Barbara Baynton's oeuvre, though small, has always been a challenge. It has been viewed as somehow at odds with the work of her male contemporaries, while ostensibly covering much of the same ground in terms of setting and genre. Her work remains challenging, and this is not just in terms of her position in the national canon. Two characteristics of her writing serve to alienate the reader: her use of fractured narratives and her failure, deliberate or otherwise, to provide an authorial position with which to assist the reader's interpretation. Furthermore, as Hergenhan suggests, her writing — short stories and a novel — involves ‘a symbolic elusiveness, almost a concealment, possibly to evade censorship’ (211), probably to protect the discovery of truths that her protagonists themselves seek but fear to acknowledge.

There is a consensus amongst readers about one feature of Baynton's work. She is a dissident writer, but what does she dissent from? The notion that her writing fails to support the national ethos espoused by her male compatriots is not in doubt. Similarly, the view, first stated by feminist readers, that the target of her criticism is the sexism of a male-dominated society is not in dispute. Yet, these views do not account sufficiently for ‘the pervading vision of moral chaos and cruelty’ which her work delineates (Krimmer and Lawson xxiii).