| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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It should not be assumed, however, that this act implied a radical and emancipatory position on gender. Western Australia displayed the same conventional cultural and structural features of late Victorian Britain when it came to familial and economic matters. Strong—and sometimes sentimental—images of family life and the ‘proper’ place for women abounded, creating normative ‘benchmarks’ and supporting harsh policies, such as the forcible removal of children from Aboriginal mothers.
Politically, Western Australia
By 1911, the state had made its final ‘transition from colonial tutelage to politics in the modern style’,48 with political parties, organised labour, and full franchise for citizens, but not for Aboriginals and the Chinese. Nevertheless, Western Australia’s political past, isolation, and insularity left a legacy conducive to suspicion of the eastern seaboard. It was felt that a government based in the east would not have Western Australia’s interests at heart.
In the first three decades of Federation, two more massive events, the origins of which were global rather than local, were to shape the sociopolitical parameters within which Western Australian teachers lived and worked. The Great War made its impact on millions. In a small and closely connected population such as that of Western Australia, few families were spared the death or injury of a son, brother, husband, or father. Not only has this had a real and long-lasting influence on Australian national identity, it has also shaped our historiography.49 My study also illustrates the profound effect of the Great War on the institutional culture of Claremont College and on the lives of teachers. The second catastrophe, the Great Depression of the 1930s, was equally powerful in its effect, which was, of course, more tangible and visible to the population. Not only did it change the lives and expectations of Western Australians in the most fundamental ways, but it also caused a three-year closure of the college.