Social Inequality In Kate Grenville's The Secret River

Thomas Jefferson transcribed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal”, that the circumstances of ones birth are irrelevant - for every man is endowed with the same certain unalienable rights. This phrase independently formed the premise for modern society, its significance remaining highly present in a contemporary environment. Kate Grenville’s The Secret River adopts this foundation of society as a foregrounded theme, addressing the synchronous concern of social inequality through class distinctions. Literary academic Luis Stover asserts quality literature is constituted through the echoing of modern tribulations, with the text assisting readers in understanding relevant contemptuous issues, such as justice, academic freedom and civil rights, each encompassed under social equality. Grenville seeks to …show more content…
Grenville’s deliberate emphasis on the prevalence and influence of the British class system throughout the outset of the novel accentuates the oppressive nature of a distinct class system, embodied through protagonist William Thornhill’s development amidst his time in London. The English social hierarchy condemned people like Thornhill to a life of steal or starve. Forced to live an impoverished childhood in the slums of Southwark and plagued with constant hunger and ailments fostered through their poverty, Grenville invites the reader to understand that these people were not inherently bad or corrupt people, but forced to play the cards they are dealt by a prejudicial class system. From Thornhill’s harsh early life with “no charity for a boy in his britches” (pg. 10) stems his wish that “another