A Town Like Alice
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| A Town Like Alice | |
|---|---|
 1st edition cover |
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| Author | Neville Shute |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | War, Romance |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
| Publication date | 1950 |
| Media type | Print (Softcover) |
| Pages | 359 pp |
A Town Like Alice (U.S. title: The Legacy) is a novel by the Australian author Nevil Shute about a young English women in Malaya during World War II and in outback Australia. Written from the perspective of her Scottish solicitor and trustee, he tells her story of being a prisoner of war and her post-war life where she makes a discovery that leads her on the search for romance and to a small outback community in Australia, where she sets out to turn it into 'a town like Alice'.
It was first published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. The "Alice" in the title refers to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
This is a story in three parts.
The story begins in the 1930s with a Scottish lawyer, Noel Strachan, being asked to make changes to an old man's will concerning his great niece and nephew following the death of their father in Malaya. Being old-fashioned, he requests that the legal firm keep control of any money for the young girl until she reaches a mature age - 35.
A few years after World War II Strachan is informed that the man has died and he begins to search for the young family. It turns out that the mother has died in England, and the boy died as a prisoner of the Japanese. The girl, Jean Paget, was also in Malaya and is now in England employed as a secretary in a firm making high quality leather goods.
Strachan tracks her down and informs her of her inheritance, and the restrictions that apply to it. She is now a wealthy woman and need never work again. In the firm's interest, but increasingly for his own personal interest, Strachan acts as a guide to her while the will is processed. After much thought on her part, when he finally asks what she would like to do with her life she replies that she would like to build a well.
The second part is the memories of Jean Paget which she tells Strachan. She was working in Malaya when the Japanese invaded, and ended up as one of a party of European women and children who are marched around Malaya by the Japanese, since no camp will take them in and the Japanese army does not want to take responsibility for them. Many of them die on the march, and the rest survive only on the charity of the local villagers. Her knowledge of Malay language and culture proves invaluable to the group's survival.
On their march from one village to another, Jean meets a young Australian soldier, Joe Harman, also a prisoner, who is driving a truck for the Japanese. He steals food and medicines to help them, and they become friends. Jean is carrying a toddler, orphaned after his mother died, and this leads Harman to believe that she is married; Jean does not correct this to avoid complications. The thefts are investigated and Harman takes the blame to save Jean and the rest of the group. He is crucified, beaten and left to die by the Japanese soldiers. The women are marched away believing that he is dead.
Later, to survive, the group becomes part of a native village where they grow rice and work as part of the village. This saves their lives, and they live there for three years, until the war ends. This village is where Jean wants to build the well so that the local women will not have to walk so far to collect water: "A gift by women, for women".
Strachan arranges for her to travel to Malaya, where she goes back to the village and persuades the headman, who in the three years had become a friend, to allow her to build the well. While it is being built she discovers that by a strange chance Joe Harman survived his punishment and returned to Australia. She decides to travel on to Australia to find him. In her travels she visits the town of Alice Springs, where Joe lived before the war, and is much impressed with the quality of life there. She then travels to the (fictional) primitive town of Willstown in the Queensland outback, where Joe has become manager of a cattle station. She soon discovers that the quality of life in Alice is an anomaly, and life for a woman in the outback is elsewhere very rugged. While staying in the local hotel in Willstown she finds that the local hunters shoot crocodiles and prepare their skins for export, at prices much lower than they are sold in England. To show the locals what their exports are used for, she makes a pair of crocodile-skin shoes in her bedroom, by hand.
In the meantime, Joe has learned both that Jean survived the war and is unmarried, and has drawn down money he won in the state lottery in order to travel to Britain in search of her. He meets Strachan, who must decide on his client's behalf how to handle this situation. On Strachan's advice, Harman returns to Queensland, and the two finally meet again.
After some initial problems they eventually decide to marry, but there is still the problem of the outback. Jean has already thought about this, and using her inheritance, she starts several business enterprises to help the small outback town of Willstown develop into a place where people would like to live — "A Town like Alice".
The last part of the book covers the starting of these businesses and Jean's help in rescuing an injured stockman, which breaks down many local barriers. The story closes a few years later with an aged Noel Strachan visiting Willstown to see what has been done with the money he has given Jean to invest, and it is revealed that the money she inherited came from the Australian gold rush.
[edit] Characters
- Jean Paget - young English woman who is a prisoner of war in Malaya and later finds love and settles in the Australian outback.
- Joe Harman - an Australian cattleman who is a prisoner of war in Malaya; he survives crucifixion and gets back to Australia.
- Noel Strachan - the narrator; he is Jean Paget's solicitor and trustee.
[edit] Themes
The protagonists share the colonial attitudes of the time: Aborigines are referred to as "boongs" or "abos". It is also assumed that non-whites must use different shops and bars from whites and that they are less reliable than whites. The attitudes are often presented not in a harmful, but an ironic way: for example, when Joe Harman mistakes the female prisoners for Malayan women, but learns that all of them are European. Also the other captive British women are completely lost, because the only Malayan words they have learned are orders for their Malayan servants, while Jean survives by use of her language skills and her willingness to live the Malayan way.
Another theme is the situation of women in Western and Asian society at that period. For example, Jean Paget is not given full control of the money she inherited from her uncle, but has her capital managed by male lawyers. Also the Malayan women are subject to their husbands. Jean Paget makes a move toward female emancipation by digging a well in a Malayan village, so that the women of this village no longer have to carry their water for two miles each day, and also have a meeting place next to the well where they can discuss village affairs without being heard by the male villagers. However, this must be done with the approval of the men.
A third theme is that of entrepreneurship, and especially the role that entrepreneurs may play in community building. Instead of living on the income from her inheritance, Jean Paget puts it to good use to make Willstown a better place.
[edit] Historical accuracy
Jean Paget was based on Carry Geysel (Mrs J. G. Geysel-Vonck) whom Shute met while visiting Sumatra in 1949.[1][2] Geysel had been one of a group of about 80 Dutch civilians taken prisoner by Japanese forces at Padang, in the Dutch East Indies in 1942. Shute's understanding was that the women were forced to march around Sumatra for two-and-a-half years, covering 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles), with fewer than 30 people surviving the march. However, the Nevil Shute foundation insists that this was a misunderstanding, and that the women were merely transported from prison camp to prison camp by the Japanese. "Shute, fortunately misinformed about parts of her experience, mistakenly understands that the women were made to walk. This was possibly the luckiest misunderstanding of his life..." says the Foundation. [3].
Shute based the character of Harman on Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards, an Australian veteran of the Malayan campaign, whom Shute met in 1948 at a station (ranch) in Queensland.[4][5] Edwards had been crucified for 63 hours by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Railway. He had later escaped execution a second time, when his "last meal" of chicken and beer could not be obtained. Crucifixion (or Haritsuke) was a form of punishment or torture that the Japanese sometimes used against prisoners during the war.
The fictional "Willstown" is reportedly based on Burketown, Queensland, which Shute also visited in 1948.[6] (Burke and Wills were well-known explorers of Australia.)
[edit] Critiques and Rankings
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the novel seventeenth on The Reader's List of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[7]
[edit] Adaptations
[edit] Cinema
It was made into a motion picture in 1956 starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch, directed by Jack Lee. This film was known as Rape of Malaya in U.S. cinemas, and by various other titles in non-English-speaking countries.
[edit] Television
In 1981, A Town Like Alice was adapted into a popular television miniseries, starring Helen Morse and Bryan Brown (with Gordon Jackson as Noel Strachan). It was broadcast internationally: in the United States, it was shown as part of the PBS series Masterpiece Theatre.
[edit] See also
Margaret Dryburgh - an English missionary held captive by the Japanese in World War Two
[edit] References
- ^ "Too Good to Be True" (Time, June 12, 1950) Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Special Broadcasting Service, 2005 "She was Nevil Shute's inspiration for a Town Like Alice" Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Nevil Shute Foundation Access date October 3, 2009.
- ^ Neville Shute Norway Foundation, "1948" Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Roger Bourke, 2001–2002, "‘Cultural depth-charges’: Traditional meaning and prisoner-of-war fiction" Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Neville Shute Norway Foundation, Ibid.
- ^ The Modern Library | 100 Best | Novels
