Henry Lawon

             The young boy, Tommy, seeing how drained and distressed his mother is, with a burst of insight exclaims "Mother, I won't never go droving; blast me if I do!" In Lawson's fictional world, however, such promises are made only to be broken or forgotten, and the blighting hopelessness of the bush life is subtly but inevitably conveyed in the final sentence:.
             "And she hugs him to her worn-out breast and kisses him; and they sit thus together while the sickly daylight breaks over the bush".
             Even the sun's light is sickly, weak, ineffective in breaking the monotonous tyranny of the bush. The end of the story emphasises the family's desolation in such a harsh environment; moreover, the drover's wife's ability to cope has been achieved at what Lawson clearly regards as the cost of her femininity. In the setting of The Drover's Wife, the reader's attention is obtained through the use of adjectives such as "stunted, rotten apple trees- and "big, black, yellow-eyed dog-. Henry Lawson intelligently compares the children and the drover's wife to the environment. The creek is "narrow, almost waterless- which also describes the "ragged, dried up children-. The bush is described as harsh, bare and monotonous, accurately describing the life of the drover's wife. She is lonely, poor, unambitious, worn and weary.
             Even though "Drover's Wife- is set in one setting, Lawson uses techniques like anecdotes to capture audience's attentions. The use of these flashbacks or anecdotes is to give more information about the Drover's wife and it creates a good characteristic of the women. The small gaps, for example "it must be near one or two' o clock-, shows the movement of her mind from the past and present. This anecdote broadens the viewer's perspectives of women life and develops an understanding of her experiences and it also gives breath of the story.
             Some gentle humour is used in the story for example handkerchief incident, which softens the wife's character and also make us feel sympathetic towards her.