ABSTRACT
In settler fiction, home, or 'Home', is a cultural space, the point of origin from which settlers move outwards to the new world, look back towards with nostalgia and return to when possible. Home is also a metaphorical and ideological concept bound up with complex feelings of belonging and identity. For settler writer Jessie Weston, who is at the centre of this discussion of fictional representations of antipodal domesticity, home is ultimately about finding the place, or space, in which one can feel and be at home. The transportation and planting of the British home and imperial cultural reference points in New Zealand appears to be a completed work. Influenced by Darwinist ideas, Weston believed Maori to be a 'doomed' race. In later settler narratives, Maori frequently provide an exotic backdrop of romance and adventure, but are more typically portrayed as either atavistic barbarians or Noble Savages keen to learn from European examples.
