Theme of Hope in Jane Harrison's Play, Stolen

From the year eighteen sixty nine to the year nineteen sixty nine Aboriginal children were taken from their homes. The play ‘Stolen’ by Jane Harrison tells the story of five Aboriginal children who were forcibly extracted form their families. The children: Anne, Jimmy, Ruby, Sandy and Shirley all demonstrated the devastating impact that the removal from their families and subsequent institutionalisation had on each of their lives. Furthermore, some of the main characters maintained their hopes and dreams under different circumstances whilst a few displayed a lack of hope.

Shirley’s character emits the voice of a struggling young mother, she had her children robbed from her by the Australian authorities who wrongly exploited a biological bond between a mother and child, yet she maintained her hopes and dreams by knitting annually to represent the years she spent separated from her children to numb the excruciating pain of losing them “I had to leave the shop .After all these years of getting used to it, it still hurts.”(pg19). She clung onto the clothes as her beacon of hope to reunite with her daughter for there was no trace of her son Lionel. She was sometimes over come by lack of hope “they say time heals –but that’s a load of bullshit- if you’ll pardon my language.”(pg35). She felt this way because time wouldn’t heal the emotional scars and wounds the white authorities left behind for her to unsuccessfully mend she is the clearest symbol of the stolen generations because she suffered constant emotional pain at the loss of her loved ones. Shirley was possibly a victim of abuse because the very existence of her children could be the result of rape, to some degree she expressed empathy towards Ruby, a victim of abuse who Shirle...

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... racism, Yet we can see that Anne possessed a strength which the other characters lacked, her own identity was a mixture of both white and black, and she was determined to make it work mutually. Nevertheless she displayed this, by her giving both mothers a present for mother’s day “I got mum some milk chocolates. And I got my mother some dark chocolates. Either way I love them both.”(pg34).

‘Stolen’ exemplifies that even though the children suffered exceedingly, most were capable of maintaining their hopes for the future. All the children upheld their hopes and dreams, however they weren’t all lucky enough to have them occur in their lives.The play illustrated the strength of aboriginal identity and the determination of the characters to retreat to their families. All the characters reunite with their families and to some extent this could be seen as hopeful.