Age of Consent (1938) is the sixth of Norman Lindsay’s ten novels, and like a number of the others it attracted the attention of the censors, though I am not sure if it was banned outright, as so many books were at that time.
In short, it’s the story of a middle-aged confirmed bachelor painter and a 17 or 18-year-old naive girl living in beach shacks on a lonely stretch of NSW South Coast, which for the movie wasn't "sexy" enough, so they shifted the location from New South Wales to Dunk Island on the Great Barrier Reef and made the artist a success instead of a failure.
In the book - which I prefer to the movie but then I always do, don't I? - the story is located in the coastal town of 'Wantabadgeree' which is the name of a farming hamlet near Wagga Wagga, well inland. Why Lindsay uses it as the name of a town on the coast I don’t know. Ignorance?
The basis of the plot is that of Bradly Mudgett, a mediocre landscape painter with just enough money from his last sales to keep him going for a couple of months in a shack on a remote beach while he tries his hand at seascapes for a change. He has his dog for company, and needs solitude.
Into this idyll walks young Cora, out looking for shellfish, whom Bradly adds to one of his compositions, only to discover that the painting works better with her in it.
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[page 118]
At that little estuary from the lagoon Bradly set up his easel, dodging about to find the best viewpoint under the dove-coloured stems of the tea-trees, dripping feathery white blossoms over the water. When that was selected, he had her wade into the water, which came no higher than her calves. Against the blaze of light beyond her, she made a lovely pattern, warm with reflected light, cooled by the shadows, and flecked with minted gold from the foliage above her. ‘Pull up your skirt a bit; hook it up with both hands, like you was wading,’ commanded Bradly. With one of her strenuous wriggles, which either confessed embarrassment, or rejected it, she pulled the skirt up, but it was so short that being pulled up, it came above her thighs, and revealed their warm mystery golden with light reflected from the water. |
Cora has her own problems with her grandmother, who threatens Bradly with all sorts of retribution, mostly to do with Cora being underage and naked, when she discovers Bradly has been paying Cora for posing, and that money has not been going towards her gin.
But, of course, it all works out in the end. I liked it well enough, though in today's super-politically-correct environment Lindsay makes me nervous when it comes to young girls and their states of undress.
As for Norman Lindsay himself who is perhaps best-known for his childrens’ book, "The Magic Pudding" (whose "the more you eats the more you gets" is, I suspect, taken too literally by Australia's growing army of welfare recipients), he was a notable artist especially with pen and ink as well as a competent author. He became and remains famous for his nudes; spent eighteen frustrating months in London before returning to Sydney and purchasing a home in the Blue Mountains where he wrote and painted for the next fifty years - see the 1994 movie below, "Sirens".
Two free full-length movies to keep you entertained over the weekend. "The Magic Pudding" indeed!
