She is clearly intelligent and full of potential, but feels she has to hide her brains for fear of being misunderstood and shunned by society. Reading My Brilliant Career, I was struck by how angry I became on Sybilla’s behalf, forced to live her life as second fiddle to a man simply because of her gender. When Harold reappears on the scene, Sybilla is confronted with a dilemma: marry him and live a life of comfort, or fulfil her “fixed determination to write a book - nothing less than a book”. She finds this life exceedingly dull and monotonous, and falls into a serious depression. Then life takes a turn for the worst, when she is sent away to work as a governess in order to pay off one of her father’s gambling debts. But Sybilla, who believes she is ugly and undeserving of a man’s attentions, is reluctant to accept his hand in marriage. It is here that she first meets Harold Beecham, a wealthy young pastoralist, who proposes to her. The eldest child of a large family struggling to make ends meet, she is sent away to live with her aunt and maternal grandmother.
Her greatest dream is to become a writer, but not everything goes her way. She shuns the conventions of her time and strives to become a woman of independent means. The book tells the story of a headstrong teenage girl, Sybylla Melvyn, growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s. Her novel, My Brilliant Career, first published in 1901, is widely regarded as a fully fledged Australian classic. If her name sounds familiar it’s because she bequeathed her estate to set up the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, which is given to a novel of “the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases” every year. Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879-1954) was an Australian feminist and writer. Fiction – Kindle edition 252 pages 2004.
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