Imagining home: constructs, images and desires

This book explores the context of early Australian- Irish emigration history and the settlement experiences of women of Irish descent. It analyses the cultural and social histories of a group of nineteenth century Australian born women of Irish emigrant heritage to understand how they negotiated the issue of home in their writing. Terms of self-expression used by the respective women writers suggest that Ireland was a central theme that shaped and influenced the ways they saw themselves as Australian women. Home was a problematic construct when referenced from the perspectives of gender, nationality and ethnicity. Their Irish emigrant heritage helped them to negotiate Australia's cultural topography enabling them to challenge, make sense of, and reinvent what was seen to be authentic characteristics of Australian culture and Australian national identity. This exploratory analysis provides an alternative reading of the subjective negotiations of identity that framed the means of self-representation they used to qualify their location in Australian national culture.