Henderson, Anne: Enid Lyons — Leading Lady to a Nation. Pluto Press, June 2008, RRP $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-9802924-9-7
That a woman should have been elected to the Australian House of Representatives in 1943 is achievement enough. That this woman should be the child of a Tasmanian sawyer and a postmistress, and herself the mother of 12 children, renders the achievement quite remarkable.
What is most striking about the life story of Enid Lyons, however, is not its trailblazing singularity, but rather the degree to which she remained — throughout her life — a typical Australian wife and mother.
It was precisely this quality of down-to-earth practicality coupled with her awareness of everyday concerns that informed and energised a political career that saw Lyons mixing socially with royalty, shaping the legislative agenda for the Division of Darwin, and ultimately becoming one of only two women in Australian history to be made a Dame of the Order of Australia.
Anne Henderson's biography traces Lyons' history from her birth and upbringing in rural Tasmania through to her death, focusing on both her public political life and her relationship with husband Joe Lyons, Australia's tenth Prime Minister.
The relationship between Joe and Enid Lyons forms the basis of Kate White's 1987 book A Political Love Story — Joe and Enid Lyons. Henderson's biography provides something of a revisionist gloss to this earlier work, challenging several of White's readings and providing newly fleshed-out details of various key events.
Chief among Henderson's new material is a chapter on the origins of Enid's father, William Burnell, in which she exposes a scandal long buried in the sanitised family records. While providing an interesting contextual footnote, such details as emerge do not radically alter a reading of Lyons herself, who — it is revealed — would have been unaware of them.
More interesting is Henderson's take on the relationship between Joe and Enid, a marriage '... revolving around the vagaries of political highs and lows', which she claims has been substantially misinterpreted by history.
Enid survived her husband by 42 years, during which time she pursued a diverse and highly successful public career, independent of her husband's influence and legacy. Such drive and endeavour, Henderson argues, have led many to cast Enid as the true political force in the relationship and Joe as the figurehead, an impression fostered by Joe's own extensive public acknowledgement of his wife's achievements.
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