Discursive Manipulations of Names and Naming in Kate Grenville’s The Secret River

Abstract

Although Kate Grenville’s Colonial Trilogy frequently signals the author’s awareness both of recent Australian historiography and of postcolonial theorising on colonial rhetoric and colonising practices, the author seems oblivious of certain reflexes (both psychological and ideological) that infiltrate her writing, subverting her declared intention of telling the truth about Australia’s frontier history. By analysing the function of names and naming in The Secret River, I show how Grenville’s narrative works both to disguise the fiercely predatory logic that drives colonisation and to normalise the process of Aboriginal dispossession.