Read novels from Victorian England, and in many instances, characters leave for or arrive home from what was then the British colony of Australia. But it’s almost impossible in the same books to find an accurate description of life there. Janet Myers, an associate professor of English, tackles that fact in her first book, Antipodal England: Emigration and Portable Domesticity in the Victorian Imagination.
Published by SUNY Press as part of the Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century series, Antipodal England uses novels, newspapers, pamphlets, emigrant letters and art to compare and contrast how the colonies are used as a plot device with the way the British truly perceived those who would move to the other end of the globe.
“It was a second-chance option for people,” Myers said of the way Australian emigration offered new possibilities to individuals from disenfranchised groups. “There was excitement around it but also a sense of this being a place where you could put people who don’t fit.”
For British novelists, emigration plots became a convenient way both to introduce new plot twists and to remove problematic characters from a narrative.
Through her research, Myers discovered that the colonies were rarely the setting for British literature that targeted the middle and upper classes. Given the size of the British Empire, she found herself intrigued by the discrepancy, especially because 19th century media showed that life abroad was often the topic of great interest.
“Authors would only know what they know from reading others’ accounts,” Myers concluded. Few writers had firsthand knowledge of Australia. “It wasn’t a destination many people got to experience.”
Yet some people did. Myers points out that British citizens would move to Australia for any number of reasons, including the midcentury gold rush, as a place for older women to work as governesses, and originally, as a relocation point for convicts.
The book, which Myers describes as a work of new historicism and cultural studies, originated from her doctoral dissertation at Rice University. Myers joined the Elon University faculty in 2000 shortly after receiving her doctorate in English from Rice.
She earned her master’s degree in English from the University of Virginia in 1995 and, four years earlier, her bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College.
At Elon, Myers has taught myriad English courses, from College Writing to Victorian Literature and Culture. She currently serves as coordinator of national and international fellowships and as co-coordinator of the Literature Concentration. Myers will begin work on a new book project during her sabbatical this spring.
Colleagues praised Myers for her depth of knowledge in the book.
“I’m interested in Victorian literature and find the ideas in Janet’s book fascinating,” said Cassie Kircher, an associate professor of English. “Janet is so good at taking visual representations such as paintings and graphics and explicating them. She’s also a beautiful writer. I know the work she’s done on the book will make her presentation of Victorian literature exciting to undergraduates.”