Book Review
Sweet Nothings
by Madison Griffiths
Author, artist, and producer Madison Griffiths rips off the band-aid 30 years after Helen Garner’s controversial book The First Stone and launches a new discussion about abuse, sex and power dynamics in Australian academia. Told through the accounts of real women, research, and personal experience, Griffiths is an unflinching voice in Australian feminist literature today.
Sweet Nothings delves into the stories of four women – Rose, Blaine, Cara, and Elsie – and their experiences as students who embarked on romantic relationships with university professors. Through their accounts, we examine how gender, power and sex is exploited in the university setting, with Griffiths providing a deeper analysis of the cultural and social acceptance and endorsement of imbalanced male-female expectations and authority.
Sweet Nothings almost feels novelistic at times with its tender, poetic prose as Griffiths handles the nuance and complexity of these difficult discourses with care and a quiet fury. Although elements of the story – including the women’s names – have been fictionalised to preserve anonymity, this book is one of thousands of true stories that share the same outcome of exploitation, humiliation and heartbreak following from a ‘sweet nothing’: an empty promise of love and affection that makes you feel special and seen. Griffiths dissects the psychology of the female student and the male teacher – their individual desires, their expectations of what they deserve, and the lasting scars left behind.
Praised by Clementine Ford, Chanel Contos and Hannah Ferguson, Griffiths’ candid and searing style of writing exposes the long history of pedagogy tied to abuse of power, particularly between male teachers and female students. With these stories taking place across Australia, openly naming many highly esteemed universities, Sweet Nothings is a tale that unfortunately feels close to home, perhaps bringing comfort to those who felt they were alone in this experience, but shocking all who learn the true prevalence of these experiences.
