indigenous Australians, the Aborigines, who, in the time era of the text, are the major occupants of Australia, are a society who, unlike the Anglo-Centric society of England, value the importance of the land, and the harmony that must be achieved between humankind and their environment. Also unlike the Anglo-Centric society, they do not believe clothes to be a necessity, as they find no shame in their bodies. They are also described to be a violent group of people, such as when, in the text, the “black” man “thrust his arm inside a hollow, and pulled out a small furry animal, and dashed it from high to his companions on the ground; where the beast was clubbed to instantaneous quivering death”, and when “one fellow more scornful than the rest, and more vindictive, thrust a firestick into [Ellen’s] buttocks, and again, and yet again, she cried out in pain and fright…”. This is a historical society that seems to have been constructed within the text to act as the complete opposite of the dominant English Anglo-Centric society, and so adds to a setting that is comp

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