Editing Ned Kelly (section)

===Kelly myth===
[[File:Ned Kelly letterbox.jpg|thumb|A homemade letterbox in the style of Ned Kelly's armour, [[Bullio, New South Wales|Bullio]], [[Southern Highlands (New South Wales)|Southern Highlands]], New South Wales]]
The myth surrounding Kelly pervades Australian culture, and he is one of Australia's most recognised national symbols. Academic and folklorist Graham Seal writes:

{{blockquote|Ned Kelly has progressed from outlaw to national hero in a century, and to international icon in a further 20 years. The still-enigmatic, slightly saturnine and ever-ambivalent bushranger is the undisputed, if not universally admired, national symbol of Australia.{{sfn|Seal|2011|pp=99–100}}}}

Seal argues that Kelly's story taps into the [[Robin Hood]] tradition of the outlaw hero and the myth of the [[The bush|Australian bush]] as a place of freedom from oppressive authority. For many admirers of Kelly, he embodies characteristics thought to be typically Australian such as defying authority, siding with the underdog and fighting bravely for one's beliefs.{{sfn|Seal|1980|pp=16, 28}} This view was already evident in the aftermath of his death. Reviewing an 1881 performance of the Kelly gang play ''[[Ostracised (play)|Ostracised]]'', staged at Melbourne's [[Princess Theatre (Melbourne)|Princess Theatre]], ''[[The Australasian]]'' wrote:<ref>Review dated 13 August 1881, in Stephen Torre, ed., ''The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Quotations'', 1990, Plays and Playwrights, p. 307</ref>
{{blockquote|... judging from the way in which the applause was dealt out, it was pretty certain that the exploits of the outlaws excited admiration and prompted emulation. ... In short ''Ostracised'' will help to confirm the belief, in the young mind of Victoria, that the Kellys were martyrs and not sanguinary ruffians.}}

According to Jones, after Kelly's death, "a Robin Hood-like figure survived: good-looking, brave, a fine horseman and bushman and a crack shot, devoted to his mother and sisters, a man who treated all women with courtesy, who stole from the rich to give to the poor, who dressed himself in his enemy's uniform to outwit him. Most of all a man who stood against the police persecutors of his family and was driven to outlawry when he defended his sister against a drunken constable. Such was Ned Kelly the myth".{{sfn|Jones|1995|p=338}} Superintendent Hare wrote that Kelly "always posed as a friend of the working-man".<ref>{{cite book |last=Hare |first=Francis Augustus |url= |title=The Last of the Bushrangers: An Account of the Capture of the Kelly Gang |date=1892 |publisher=Hurst and Blackett |isbn= |location= |page=5, 148 |access-date=}}</ref> Seale argues that the gang's raids were partly public performances where they sought to live up to the romantic image of the bushranger-hero.{{sfn|Seal|2011|pp=125–26}}

By the time Kelly was outlawed, bushranging was an anachronism. Australia was highly urbanised, the telegraph and the railway were rapidly connecting the bush to the city, and Kelly was already an icon for a romanticised past.{{sfn|Seal|1980|pp=16–17}}<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|author-link=Eric Hobsbawm|last=Hobsbawn|first=E. J.|title=Bandits|publisher=Weidenfeld and Nicolson|year=1969|location=London|pages=112–13|url=https://archive.org/details/bandits0000eric}}</ref> Macintyre states that Kelly turning agricultural equipment into armour was an irresistible symbol of a passing era.<ref name=":8">{{Cite book|last=Mcintyre|first=Stuart|title=A Concise History of Australia|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2020|isbn=978-1-108-72848-5|edition=Fifth|location=Port Melbourne|pages=107–08}}</ref> For Seal, the failure of the gang to derail the train at Glenrowan was a symbol of the triumph of modern civilisation.{{sfn|Seal|1980|pp=16–17}} The national image of Kelly, he writes, may bear "about the same resemblance" to the man as his armour does "to the plough mouldboards from which it was beaten". He concludes:

{{blockquote|He is different things to different people{{Em dash}}a murderer, an Australian Robin Hood, a [[social banditry|social bandit]], a revolutionary leader, even a commercial commodity. But to most of us he is somehow essentially Australian.{{sfn|Seal|1980|pp=174–75}}}}