Australian Women's Book Review Volume 14.1 - School of English ...

'conceptually means possessing and controlling it'. No wonder most of Nowhere revolves around
Communism and anti-war proclamations, both inspired by strong political convictions. Melodramatic
outpourings serve Hewett, above all, as a source of oppositional power that she wields upon the
'conventional and repressive discourses of the post-Enlightenment order' in order to force them to yield
up their limitations and to reveal the sites of their repressions. Thus, melodrama returns to the primary
impulse behind perhaps all theatricality: it stages fundamental human conflicts and gives vent to
unleashed desires in an open transgression of social restraints and psychological repressions. In
Murphy's interpretation, it is a spontaneous 'if rather desperate medium both for communicating the
anxiety associated with the breakdown of moral and ideological systems in the 20th century, and for
expressing the desires (to which this revolution lends support) for the creation of a new order.' But
Hewett allows for the melodrama as spectacle and entertainment as well. The pleasure principle to her
is the vehicle for social and political persuasion.
In Nowhere, as in Hewett's earlier plays, Eros is the dominant instinct, a 'kosmogonos, a creator and
father-mother of all higher consciousness' as Jung called it in The Undiscovered self. It is canvassed as
an issue that reflects generational attitudes, this time ranging from the widely acknowledged notion of
sex as a panacea to the romantic conceptions of love that lead people to suppress their desires by either
quelling them altogether or sublimating them into dreams. Desire is again discussed in the form of
discourses surrounding both sex and gender. Woman as Virgin versus woman as slut - the two
antithetical male perspectives of women - reappear at various points in the play, suggesting that once
they get embedded perceptions are difficult to modify.
Something has changed though in modern Australia, Hewett suggests, for Vonnie's behaviour is neither
aggressive nor defensive. She freely expresses her sexuality and is at peace with herself. This certainly
has to do with her portrayal in the image of a 'half-caste' woman empowered by indigenous wisdom
and attitude to nature. The violence to which Vonnie gets subjected by men is still considerable, though.
With a single phrase, 'Make love not war', Hewett conjures up the entire era of the 1960s and with it
brings to life pictures of women still often sexual objects under the banner of 'sexual liberation.'A
fulfilling sexual relationship is seen not to preclude harassment or physical abuse of women by their
male partners. From the modern point of view, this parallel examination seems to suggest that men find
it more difficult to adapt to the notion of partnership and its quotidian connotations of equality.
Violence towards and victimisation of women are the two behavioural patterns that Hewett subverts
with a large gesture. One of the most powerful scenes in Nowhere is the axe-murder of Bull, a bikie and
Vonnie's abusive pimp, conceived in the best manner of expressionism. Hewett has recourse to that
aesthetic whenever she needs powerful visual imagery; it also helps her to create the atmosphere of
total theatre on stage. But being a pastiche, Nowhere exploits other aesthetic options that allow the
author to explore. for example, desire in old age. A not-old reader/viewer of a Hewett play can find out
what it might be like to be and feel old, and in what ways this feeling weakens or empowers an
individual. Institutions like old people's homes, the pension system, and social welfare pop up as
discursive points along with social work in general, the 'stolen kids' generation, public and municipal
property, or the ambivalent attitude to the arts in Australia. Characters who epitomise public institutions
are reduced to character types or symbols and are therefore given only a prefix to a name (Mrs Mac) or
are called by the name of their profession (the Sergeant), just as Bull is a man with only a nickname.
This dramaturgical practice commonly found in expressionism enables Hewett to efface the
psychological dimension of individuals and lay bare the representational device - both formally and
ideologically. The technique has an anti-illusionist function similar to the Russian formalists' alienation
40