Grenville’s novel is set against a background of British colonialism which profited from slavery in the islands of Jamaica and Antigua.ĭaniel is wounded in 1781, during a naval battle with the French fleet providing support to American colonists against the British blockade of Chesapeake Bay. It is an excellent text to consider issues of Australian identity and cultural conflict. Grenville explicitly drew from Dawes’s language notebooks to give authenticity to her protagonist’s relationship with an Aboriginal girl, Patyegarang, of the Cadigal tribe. The eponymous “Lieutenant” is based on the historical figure William Dawes, who was indeed a young lieutenant of marines, astronomer, mathematician and linguist and present during a punitive expedition in Botany Bay, which is pivotal in the novel. The Lieutenant gives us her imagining of the world of the First Fleet of 1788, from the perspective of her protagonist Daniel Rooke, an astronomer and linguist. Kate Grenville has produced three outstanding historical novels: The Secret River (2005), The Lieutenant (2008) and Sarah Thornhill (2011) where she vividly imagines Australia’s early white settlement and its contentious encounters with the indigenous population.
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