Tess Gardner review of Tessa Morris-Suzuki, A Secretive Century: Monte Punshon’s Australia

(Melbourne University Press, 2024), 272 pp., PB $35, ISBN 9780522879940

Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s A Secretive Century is a biography of Monte Punshon, a figure with a complex and fascinating life spanning 1882–1989. Punshon is a worthy choice as a subject for a biography, not because she played a notable role in twentieth-century Australian society, but because of the oblique angles from which she experienced it over the course of her long life. This included travelling children’s theatre companies; the queer scenes of Melbourne in the 1930s and 1980s; Japanophile circles of the mid- and late twentieth century; and the Tatura internment camp in World War II, at which she worked as a warden.

Morris-Suzuki purports that Monte lived in a ‘secretive century’ in which private and public lives were much more starkly divided than today. This is particularly relevant for her discussion of Monte’s sexuality: while Punshon loved many women, she remained uncomfortable with the label ‘lesbian’ for most of her life. The tension between Punshon’s desire for liberation and social expectations is sustained throughout the work. It is resolved in Morris-Suzuki’s conclusion and final thoughts on Punshon’s life, titled ‘Unafraid to Be’. Yet Punshon experienced no small amount of fear while confronting unfamiliar cultures and social pressures; the trick was simply that, instead of being trapped by her fears, they became a spur towards curiosity, discovery and a fascinating life. Morris-Suzuki presents this as a worthy model to follow in a time of shifting geopolitics, new technologies and the large-scale movement of refugees. The idea that Australians who engage with Asia provide worthy models for their counterparts is common enough in biographies. Morris-Suzuki carries the reflection on fear consistently through the biography, making the case that it was Punshon’s attitude as an individual that shaped her approach to Japan, the world of the theatre and her ‘homosexual boyfriends’ (p. 151).

Morris-Suzuki’s emphasis on a ‘secretive century’ shapes both the argument and methodological framing of the biography. Punshon, in her memoir Monte-San, is quite clear about her reticence to tell the reader every detail of her personal life. Morris-Suzuki is sensitive to this desire for privacy and the issues that come from recalling a long life, stressing that her role is to go beyond checking the facts of a memoir to investigating what is interesting about the gaps in Punshon’s recollections, intentional or otherwise. This is facilitated by a micro-historical approach, one that is effective and likely necessary for a life that touched on as many themes as Punshon’s. Morris-Suzuki plays the specifics of Punshon’s life and the broader context against each other ably.

The significance of Morris-Suzuki’s work lies in her choice of Monte Punshon as a subject, naturally enough, but also in the micro-historical approach employed in the work. Punshon is a deeply interesting figure on her own, but Morris-Suzuki embraces the trend within biography to use atypical individuals to highlight social forces. This demonstrates the value of Punshon’s perspective on twentieth-century Australia: it leads to a re-examination of well-known events from the perspective of populations that do not feature in typical narratives, such as the ‘enemy aliens’ interned at Tatura. It also draws attention to these individuals and groups themselves. For example, Morris-Suzuki highlights the dance instructor at the Juvenile Comic Opera, Jennie Brenan, ‘one of the rather large number of remarkable women who have been consigned to the shadows of Australian cultural history’ (p. 77).

Morris-Suzuki writes with skill and judgement. The narrative is subtly signposted and foreshadowed; the argument is well maintained; and the themes of gender, sexuality, Australian nationalism and Australia’s place in the Asia-Pacific region, among others, are expertly woven together. She captures the moving aspects of Punshon’s life with sympathy and emotional resonance and inserts herself into the biography in a way that makes her role and perspective clear but does not belabour the point.

A Secretive Century is suitable for scholarly readers but written also to be accessible and engaging for a more general audience. Historians of Asia and Australia, as well as queer historians, will likely get a great deal out of the work through the addition of Punshon’s perspective on these themes. Morris-Suzuki’s engagement with earlier works on Punshon is largely a difference in emphasis: unlike earlier works, she sets out to explore aspects of Punshon’s life beyond gender and sexuality. This fits not only with the core argument of the biography, but also engages with the multiplicity of individuals studied in life writing. In general, Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s argument leads her to engage with some of the central questions of life writing: the relationship between the biographical subject and society, and the ways in which the subject sees themselves. Morris-Suzuki’s command of the subject’s archive, the historical backgrounds through which Punshon moved and skilful writing makes this engagement successful and interesting. A Secretive Century is an enjoyable and worthwhile read.