Each successive generation of historians has discarded, reformulated or asked new questions of the convict past in light of contemporary concerns. What preoccupies one generation of historians will inevitably be redefined by another. In this book I have suggested some new directions for broadening our understanding of convict history and of the experiences of convict women in particular. I have attempted to move the discussion beyond whether convict women were criminals or skilled labourers; whether they were whores or not; whether most of them became respectable citizens or not; whether they were victims of patriarchy or not; whether the conditions they endured were better in Australia or in Britain; and whether the prisons were a hell or a haven for female inmates. In order to shift the discussion away from these arguments we need to ask different questions of Australia's convict period. But if the task ahead is to be a profound revision, how can this revision be imagined?

Unravelling the cultural meaning of headshaving, of moments of laughter and play, of the language of pollution, purity and abandonment, of the inside/out nature of the prisons and the spatial arrangement on ships and within the towns, of the question of looking and seeing, of the perception of convict women as savage and other, of the abandoning and wandering mother and of the orphan, are new avenues for understanding colonial relationships.