- A proud young woman in early 20th century Australia must choose between marriage and independence.
- Sybylla Melvyn is an independent young woman who soon after arriving to live with her grandmother, and aunt announces she'll never marry and plans on having a career instead. She attracts the interest of several suitors; bumbling Englishman Frank Hawdon, her handsome neighbour, the handsome young farmer, Harry Beecham, who she's attracted to.—garykmcd
- In 1897, Sybylla Melvyn has just entered young womanhood. She is still living at home with her poor farming parents in the Australian outback. She considers herself to be unattractive but clever. She dreams of a "brilliant" creative-oriented career, such as in the arts, but she is not yet ready to strike out on her own despite her spirited independent streak. She sees that independence as being incompatible with marriage which her elders seem to feel is the next logical step in her life. She welcomes her mother's decision for her to live with her wealthy maternal grandmother, especially considering the alternative which is to accept a job as a servant. That move is so that she can learn to be a proper young woman to attract that husband. Her Aunt Helen encourages her to marry a man she likes with prospects rather than marry a man she loves without prospects. In the former category is jackaroo Frank Hawdon, although Sybylla does not even seem to like him. In the latter category is Harry Beecham, an acquaintance from her childhood. He is a wealthy landowner, who has his pick of any woman he wants as his wife. Regardless of how she feels for Harry and how Harry may feel for her, she still may not see marriage as being part of her immediate future. But factors outside of her control may dictate what happens in Sybylla's life.—Huggo
- Australia, 1890s. A young woman, Sybylla Melvyn, is stuck in a rural area but dreams of a career in the arts, ideally as a writer. Her ambitions are at odds with her family's aims for her and with broader society's views on a woman's path in life. She meets a young man and the two are soon close. Will she have to choose between her career and him?—grantss
- For her award-winning breakthrough film, director Gillian Armstrong drew on teenage author Miles Franklin's novel, a celebrated turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australian coming-of-age story, to brashly upend the conventions of period romance. Headstrong young Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis, in a star-making performance), bemoans her stifling life in the backcountry, where her writerly ambitions receive little encouragement, and craves independence above all else. When a handsome landowner (Sam Neill), disarmed by her unruly charms, begins to court her, Sybylla must decide whether she can reconcile the prospect of marriage with the illustrious life's work she has imagined for herself. Suffused with generous humor and a youthful appetite for experience, My Brilliant Career is a luminous portrait of an ardently free spirit.—Anonymous
- The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is an imaginative, headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s. Drought and a series of poor business decisions reduce her family to subsistance level, her father begins to drink excessively, and Sybylla struggles to deal with the monotony of her life. To her relief, she is sent to live on her grandmother's property, where life is more comfortable. There she meets wealthy young Harry Beecham, who loves her and proposes marriage; convinced of her ugliness and aware of her tomboyish ways, Sybylla is unable to believe that he could really love her. By this time, her father's drinking has got the family into debt, and she is sent to work as governess/housekeeper for the family of an almost illiterate neighbour to whom her father owes money. She becomes acclaimated to this life to the point where it is almost bearable, but to her relief (again) is sent home (this time) to keep her away from her crass employer's son who has apparantely fallen for her (and, ironically, since she has no property, she is deemed unsuitable as the son's mate). When Harry Beecham returns to ask Sybylla to marry him, she concludes that she would only make him unhappy and sends him away, determined to pursue her career as a writer. The movie ending completes the suggestion, made at the begining, that this entire screenplay is based on her first book, as we see her putting the manuscript in a mailbox in front of her parent's ramshacle house. (A suggestion that this movie is the story of her Brilliant Career.....or how it got its start anyway).
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