‘Among the Reeds: a lost novel of women’s emancipation’

Set in Sydney in 1913 but not published until 1933, Among the Reeds is the sole novel written by Alice Muskett, a woman better known as a painter in the period of women’s emancipation in Australia. It was published under the pen-name “Jane Laker”, and takes the form of Jane’s journal, over the period of a year. This chapter reads the novel as a perceptive and optimistic account of the key moment of feminist and modernist transition – until the shadow of the Great War falls across that sunlit Sydney world. This historically significant novel has long been out of print and the chapter explores the way it dramatises women’s conflicts over marriage and career.