ABSTRACT
This essay addresses the entangled relations of post-colonial female subjectivity by considering an Australian nineteenth-century text (Tasma’s The Penance of Portia James, 1891) which has been excluded from the discourse of cultural difference and post-colonialism. The central argument is that the heroine is situated obliquely between the positions of colonial Anglo-Australian, nationalist Australian and colonizing Anglo-Saxon, without unequivocally occupying any position, thus suggesting that each of these positions is historically determined, conditional and changing. In an earlier paper (Giles 1989) the term enjambement was used to describe the subjectposition between these categor ies which are themselves in movement, resulting in the quest to occupy a transcendent or culturally neutral space. In her quest for this space, the heroine of Tasma’s romance is engaged in a series of sacrifices-of romantic love, cultural affiliation and discourse itself . The key words to describe the condition of the enjambed heroine are movement, silence, and indeterminacy.
