ABSTRACT

As a foreign immigrant, Cynthia, whom Bernadette dubs a “mail-order bride,” simply cannot or will not fit into Australian life. Cynthia – castrating, foreign, manipulative, and perversely sexualized – is thus characterized as a sort of madwoman in the attic, a figure like Jane Eyre’s Bertha – the foreigner who traps the good white man in a deceitful marriage, and then drags him “through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste” (Brontë: 334). As with Bertha, her removal from the scene makes possible the formation of the ironically more “natural” couple, Bob and Bernadette. But whereas Rochester’s marriage to Bertha takes place within the twisted logic of colonial expansion, and on her home turf, Cynthia’s presence in Bob’s life reverses the structure – blame for this marriage can be placed on the foreign immigrant whose presence in Australia, and especially in the sacred pub, is an embarrassing intrusion.