Elizabeth Jolley (1923–2007)
Author of The Well
About the Author
Elizabeth Jolley was born Monica Elizabeth Knight in Birmingham, England on June 4, 1923. She was educated privately until age 11, when she was sent to Sibford School, a Quaker boarding school. At 17 she began training as nurse in London and was exposed firsthand to the horrors of World War II. She show more emigrated to Australia in 1959 with her husband and their three children. Before becoming a full-time author, she had numerous jobs including nursing, housecleaning, and farming. She published her first book of short stories, Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories, in 1976, and her first novel, Palomino, in 1980. Her other works included The Newspaper of Claremont Street, Mr. Scobie's Riddle, The Well, My Father's Moon, Miss Peabody's Inheritance, Foxybaby, and The Sugar Mother. She died on February 13, 2007 at the age of 83. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Elizabeth Jolley
Associated Works
Australian Literature: An Anthology of Writing from the Land Down Under (1993) — Contributor — 26 copies
Femmes de Siècle: Stories from the 90s - Women Writing at the End of Two Centuries (1992) — Contributor — 17 copies
Goodbye to Romance: Stories by New Zealand and Australian Women Writers, 1930-1988 (1989) — Contributor — 10 copies
Facing Writers : Australia's Leading Writers Talk with Dagmar Strauss (1990) — Contributor — 5 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Jolley, Monica Elizabeth
- Other names
- Knight, Monica Elizabeth (birth name)
- Birthdate
- 1923-06-04
- Date of death
- 2007-02-13
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Australia
- Birthplace
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Place of death
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- Places of residence
- Claremont, Western Australia, Australia
- Education
- Sibford School
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
playwright
creative writing teacher
registered nurse - Relationships
- Mckelvey, Ben (student)
Winton, Tim (student) - Organizations
- University of Western Australia
Western Australian Institute of Technology - Awards and honors
- Australian Living Treasure
Order of Australia (Officer, 1988)
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 30
- Also by
- 16
- Members
- 1,902
- Popularity
- #13,534
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 46
- ISBNs
- 189
- Languages
- 6
- Favorited
- 9
First published in 1984, Milk and Honey is in some ways classic Jolley: it features a lonely character alienated from and yet trapped in the society around him; but the Gothic elements in this novel were a departure from her previous fiction.
Somehow, I was able to get behind the paywall at the ABR to find Stephanie Trigg's 1986 review of The Well, which makes reference to the common themes in Jolley's fiction.
Comparing Jolley with Helen Garner whose work is said by critics and reviews to be similarly confined to a domestic canvas, Triggs writes that Jolley’s pictures of domestic life are much wilder, more dramatic, and more violent. Murder, madness, sexual and psychological violence abound, and many Jolley narratives in their bare bones are quite alarming and bizarre. That is most certainly true of Milk and Honey, despite the Biblical allusion of its title to a 'promised land' of abundance and fertility. There are unexplained deaths, illnesses and disappearances, and a death which is not a death though the 'murderer' thinks it is. The central character's wife has a child but it's not his because he is impotent with her, though not with his lover who is herself infertile. The sterile marriage is offset by the birth of a child through incest.
The 'mad woman in the attic' is not a woman and is not mad either, but rather a grotesque caricature whose tragedy is that he has been denied a life because of his parents' fear of doctors. Reminiscent of the entrapment imposed by the destitute elderly Russian émigré, Nastasya, in The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981, see my review) Waldemar both traps his family and is trapped by them because they refuse to hand him over to institutional care. Childlike Waldemar, dripping with the honey that he loves to eat, is the only character who represents fertility and abundance.
And the musical prodigy turns out to be really rather ordinary, fit only for a provincial orchestra and then not even that when his own violence disfigures his hands. This is not a story of resilience or triumph over adversity and there is little kindness in it.
In Brian Dibble's 2008 biography Doing Life (which I can't find on my shelves, did I lend it to someone?), Jolley's story begins with the enigmas of her own family life. As I wrote in my review, Jolley’s father bore his wife’s love for the enigmatic (and underfoot) Mr Berrington with fortitude, and this influenced Jolley’s interest in depicting sexual triangles.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/28/milk-and-honey-1984-by-elizabeth-jolley/… (more)