(1912-1990) poet, novelist
Patrick Victor Martindale White was born in Knightsbridge, London, to Victor Martindale and Ruth Withycombe. He came to Australia as an infant and grew up in Kings Cross, Sydney. In 1925, he went to England to attend Cheltenham College and returned to Australia in 1929. White’s interest in writing came early as a child, and he also wanted to be an actor. His mother encouraged him to write while in primary school, and when he was nine, he was published in the children’s page of a newspaper.
White’s collection of poems, The Ploughman (1935), gained prominence, and other of his poems were published in the London Mercury. He rewrote his novel The Immigrants, which was published as Happy Valley in 1939, for which he won the Australian Literature Society’s gold medal. In 1939, he came to the United States and published The Living and the Dead (1941).
White’s main themes are alienation, the Australian landscape, the cultures of Europe and Australia, and the Aborigines. His central theme is the search for meaning and value in life. He was influenced by the French poet Charles baudelaire and came to be known as a symbolist (see symbolism) writer. He uses symbolism to convey a sense of the splendor of Australia, which to many people seemed dull. White’s narrative techniques include autobiographical elements, dramatization, symbolism, merging of his self with his characters, and flashbacks. For White, plot was not as important as character development.
White was also known to be a transcendentalist because of his portrayal of an Australia above the ordinary. He wrote the novel The Tree of Man (1955) with the goal of finding a secret core or purpose of Australia. In the novel, Stan and Amy long for a new beginning for their country, beyond ordinary politics. In The Aunt’s Story (1948), White writes about the national homelessness of Theodora, who is placed between the two cultures of Britain and Australia. He also expresses his doubts about Europe because of nuclear armament and the Holocaust. Ellen in A Fringe ofLeaves (1976) feels ill at ease in Europe. The Australian landscape is a major presence in this novel. As he writes of his own reaction to Europe in his autobiography, Flaws in the Glass (1981), “It was landscape that made me long to return to Australia.”
In Voss (1957), we see a primitive picture of the Aborigines. Voss, the main character, communicates with the Aborigines in a language of nature, as if they were not human. In A Fringe of Leaves, we also read of Eliza Fraser, who is stranded on an island and is living with the Aborigines. She becomes one with them, and her cannibalism is a metaphor for European destruction of Aboriginal culture.
Patrick White won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1973, the only Australian to have this honor. In 1965, he won the Australian Literature Society’s gold medal for Riders in the Chariot (1961). He received the Australia Day Councils’ Australian of the Year Award for 1974. He is considered to be one of the most intellectual, original, and preeminent Australian novelists. White died in Sydney after a long illness.
Other Works by Patrick White
Selected Writings. Edited by Alan Lawson. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1994.
The Twyborn Affair. New York: Penguin, 1980.
Works about Patrick White
Marr, David. Patrick White: A Life. New York: Knopf, 1991.
Wolfe, Peter, ed. Critical Essays on Patrick White. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990.
