For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke

Part of Clarke’s journalistic aim, according to McCann, is to highlight the demoralizing effects of this societal interest in the grotesque-a concern effectively accomplished in Kirkland’s flogging where Dawes’s moral stance is tortured to the point where he seems to have “abandoned his humanity,” notably so at the hands of Gabbett, a central figure of spectacle in the novel. One of McCann’s points focuses on how the public’s “lust for blood” correlates with urban boredom-a concept that’s mirrored through a relationship between the tedious size of the novel and it’s escalation of the spectacle from parental secrets to child suicides. In “Marcus Clarke and the Society of the Spectacle: Reflections on Writing and Commodity Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Melbourne,” Andrew McCann demonstrates how the “Peripatetic Philosopher”- one of Clarke’s more successful journalistic endeavors-and other selections reveal Clarke’s critique of the colonial Melbourne society and it’s fascination with the spectacle, which Clarke both caters to and critiques in his novel.

While Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life is unquestionably a valuable contribution to Australian literature, his journalism career also deserves equal attention, particularly as an influential antecedent to the creation of his seminal text not only on a technical basis as John Conley details in “Marcus Clarke: The Romance of Reality”, but also as a social platform.

For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke