[issybird]

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

The problem with the racial discrimination which is certainly implied in A Town Like Alice and the contrasting abilities of Jean to cleverly push just the right buttons to use the Malayan Islamic sexism against the men themselves in the building of the well for the benefit of women is interesting. Perhaps it derives from the possibility that writers--and the characters they create--may sometimes unconsciously compartmentalize their values in an odd way. Jack London was a believer in social equality--but this didn’t extend to racial equality.

<snip>

To return to the topic and book at hand, I suppose it is possible that Shute was completely unaware of the racism in that latter part of the novel and was reacting to built-in stereotypes. If so, it still weakens the book for a modern reader.

Originally Posted by caleb72

Yes, that's the one incident where I felt she actually seemed to be expressing an attitude on the matter. It was mainly shock and disbelief - although it probably was quite shocking and unbelievable at the time.

My reaction is that the racism in the Australia portion is that, unfortunately, it really was unconscious. Shute went to great pains to show Jean as understanding in the Malaya portion of the book, so the contrast is telling to me.

I know it's outside the purlieus of this story, but think about Jean's prewar life in Malaya. The situation with the white rancher and his wife must have been fairly common on the rubber plantations in Malaya, although most of the interracial couples wouldn't have been married, and the woman and any children would have been abandoned if the rancher went back to England. In any case, Jean would have been well aware of it even if she didn't meet the men and their women socially. So why the shock and dismay in Australia? Especially since this seems to be a far better situation according to the morals of the time. The couple was married and the rancher wasn't leaving. The key element has to be race. So either it's because Shute has a different reaction to miscegenation with Asians or he just wasn't thinking about the implications of his story; I suspect some of both.

Originally Posted by caleb72

In any case, I found the whole native Australian handling quite interesting especially as an Australian. A lot of what's written now would portray all of this under a sinister cloud to make it absolutely clear to the reader that the author was not racist. It's somewhat of a national pastime here. There is no pontification and I found the lack of agenda quite exhilarating.

Well, yes. There is nothing more dreary than self-conscious political correctness and when it's retroactive it's even worse. It didn't bother me to read it and it wasn't unexpected in a book of its time, but when an otherwise perfect and noble character like Jean displays an unintended by the author but nonetheless serious flaw in her nature, it's offputting. Had Jean been less of a paragon it wouldn't have been as annoying.

Again, I didn't mind the racism as part of the story, but the book itself just isn't very good. We're not talking Merchant of Venice territory here. Alice, ironically, reads to me like typical book club fare of half a decade ago; it's dated and I don't think it deserves to be read as literature, although it has some interest as sociology. Books and most other matters of art and taste seem to go through a trajectory--current to dated. The issue is whether it emerges as classic or just period or is entirely forgotten. At best, Alice is period and it's good enough of that ilk. The story holds your attention.