ABSTRACT
In ‘Dead Roses’, Patrick White uses twenty numbered sections to relate the story of Anthea Scudamore’s transformation into a replica of her conventional mother. Most critics have praised White’s skill in creating his Greek characters, who are full of nervous energy, even when tamed by experience. The most obvious connection between White’s work in the theatre and his fiction is the play A Cheery Soul, originally written as a short story. Two characteristics of White’s novels might suggest that he would have a problem in accommodating his expansive imagination to the limits of the short story. The first is the broad temporal span covered by the novels, the other is the process of narrative regression of which the hundred-page excursus into Theodora’s past in The Aunt’s Story is typical. The action of Big Toys takes places in winter and spring, whereas White’s next play, Signal Driver, has the chronological expansiveness of his longer fiction.
