Victoria Purman will discuss her new book, The Marriage Trap, at Leeton Library. Photos: Supplied.
Historical fiction author Victoria Purman will explore Leeton’s wartime history and the changing rights of Australian women when she visits Leeton Library next week.
Purman, who has written about Leeton in her novel The Land Girls, will discuss the role of Australian Women’s Land Army members who worked in the region during World War II, as well as the history of contraception and its impact on women’s lives.
She will speak at Leeton Library on Thursday (30 July) as part of the State Library’s 200th anniversary celebrations and statewide open day: Open Doors, Open Books, Open Minds.
“Women in the Australian Women’s Land Army went to Leeton, the big agricultural bowl, so I’m going to talk a little about that, too, and that role the Land Army women played in Leeton during World War II,” she said.
Purman, who has never visited the Riverina before, will also discuss her latest novel, The Marriage Trap, which examines the impact of contraception becoming more widely available to Australian women during the 1960s.
The idea for the book came after Purman began considering moves in the United States to restrict women’s access to contraception.
“I thought, how is it that Australia is a place now where you can walk into a supermarket and buy condoms off the shelf or you can go to your doctor freely and get contraception? There are so many more kinds of contraception available to women now,” she said.
“So I started researching that idea of how Australian women got access to contraception. And I found it so fascinating, because it wasn’t easy. We were the second country in the world to approve the contraceptive pill for use by women, but it was only for married women, and they had to get approval from their husbands, and it was super expensive.”
One of the main characters in The Marriage Trap, Olive, is 60 years old and has five children. Three have grown up and moved away, but two remain at home — Cathy, a 20-year-old teaching student, and her little sister, Evelyn, aged 10.
“You can do the maths: she’s a change-of-life baby, as they were called. Olive is a devout Catholic — she really is a person of faith — and through the book she finds herself really tested when the Catholic Church reaffirms its opposition to all kinds of contraception.”
Purman says she created the Langley family as a microcosm of three women grappling with their reproductive health — when they want to have children and how many, and how that was out of their hands.
“And when the pill and other forms of contraception became available, it opened up women to take opportunities in their lives that were denied them before,” Purman said.
Purman said discussions with readers had also highlighted how much attitudes towards sex education and contraception had changed.
“I get so many stories at the signing table. They’ll come up to me and say, ‘That happened to me.’ Or ‘I didn’t know anything about sex education when I was a girl. I was told that babies came from the cabbage patch.’ We were so scared of being open and honest about those things, and thank goodness those times have changed.”
Purman will also discuss her historical fiction books and her career as an author, and take questions from the audience.
“I love creating characters which really resonate with readers. When they tell me that it is their story, I just feel so humbled and rewarded by that.
“I can’t wait to come. I’ve never been, but I hear it’s a beautiful town.”
Purman will speak at Leeton Library at 5:30 pm this Thursday (30 July).
More information is available through the Riverina Regional Library website or by contacting Leeton Library on (02) 6953 0945.
