She’s more into books and theatre, more interested in intellectual activities than the ones devoted to her sex. She’s not the average young girl, not interested in clothes and appearance. So, there is no way Harold Beecham could actually love her for herself. Therefore, she assumes that she’s unlovable.

She’s convinced that she’s ugly and that men only fall for pretty girls. Sybylla rejects the idea of love and marriage but I’m not sure it’s really to keep her freedom. It would be from fair to middling if there was love but I laughed at the idea of love, and determined never, never, never to marry. Marriage to me appeared the most horribly tied-down and unfair-to-women existence going. Her vision of men and marriage is rather jaded and she has no intention of marrying as expected of her. Her personality is extraordinary for her sex, time and age. Sybylla is the narrator of the book and we see her life and other people’s reactions solely through her lenses. She gets acquainted with Harold Beecham who falls in love with her and wants to marry her. She has the opportunity to read, to have interesting dicussions and to be in good company. These are the happiest years of her life. She is sent away to live with her grandmother who is wealthier and cares for her company. Due to several years of severe droughts and poor business decisions, her family gets poorer and poorer while her father wastes all their earnings in alcohol. She first grew up on a station until her father moved his family to start a dairy farm. Sybylla Melvyn is an opinionated young girl living in rural Australia in the 1890s. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot.

If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin (1901) French title: Ma brillante carrière.