Presumed Dead: Gothic Representations of the Missing Person in Contemporary Australian Literature
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Thirty-five thousand people are reported missing in Australia each year—one every fifteen minutes. Most return home, unharmed. Some don't. Missing person figures haunt the Australian cultural imagination. In literature and in life, explorers are swallowed by the desert, children are lost in the bush, schoolgirls vanish at picnics, hitchhikers are abducted by serial killers, and a prime minister mysteriously disappears while swimming. This article considers the ways contemporary Australian writers Sarah Armstrong (in Salt Rain, 2004) and Jessie Cole (in Darkness on the Edge of Town, 2012) use the Gothic to articulate the uncertainties of the state of being missing, representing the missing person as liminal in Victor Turner's sense, a kind of undead figure who mediates between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. In the Australian cultural imagination, the missing person exercises a peculiar fascination. In literature and in life, explorers are swallowed by the desert, children are lost in the bush, schoolgirls vanish from picnics, hitchhikers are abducted off highways, and even a prime minister mysteriously disappears while swimming. This cultural fascination has been widely acknowledged (
Author: Doolan, Emma
Institutions: The University of Queensland, Southern Cross University
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7213839846