Inheritance

In Hannie Rayson’s complex play ‘Inheritance’, there is an affray over the family farm, Allendale. The contemporary drama gives an insight of how rural Australia can be an extremely dark place, full of hardship and financial strain, leaving farmers unable to cope in their current situations. It proves time of abhorrent tragedies can tear away a family bond. The prologue was set in 1934, when ‘multiculturalism’ wasn’t heard of, homosexuals were discriminated against and aboriginals were denied the rights other Australians were benefiting. The play depicts a prejudiced and racist community, language emphasises this: Aborigines are "coons", Greeks are "wogs", and homosexuals are “poofters or pansy boys". To a degree, the characters in the play signify aspects of the Australian identity and experience. When the prologue was written (1934) it was a time when aboriginals weren’t given the rights other Australians were enjoying. Rayson uses Nugget to represent the wrongs of the past that haunt the present. He is an important symbol of the aboriginal population who was born as a result of a white man taking advantage of black women, used and discarded by white people and lost his birthrights. Nugget is overlooked in the play as he was a talented farmer with a lot of love for the land although was seen as a threat to others of their property rights. An example of prejudice against him was when he sensibly rejects a $100,000 deal to buy new farm machinery, Lyle mutters to him ‘bloody boong and ‘black bastard’. Aboriginals weren’t the only ones prone to discrimination in the play. Girlie makes assumptions about the Greeks who owned the pub ‘They’re thieves, those Greeks’. Maureen is an ambitious character with racist views. She refers to aboriginals as ‘the bloody Mabo mob’ and uses her own resentment to fuel her political campaign against multiculturalism in a speech she quoted ‘I’m talking about every Asian, Moslem and Hottentot who come here’. Maureen also prejudices...