SOURCE: "Judith Wright and the Colonial Experience: A Selective Approach," in The Colonial and the Neo-Colonial Encounters in Commonwealth Literature, edited by H. H. Anniah Gowda, Prasaranga, University of Mysore, 1983, pp. 173–86.

The following essay was delivered as a seminar in 1981. In this analysis, Janakiram examines and applauds Wright's struggle, in both poems and in life, to create a relationship "to be won by love only" between the European settlers of Australia, the Aborigine population and culture, and the land itself. Jankiram maintains that Wright uses this relationship to achieve a true Australian identity, not as an exile or a conqueror, but as a native at peace in her homeland.

As Leonie Kramer has noted [in "Judith Wright, Hope, Mcauley," Literary Criterion, Vol. XV, Nos. 3–4, 1980], Judith Wright, A. D. Hope and James Mcauley form a major trinity, who together with R. D. FitzGerald, Douglas Stewart and David Campbell, "virtually...