Story summary
Samenvatting van De bewegende vinger
- 8 min. leestijd
- 10 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
A girl rides a stolen horse through the dark to save the man she loves in seven tales of the Australian bush.
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De bewegende vinger in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 3 h 45 min2 h 55 min fast, 4 h 25 min slow
- Lengte
- 53.200 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Makkelijk short sentences, plain words
- Voor het eerst verschenen
- 1895by Mary Gaunt
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Hoelang het duurt om de klassiekers te lezen · Bijgewerkt
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De bewegende vinger in short
The Moving Finger gathers seven tales of the Australian colonies. A girl loves a bushranger at a lonely waterhole, a young woman rides alone at night for help, two explorers lose their own tracks, a sailor loves a Puritan, an English heir leaves a hut on the plain, an old woman remembers a race, and a digger boils a pudding in a shirt. In each, a moment of choice leads to a result that no one can call back.
What De bewegende vinger is about
Picture a coach rolling through the dark over flooded plains, with a driver who swears at the road, the horses and the foolishness of women while he tells a ghost story. That is how The Moving Finger begins. Soon you are inside the tale of a girl at a lonely waterhole, the cattle thief she loves, and a card game that foretells death.
Mary Gaunt, an Australian-born writer, gathered seven stories of the colonial bush, from the plains to a gold camp, a desert, a stormy coast and a sheep station. The title comes from a verse about a hand that writes and moves on, and in each story someone makes a choice that cannot be called back.
Voor wie is het?. You will enjoy this if you like short stories with a vivid sense of place, tales of the bush and the goldfields, and a plain, warm storyteller's voice.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A girl at a waterhole loves the wrong man
The first tale comes from a coach driver on the stock route between Hay and Deniliquin. Murwidgee Waterhole lies in a deep crack in a grey, shadeless plain. Old Durham and his wife sell liquor there without a licence, and their grandsons steal a few cattle from every herd that passes.
Their granddaughter Nellie is pretty, gentle and a little simple. She loves Gentleman Jim, an escaped convict and bushranger who speaks like an educated man. Her grandmother reads death in the cards. When Jim learns that Ben Fisher, a foreman, wants to marry Nellie, he swears to kill her if she goes near the man. Nellie kisses his hand, because his anger looks to her like love.
The family has an old trick. A rider in a white sheet gallops through a sleeping camp, the cattle stampede, and some of them vanish. This time Fisher's men know the trick, and one promises a bullet for the ghost. Warning Fisher would betray Jim. Blind loyalty to one man sets the whole night moving.
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A refused suitor and a girl's night ride
On the evening before Christmas, on the verandah of Warwingie station, Tom Hollis asks Bessie Warner once more to marry him.
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Two men lose their way in the desert
The third tale drops two men into the dry country beyond the Mulligan River.
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A sailor leaves the girl he cannot win
The fourth tale begins on a headland above the Southern Ocean.
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A hutkeeper who depends on a careless man
The fifth tale is set in Western Australia in a drought.
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An old woman explains why she never married
An old maid tells her young niece, also named Hope, why she never married.
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A young digger cooks his first Christmas dinner
The last tale is a memory of a first Christmas on the Tinpot Gully diggings in the early fifties.
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One act cannot be called back
The title comes from a verse about a hand that writes and moves on, and the stories take it seriously.
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Loneliness shapes love, class and risk
The land is the second main character.
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Spoken voices and repeated words carry the tales
Gaunt often puts a voice inside the story.
Read all 10 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Nellie Durham A gentle, simple girl at a lonely waterhole who loves a bushranger and wants only to keep him safe.
- Bessie Warner A pretty station girl bored with hill life, who must find the courage to ride through the night for help.
- Tom Hollis A loyal neighbour who loves Bessie and will risk anything to see her safe.
- Anderson An old bushman lost in the desert, who thinks of his crippled little son and tries to keep a younger man alive.
- Ben Harper A well-read second mate who loves Susy Mackie and cannot share the faith she holds.
- Susy Mackie A Puritan farm girl torn between her love for a sailor and the creed her father taught her.
- Kitty A mixed-race hutkeeper who belongs to neither the station nor the camp and clings to the one man who keeps her.
- Hope Forde An old woman who tells her niece of the poor overseer she loved and the race that decided her life.
How it ends (spoiler)
Gentleman Jim shoots Nellie in the dark, then holds her as she dies. At Warwingie the gang is beaten, but Hollis dies at midnight on Christmas morning. Helm dies mad in the desert, and Anderson, saved, comes home to find his son dead. Harper gives the skipper the last place on the rope, and it snaps. Kitty is dead when the men return, and Stanesby goes home to marry. Paul Griffith dies after his fall, and Hope never marries. The digger simply grows older.
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Vragen over De bewegende vinger
What is The Moving Finger about?
It is a collection of seven stories set in the Australian bush in colonial times. They cover a bushranger's sweetheart, a hostage rescue at Christmas, lost explorers, a wreck on a stormy coast, a hutkeeper on a lonely plain, a steeplechase and a digger's Christmas.
What does the title The Moving Finger mean?
The title comes from the verse printed at the start, which says that a moving finger writes and then moves on, and that no piety, wit or tears can cancel what it has written. Each story turns on an act that cannot be undone.
Who wrote The Moving Finger and when is it set?
Mary Gaunt, an Australian writer who died in 1942, wrote the stories. They are fiction set in the colonial period, from the days of the goldfields in the 1850s onward, on stations, diggings, plains and the southern coast.
Is The Moving Finger easy to follow?
The stories are short and each one stands alone. Several are told by a lively speaker, such as a coach driver or an old aunt, and the plain dialogue and clear scenes make them easy to follow by ear.
What is the main message of The Moving Finger?
The collection shows that one act, word or wager can shape a whole life, and that nothing can wash it out afterward. It also shows how loneliness, pride and love steer people on the frontier.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
Gaunt, Mary. The Moving Finger. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger.
Gaunt, M. (2026). The moving finger. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger (Original work published 1895)
Gaunt, Mary. The Moving Finger. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger.
@book{gaunt2026moving,
author = {Gaunt, Mary},
title = {The Moving Finger},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-moving-finger},
note = {First published 1895}
}
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