Patrick White - A Woman’s Hand

Contains a review of Patrick White’s novella: A Woman’s Hand. The theme of this novella is reminiscent in some ways of John Morrison's 'The Dutch House.' It is concerned with the way in which a man's individuality can be destroyed even within an apparently happy marriage. But whereas Morrison gives the reader a detailed picture of the life of his houseproud married couple, and then shows us the husband's personality reasserting itself, not after his wife's death, but after the subsequent destruction of the house which had become the object of their joint affections, White spends most of his time on his characters before the marriage. We are left to infer what happens in wedded life from two letters, and then we are presented with the disastrous end, which destroys not only the married couple but the other husband as well. The reader has to go back over the few clues which White has dropped in order to establish any coherence in the sequence of events with which he has presented us