The Transit of Venus

“Because they were alike in feature, the contrast in coloring was remarkable. It was not only that one was dark and one fair, but that the one called Caro should have hair so very black, so straight, heavy and Oriental coarse texture. Grace was for this reason seen to be fairer than she was—as she was judged the lighter, the easier, for the strength of Caro. People exaggerated the fairness, to make things neat: dark she, fair she.” 

Here, Hazzard highlights the temptation to oversimplify the Bell sisters’ characters based on an exaggerated contrast in hair color. In neither looks nor personality is Grace the opposite of Caro. However, Caro’s striking darkness and a hair texture that reads as “exotic” causes outside observers to project mildness and a yielding temperament onto Grace. They thus force the sisters into clichés present in 19th-century European novels about the fair, compliant heroine and the dark, rebellious heroine. Hazzard sets up these expectations at the start of her novel to deconstruct them in its duration. 

“Professor Thrale did not much care for the fact that Grace came from Australia. Australia required apologies, and was almost a subject for ribaldry.” 

Professor Thrale’s disparaging attitude towards Australia, a former British colony, is typical of upper-class Britons who are smarting from the loss of their empire and global influence in the postwar period. By resorting to jokes about a supposedly backwards and buffoonish Australia, Professor Thrale pretends that the old status quo is in place and Britain firmly superior in culture and power. He also makes it clear that Grace’s nationality is embarrassing to him. 

“He found these women uncommonly self-possessed for their situation. They seemed scarcely conscious of being Australians in a furnished flat. He would have liked them to be more impressed by his having come, and instead caught himself living up to what he thought might be their standards and hoping they would not guess the effort incurred.” 

Christian, who has been raised in the hierarchical British class system with all of its expectations of social deference, is shocked at how at ease in their own skin the Bell sisters seem. They do not feel that they have to apologize for what seem to him markers of social inferiority, such as being Australian or living in rented accommodation.