Ella Norman; or, A Woman's Perils

First published in 1864 in London ELLA NORMAN is the tale of a young woman whose family's sudden impoverishment leads them to seek opportunities in the much-trumpeted Eldorado of the time, Australia. The author angrily derides the common English delusion that fortunes could be easily restored in this mythical land of easy pickings. Young Englishwomen were convinced that rich husbands were literally waiting on the wharf for any genteel and refined English girl who cared to sail there. Just as imperiously, young English gentlemen exiled themselves because of sudden poverty, or lack of prospects at home. Or, they were sent to Australia by their families to expiate some social "error" of the time. But, Elizabeth Murray points out, in her brutally derisive scrutiny of Australian life and manners, English ladies and young gentlemen had no place in "mob-ascendant" Australia. She dwells in lovingly scornful detail on every aspect of Australian society she despises: commercial crookery, government corruption, the gaucherie of colonial attire (men's as well as women's), table manners, speech, furniture, social mores, (deficient) diet and class disorder. However, Elizabeth Murray's disdainful novel had a purpose; and that purpose is as interesting now as it was in 1864. She was fighting for the rights of impoverished English girls against a group of aristocratic do-gooders whose muddled aim was to send boatloads of unattached women to Australia on the vague promise of easily-acquired husbands, social position and immediate wealth and happiness.