This chapter examines how women’s writing has shaped the Australian novel. It suggests that the novel and women’s particular contributions to the form serve as significant flashpoints for discussions over the directions of the national culture. The chapter proceeds from the knowledge of Aileen Moreton-Robinson, an Indigenous woman of the Goenpul tribe, part of the Quandamooka nation: namely, that speaking about ‘women’ as though their presumed shared identities, experiences and representations ‘as Australians’ hinged on gender alone, has been a significant faultline in non-indigenous feminisms. Further, writings by Indigenous women underscore that ‘the novel’ is a freighted form that turns critical attention to the many strategies historically practised in Indigenous cultures and communities, that unsettle any presumption that ‘the novel’ (and indeed ‘the nation’) is a category or genre to be taken for granted. This chapter seeks to come to an understanding of how women’s novel writing in Australia is therefore a category of reception with complex histories and effects. It has a particular interest in the production and reception of ‘women’s novel writing’ in terms of the practices of individual authors; the creation of cultural and literary fields; complications of gendered identities; and the construction of readerships.