Changing Role of Men and Women
Cloudstreet is an exploration/comment on the changing role of men and women in Australian society
Sociological comment
Family structures and dynamics
Characterisation/language
Identity/role-power
Sociological Comment
Sociological means the study of human social behaviour, especially the study of the origins, organization, institutions, and development of human society.
This novel focus’ on the period between the 1950s and 1960s. During this time certain roles were expected of men and women.
At the time Australia was a male centred society as was much of the industrialised world and the value of women was restricted to their sexuality and their role as nurturers.
Generally women were under domestic circumstances.
The men of the novel can exist successfully because they can determine their own world to an extent but they generally fail to understand the world as it is presented to them. They are as much dogged by the society they live in as the women
Tim Winton constantly plays with notions of masculinity in ways which appear to undermine conventional gender stereotypes.
The women come to terms with their own nature and learn to shape it to the demands to society and the circumstances of their life.
Identity/Role-power
Winton changes the male characters to be positioned with more feminine qualities.
Winton places his female characters as the “steel” in the otherwise shapeless lives of the families.
The women are sympathetically portrayed and frame the context of this world of battlers
There is a clear division between the actions of men and women in the novel. Men tend to be connected to other realties; there search for meaning outside of the house, women tend to have to “grit it out” in the household circumstances.
A feminist reading could be portraying woman...