Mary (N'goola)

Outer characterization

Mary is one of the most important characters in the short story “N’goola” by Katharine Susannah Prichard. Her Aboriginal name is N’goola, but she is initially unaware of this, as she was raised from the age of six (p. 42, l. 15) in a missionary institution where she was given a white person’s name (p. 42, ll. 28-31). 

This tells us that Mary is part of the Stolen Generation, since she was forcefully taken from her tribe when she was a child to be raised according to white customs.

Mary is a half-caste, meaning a half-Aboriginal, as her biological father is a white man (p. 40, ll. 2-6). Mary, who is now “a woman of thirty-five or thereabouts” (p. 35, ll. 8-9), is married to a half-Aboriginal man named Ted (p. 35, l. 34). They have an 18-year-old son together (p. 35, l. 25). She works for white people in town, “doing washing and scrubbing in the township” (p. 35, l. 24). Mary lives at the edge of town in a native settlement, in poor conditions, but on a p...