Grenville's Own Words

“William Thornhill, essentially a decent man, was sickened when he saw things of which one of his neighbors boasted, but he said nothing about it to Sarah, so gradually he became complicit with the unspeakable, simply because - if he was to prevent his wife from panicking, which would mean abandoning his precious piece of land - unspeakable was exactly what it was. He didn’t know it at first, but he was being edged into a furtive undeclared war.” (Introduction by Diana Athill, on the subject of colonialism in The Secret River being a tool for upward social mobility, xvi)

     In an unpublished 2009 interview with Kate Grenville, she discusses her writing style, The Secret River, and criticism that she leaves Will Thornhill’s character “off the hook.” 

     Grenville’s commentary is important for understanding her position on Thornhill and his participation in colonialism that led to his success. She believes that his character and the system that he is caught up in is complex and worthy of deeper evaluation rather than being seen as a black and white situation. 

     Grenville states, “In the case of Thornhill, and all the early colonisers he typifies, to declare him simply a bad man would be to evade the hard task of understanding what happened on the Australian frontier. Seeing him as simply “evil” is as false as the idea (as taught in my schooldays) that the white colonists were pioneer heroes who did no wrong. Neither of these crude positions gets close to the reality. Both of them shut off any possibility of further explorations or understanding” (Grenville).

     She moves onto explaining Will’s necessity to partake in the exploitation of the Aboriginals in order to advance his family.

     “Exploring that question takes us far beyond easy labels. It takes us into understanding why a man like Thornhill might do what he does. That’s a complicated knot of many threads: his own past, his feeling for right and wrong, pressure from the culture around him, love for his family, self-interest … In the end, I felt he was a man neither better nor worse than most, but had been acted on by all those factors to do something that was deeply wrong and which, in his heart, he knew to be deeply wrong” (Grenville).

     Whether Will's actions were right or wrong is up for debate. What can be said is that while I do not personally view Thornhill’s actions as moral, it is evident that Will viewed taking part in colonialism as the only way he could move his family up the social ladder. He was faced with very limited options: either do nothing and see “his land” be taken away from him or act against the indigenous people in order to secure his land for generations to come. For Will and his family, participating in colonialism created positive changes and gave him opportunities that would not have been imaginable had he returned to England or watched his land be reclaimed by the Aboriginal peoples.