Wild Card: An Autobiography 1923-1958

by Dorothy Hewett

In this acclaimed autobiography, Dorothy Hewett, renowned playwright and novelist, traces the personal and political metamorphoses of her first thirty-five years. A woman who challenged sexual and political conventions, she combines in Wild Card the passions of her life with her power as a writer, creating a classic of people, place and history.After university, several failed love affairs, an attempted suicide and a major poetry prize, Dorothy Hewett joined the Australian Communist Party in 1945. Four years later she left her first husband and moved to Sydney's Redfern with her lover, a boilermaker. Hers has been a life of extremes: the pleasures and purgatories of a woman who tackled everything placed in her path with a searing honesty, energy and intellect.

Genres: Biography, Memoir, Australia

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Dorothy Coade Hewett (21 May 1923 – 25 August 2002) was an Australian feminist poet, novelist, librettist and playwright. She was also a member of the Communist Party of Australia, though she clashed on many occasions with the party's leadership.

Hewett was born in Perth and was brought up on a sheep and wheat farm near Wickepin in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. She was initially educated at home and through correspondence courses. From the age of 15 she attended Perth College, which was run by Anglican nuns. Hewett was an atheist, remaining so all her life.

In 1944 Hewett began studying English at the University of Western Australia (UWA). It was here that she joined the Communist Party in 1946. Also during her time at UWA she won a major drama competition and a national poetry competition.

In 1948 she married communist lawyer Lloyd Davies. The marriage ended in divorce in 1959, following Hewett's departure to Sydney to conduct a relationship with a boilermaker named Les Flood. She bore Flood three sons over nine years, during which time she wrote no poetry owing to the family's constant struggle against poverty. However, the time she spent working in a clothing factory during this period did inform some of her most famous works.

Following the end of this relationship in 1958 Hewett returned to Perth to take up a teaching post in the English department at UWA. This move also inspired her to begin writing again. Jeannie (1958) was the first piece she completed following her enforced hiatus, Hewett later admitted to finding this a rejuvenating experience.

Hewett published her first novel, Bobbin Up, in 1959. As the title suggests it was a semi-autobiographical work based on her time in Sydney, the novel was a cathartic work for Hewett. The novel is widely regarded as a classic example of social realism. It was one of the few western works that was translated into Russian during the Soviet era.

In 1960 Hewett married again, this time to writer Merv Lilley, the marriage would last until the end of her life. They had two daughters, Kate and Rose. The couple published a collection of poetry together in 1961 entitled What About the People!.

In 1967 Hewett's increasing disillusionment with Communist politics was evidenced by her collection Hidden Journey. Things came to a head for her on 20 August 1968, when the Red Army brutally suppressed the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. She renounced her membership of the Communist Party. This and her critical obituary of the Communist novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard, caused several Communist writers to circulate material attacking her.

In 1973 Hewett was awarded one of the first fellowships by the newly formed Australia Council. The organisation granted her several fellowships, and later awarded her a lifetime emeritus fellowship. Hewett returned to Sydney that year with the hope that this move would further her career as a playwright. During her life she wrote 15 plays, the most famous of which are: This Old Man Comes Rolling Home (1967), The Chapel Perilous (1972), and The Golden Oldies (1981). Several plays, such as The Man From Mukinupin (1979), were written in collaboration with Australian composer Jim Cotter.

In 1975, she published a controversial collection of poems, Rapunzel in Suburbia, which resulted in the pursuit of successful libel action by her ex-husband Lloyd Davies in relation to specific verses and their quotation in a review by Hal Colebatch in The West Australian newspaper.

Virago Press published the first volume of her autobiography, Wild Card, in 1990. The book dealt with her lifelong quest for sexual freedom and the negative responses she received from those around her. Two years later she published her second novel, The Toucher.

In 1990 a painting of Hewett by artist Geoffrey Proud won the Archibald Prize, Australia's most prominent portrait prize.

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read about Dorothy Hewett as the writer of "Bobbin Up",
a very confronting book about a group of women who try to bring
about changes in their workplace in a textile factory in
Alexandria, Sydney. I used to go past it in the train every day
- a really dirty, looming place. She also shockingly left her
first husband and little child to run off with her lover, a
boilermaker and committed Communist. How is this woman going to
command a reader's sympathy - but she does!!
Initially you get a beautiful memoir, all about growing up on
a remote property in Wickepin, Western Australia, doing correspondence
lessons on an old butter box desk. There is also conflict with her
parents as she struggles to reconcile the overweight, often angry
mother with the fading pictures of a young vibrant girl who loved
company and conversations. Hewett feels her mother married the
wrong man - her father was a brooding intellectual, a loner who finds
it hard to show his real feelings. Her family were prosperous farmers
and the depression didn't really touch them - although how they made
their money was pretty sketchy. They were never in want and were
always able to live in the finest style, with golf clubs, private
colleges etc. At one point Hewett says if any family
member needed somewhere to stay a house would be bought for them as
her father had a hatred of renting!!
Dorothy comes into her own at high school - she becomes the "resident
genius of 6B" and forms binding friendships with photographer Betty
Picken and the mysterious Lilla Harper (who Hewett seems to imply
was her lover). On to university where she becomes a lost soul -
"the University bike" as a friend jokingly refers to her. After
winning a major poetry prize she sells the publishing rights to the
first magazine that comes calling which happens to be "Reader's
Digest" so when the far more prestigious "Meanjin" wants to publish
she has to refuse. Life becomes too hectic and there is a suicide
attempt, told in a serio/comic style which has her mother pouring
salt and water down her throat which she vomits up in the hospital.
Impulsively she marries Lloyd Davies hoping to give her life some
steadiness - they are different in temperament and both committed
Communists but it doesn't work. Hewett is a true Bohemian and the
many affairs don't stop because of marriage and a baby - as well as
a visit to an abortionist!!
Her meeting and eloping with Les Flood was not her first opportunity
of leaving Lloyd. The last half of the book shows how her escape
from Perth (where she was the petted favourite of the Party. She
seemed to have this ability to be able to make men her slaves ie
she always told Lloyd about her conquests and he always seemed to
take it very well. And while she often comments on being the beauty
of the family, photos show her as being pretty average in the looks
department). To Sydney, which brings her up against the sheer reality
of desperate poverty. Les Flood was a charismatic type who swept her
off her feet but he was not the adoring pushover she was used to.
People hinted that he was "mad" (Hewett later says he was a paranoid
schizophrenic and that she, who did a course in abnormal psychology,
lived with him for so many years but it just didn't click!!) She
tries to lose herself in an insane amount of activity, printing
and delivering leaflets, writing articles for "The Tribune" - all
taking place at a time in the early fifties when Prime Minister
Menzies was going all out in an attempt to have the Party banned.
She and Les go on a speaking tour of Russia and China where Hewett
details the strange, secretive behaviour of the peasants who are
supposed to be welcoming them with open arms. Several years later
when the atrocities of Stalin become known to the world Hewett writes
that she felt so worthless and a fool!!
So much happens in this book with the swiftness of a runaway freight
train - it is impossible to believe the book only details events up
to 1959!! Just when Dorothy is at her lowest she finds a job in
the advertising department of Waltons Department store and begins to write again. Recalling the gossip and stories she listened to when she worked at the Alexandria Textile mill nearly ten years before and after
having been short listed for the "Woman's Weekly Short Story
Competition", she begins to form "Bobbin Up". But in the midst of
all this there is the desperate flight of an abused wife, stealthily
snatching her children from school and secretly boarding a plane
to take her back to Western Australia.
Just a fantastic read, whatever you think about her politics, Dorothy
Hewett is a survivor as well as a born writer.

[Rachel Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a life! What an intellect!! If Dorothy had been born a few years later, she might have had greater control of her destiny....with the pill and emerging equality for women. Reading her life story made me understand how controlled women were in the 1940s and 50s...by men, sexism, and poverty. To be 'different' made her a target. However, Dorothy was able to overcome this as well as devastating personal tragedy to have a remarkable life....with the enduring support of her family.