BY Rebecca Seth

A Kindness Cup

There is no one quite like each of us in this world. Thus, whenever texts construct an idea of normality, just as when societies do, particular groups and individuals will always be marginalized. The central ideas of normality carefully constructed by authors are unlike those of reality which are formed by dominant ideologies and cultural beliefs. Throughout the cautionary fable A Kindness Cup, Thea Astley deliberately reconstructs the idea of normality held by white colonisers in the nineteenth century. When read using a post colonial reading approach the marginalised indigenous Australian Aborigines' perspective is presented to the reader, along with the opinions of Snoggers Boyd, Thomas Dorahy and Charlie Lunt, who are also marginalised by their white society.

Astley reconstructs the idea of normality during the latter half of the nineteenth century in Queensland as a means to communicate to post colonial...