Everyone seeing a film for the first time makes a value judgment, even if it is only based on an emotional response but the humanist goes back to probe these initial responses more deeply. The humanist approach seeks to learn what film can tell about the human condition by searching for the answers to several questions asked of other art forms: What kinds of ideas—political, religious, historical, or philosophical—are hidden beneath the surface of film? What sort of symbols are used to convey these ideas? Who is the artist behind the creation of the film?
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My Brilliant Career is one such story that imparts truth through the moral conflicts, confrontations, and choices made by the main character Sybylla—and provokes a powerful emotional response. A timeless masterpiece authored by women for women, this tale addresses sexism in a patriarchal society and oppression of women but contains hope through our heroine’s drive and determination to break free of the boundaries set for her by a male-dominated society.
Though Miles Franklin’s novel was published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1901, it remained a pertinent story for Director Gillian Armstrong to re-author, in the form of film, in 1979. And it is still relevant today as it follows a young girl’s hungering for life, love, and freedom in the outback plains of New South Wales. “…underneath its extravagances and its melodrama, which have their own charm of period, Miles Franklin’s spirit flashes indomitably; and in its picture of country life and in its image of the rebelliousness of youth there remains an abiding vitality” .
Judy Davis, “Australia’s best known leading lady,” received wide acclaim for her portrayal of “the defiant heroine in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career” . Davis—perhaps just a particle too pretty for a young woman described by her mother as useless, plain, and Godless—indeed gives a stunning performance as Sybylla. She is completely believable in her role of the recalcitrant young woman who dares to challenge the prescriptions of patriarchal society.
The theme of this film concerns the breaking of barriers of oppression set forth for women by men who would have them stay focused on marriage, children, and serving males needs. Armstrong reveals the theme through Sybylla’s determination not to follow the dictates of a male-dominated society and marry Harry but, instead, to acknowledge who she is as a person—to seek her own dreams in the world of literature and words. Sybylla’s refusal to succumb to society’s mold of a respectable woman, is a show of strength for women in breaking down barriers constructed by men to keep women in their service. “I want more than a pretty dress,” she exclaims.
This is not to say that Sybylla’s choice is an easy one. She is obviously ambivalent about leaving Harry behind as she sets out to form her own future. Armstrong does not minimize the difficulties women must face in making choices to reject the status quo. Sybylla is not portrayed as an uncaring, unconcerned, non-sexual female but rather as a sensuous woman with a passion for life, love, and family. Her paradoxical nature causes her no small pain, but she is certain that if she does marry Harry she will soon render him helpless and miserable. She knows she will cause him pain either way but it is the lesser pain he will have to suffer by her leaving him now before the damage is done. When Harry tells her he wants to marry her and asks, “Don’t you trust me?” she replies, “It’s me I don’t trust. The last thing I want is to be a wife out in the bush. Maybe I’m ambitious, selfish, but I can’t lose myself in someone else’s life when I haven’t lived my own yet. I want to be a writer. I’ve got to do it now and I’ve got to do it alone” When Harry asks, “Don’t you love me a little?” she replies, “Yes, but I’d destroy you and I can’t do that.”
While Armstrong guides us through this story with apt attention to Sybylla’s rebellious nature and unwillingness to conform—almost always followed by warnings from her mother, suitors, grandmother, and aunt that she must learn to “cultivate feminine values”—this film is not just about one woman’s plight. It is also a politically motivated film about the oppression of women—as a group—through boundaries and barriers established and promoted by society. Throughout the film, Armstrong employs unique and symbolic pictorial views of these boundaries and barriers through the use of fences, cages, and class conscious societal traditions such as table, parlor, and conversational manners required of respectable people.
Armstrong’s frequent use of fences is extremely effective. Fences are built as control measures, either to keep someone or something contained or to keep someone out of a contained area. These symbols of control and containment guide the film-goer through the entire story. There is an irregular wooden fence in front of Sybylla’s family farm which could be interpreted as a boundary which hems her in. When she arrives at her grandmother’s house, she must pass through a white picket fence and tall archway, indicating she is entering a place of respectability and expected reserve. In another scene, Uncle Julius suggests to Grandmother that Sybylla should be an actress but Grandmother responds that she would rather see her hair shorn off and have her put into a convent. There quickly follows a shot of Sybylla walking along the fences that border the sheep pens—the message clearly indicating that women have little more rights than the lowly sheep. In yet another scene, Armstrong sets Harry and Sybylla on opposite sides of a fence, showing their division of attitude and thought.
Surrounded as Sybylla is by the class conscious expectations of societal traditions, she refuses to conform. When one of the male dinner guests at Aunt Gussie’s ball remarks, “I’ve just bought a fine new bull,” Sybylla decides to respond as a man might. “That ought to make a few cows happy,” she jokes to the astonishment of her companions. Sybylla is warned that her willfulness will get her into trouble…but she is not afraid.
In the final scene, piano music of Sybylla’s childhood accentuates the successful completion of her book. Her journey to fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer finds its conclusion as she steps beyond the garden gate, places her book in the mailbox, and leans against the fence that might have kept her from her goal. My Brilliant Career contains hope for all women, putting us in tune with our own abilities and confidence to fight the constructs of male domination—flee the cage, tear down fences if necessary, and take up our places in the world as individuals with important issues and choices.
My Brilliant Career nurtures the spirit of wild creativity and determination in women. It urges us to keep faith in ourselves, to realize that we can reach out to take control of our lives, to understand that we may refuse to be molded into submission by a patriarchal society. While My Brilliant Career is a portrait of a young girl growing into womanhood and defying the unreasonable requirements of class respectability, it is also a vehicle for feminist cause and necessary change for the future of women. The individual women artists who have made this film possible are to be congratulated for creating a work of art that will continue to cause women—and men—to question the morality of a patriarchy that presses women into the service of men.
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