INTRODUCTION

Thursday’s Child is a novel about one Australian family’s struggle during the Great Depression. Harper Flute, a seven-year-old girl at the time of the story’s inception, recalls the remarkable story of her life from the vantage point of a young woman of twenty-one who is finally able to come to terms with her strange childhood and accept it for what it was. Her eventful passage from childhood to maturity is marked by enough mystery and suspense to keep the reader wondering until the last page. Harper takes her little brother Tin to a nearby creek while their little brother Caffy is being born. A mud avalanche buries Tin, but their father arrives to rescue him just in time. From that moment, we see Tin withdraw silently into his own world of digging under the family’s shanty home, where he stays practically day and night. Harper shows an unusual degree of insight for a child when she tells her parents that “...he’s not digging tunnels. He’s just changing the shape of things.” When the shanty caves into the tunnels Tin has dug, the family must depend on their neighbours to donate both housing materials and labour. The proud and independent Flutes must accept charity from those who have belittled them in the past. There is suspense in this story when Caffy falls into a well and older sister Audrey is forced to endure abuse from a sinister neighbour. In both cases, Tin comes to the rescue from his subterranean dwelling. Although some issues remain unresolved at the finish, the novel nevertheless has a satisfying ending as the Flute family is finally able to escape from the prison of their poverty.

Thursday’s Child is a story about independence and the need that we all have to shape our own lives without interference from others. The author uses the imagery of caves, tunnels, fences and prisons to reinforce her theme that we must seek to liberate ourselves from whatever confines us as individuals.

Life is a complicated thing. Reading and studying novels like Thursday’s Child helps us to make some sense of it. This web site is designed to enrich your reading of the novel and help you gain a broader understanding of the world and your place in it. It is full of different ideas, strategies and techniques for studying the novel so that you can choose the path you want to take and confidently become an expert on Thursday’s Child .

The web site offers you the opportunity to explore Thursday’s Child within both its historical and geographical context and as a work of literature. It provides you with extensive background material about the author and the book, a close study of characters, themes and issues, the text’s narrative elements, and related language activities.

As some applications on the website are not compatible with mobile devices (e.g. iPhone or iPad), this website is best viewed using a PC or MAC. If your mobile device does not enable you to access the drop down menus, it is recommended you navigate this website from the Index (below).

INDEX

Introduction to Novel
• About the Novel
• The Title
• Critical Perspective #1
• Critical Perspective #2

Background
• Sonya Hartnett
• Historical Context
• The Great Depression

Characters

Essay Topics

Enrichment Tasks

Narrative Elements
• Genre
• Narrator and Voice
• Plot Summary
• Setting
• Style
• Structure and Fate
• Language and Symbolism

Themes and Issues
• Being Male
• Bringing Up Children
• Poverty
• Guilt
• Landscape and Nature