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How to cite this thesis

Surname, Initial(s). (2012) Title of the thesis or dissertation. PhD. (Chemistry)/ M.Sc. (Physics)/ M.A. (Philosophy)/M.Com. (Finance) etc. [Unpublished]: University of Johannesburg. Retrieved from: https://ujdigispace.uj.ac.za (Accessed: Date). LElQ CtGRD \JENT

THE INTERACTION OF

RACE, GENDER AND CLASS

IN A SELECTION OF

SHORT STORIES BY NADINE GORDIMER

DELINA CHARLOITE VENTER

Dissertation Submitted in Fulfi~f~lent

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in the Department of English

- RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY

November, 1991

Supervisor: Prof. S. R. Gray ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of:

Prof. S. R. Gray for his painstaking and valued guidance; the library personnel at the Rand Afrikaans University, particularly Ronel Smit; the financial assistance of the Centre for Science Development of the Human Sciences Research Council and the Rand Afrikaans University towards this research - opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and not necessarily to be attributed to either of these institutions; family and friends who supported this endeavour, particularly Wilbert. ABSTRACT

This study approaches a much neglected area, not only of English literary research in South Africa generally, but also more specifically of Nadine Gordimer's writing career. Over the last fifty-one years Gordimer has produced approximately 126 short stories. These have variously been taken up in twelve collections, ranging from Face to Face in 1949to Jump in 1991.However, most ofthe recognition she has received pertains to her novels which are frequently praised for their historical awareness and their commitment to the disfranchised in South Africa. Yet the short stories are a significant part of Gordimer's output - altogether eight original collections of short stories exist, as compared to ten novels. Nor are the short stories of any less historical significance. Even a cursory glance at the periodization of the stories as reflected in this dissertation unquestionably reveals a developing historical perspective in Gordimer's short fiction. What is most remarkable about this unfolding perspective is Gordimer's ability from time to time in the stories to break out of the limitations imposed on her consciousness by her position in South African society as a white, upper middle-class woman. The most important reason for the dearth of research on the historical consciousness in Gordimer's short fiction seems to be the choice of literary-critical approaches adopted in previous works. Broadly these may be classified as either formalist or new critical. Given the importance to these approaches of the autonomy of the text vis-a-vis the life history of the authoress or the wider socio-political environment within which the work exists, it is not surprising that these works have rather limited their focus to such aspects as theme, structure, short story development and imagery. By examining the interaction of race, gender and class in Gordimer's short stories this dissertation pins its exploration of the developing historical consciousness ofthese texts not only to specific issues, but to issues with which Gordimer clearly concerns herself. This dissertation therefore asserts that the structures of race, gender and class are indeed pertinently explored in the short stories, not only individually but often with an understanding of their intertwined aspect, and that using this approach a more subtle and appropriate reading of the stories and of their development may emerge. TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

Chapter 1. A Polyglot Society: Race, gender and class in the early stories 17

Chapter Two. "Ah, Woe is Me": The trials of the early fifties 33

Chapter Three. "White friends and black friends": Progress in the late fifties 48

Chapter Four. Political activism and "woman's nonsense": The sixties 61

Chapter Five. The accommodation of "politics and the psyche": The early seventies 75

Chapter Six. "The dying white order": The mid-seventies onwards 86

CONCLUSION 103

BIBLIOGRAPHY 108 1 INTRODUCTION

In keeping with the nature of this project, the aims of this introduction are varied and several. The first part of the introduction looks at Nadine Gordimer's writing career, the chronology of her short stories and previous work done in this area, the second part establishes the methodology used in this dissertation and the third part briefly examines Gordimer's use of South African history as reflected in the layout of the main body here.

To date, over the last fifty-one years, Gordimer has written approximately 126 short stories. By the time her first novel, The Lying Days, appears in 1953 Gordimer has already published thirty-four short stories in various magazines - the earliest appearing in 1937- as well as collected these in two publications, Face to Face (1949) and The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952). Apart from three new stories, the last is essentially an American edition of the first, locally published, collection. Up to and including the 1965 collection of stories, Not for Publication, the appearance of a collection of stories can be seen to alternate with the appearance of a novel. Six Feet of the Country appears in 1956, followed by a novel, A World of Strangers, in 1958. Friday's Footprint appears in 1960 and is followed by the novel, Occasion for Loving, in 1963. After 1965 two novels appear before each subsequent publication of a new collection of short stories. Livingstone's Companions in 1971 is preceded by the novels, The Late Bourgeois World and A Guest of Honour, in 1961 and 1970 respectively. A Soldier's Embrace in 198Q..ls preceded by the novels, The Conservationist and Burger's Daughter,JI!JJ74-.Eng 1979. ------._---~--_ .._..---..._--- ._---~----, ...• -.. __ ... ~.-. __._._, ",.," ..• - .. _.,,--_ ..~ •.., .-.__ .__ ."-~ ._...--'_•.•..... _.- ...... •.....__ .' -"--' .. _-~ respectively. The short stories are clearly as significant a part of Gordimer's substance -, •.._-_ ..--,.,.__ .._--'-~- as a writer as are the novels, and are as much a published presence as the novels. The disproportionate attention given the novels as opposed to the stories contributes greatly to obscure this fact. It is hoped that this dissertation will contribute to establishing the balance and to bringing the stories into their own. This dissertation examines Gordimer's short stories from the perspective of the ------~-~..._"'-_. -, - '~'~----"-'-'"'---'" interaction of race, gender and class and hopes to demonstrate not only that these are --~------_. -,-'- - -"---~ _.._-_._-----"...~,. -, - .- _._---~---~-~- .•. _---_._--._~~---~. __._.-.,.- . ---~. __ .~ interlocking categories in the short stories, but also that their interaction can be seen as J_'_"- --~-' ._"._ - -_..,- .. _.,..~ -.-- ---..-.,.-,.----~ ..-~'-<'.--.---. ~ _~ ... .._. ._. ~._.__.._J.• _. ~ .. _ - - _ •. -.- 2 a developing concern across the oeuvre, fromo!!~,_story?!1fLQI1J.~period_tO-,anQJher. ------~- ----,--._-~ ~- ._,- - .. .._. ------... Gordimer has indeed remarked about her stories, '~.: ...tJ:I~!e,ares.ome.storiesLhavegQne" ~ ""-'=._c.~--«~~., --=------~~---·~- ~_. ~.< _._~ .__. .• ••,.".-,- .,.,-,".,," , ...• on writing, again and again, not so much because the themes are obsessional but because

=-~---"""'--~------"-"<-~----"~--;-'~'""._'~~"-""-'-"'-"-., I found other ways to take hold of them.... = I;-or:cter-'to'O-establish-Gordlmer's'developmental treatment of the interlocking nature of the categories of race, gender and class it has been necessary to establish a bibliography of the short stories. This has been compiled according to the dates of individual publication rather than according to the publication dates of collections, because not only does this contextualize a story as precisely as possible, but it also avoids possible fallacies. For example, in her dissertation, Karen Lazar assumes some significance, in terms of Gordimer's short story writing, for the six year break between the publication of Not for Publication in 1965 and Livingstone's Companions in 1971 (see her dissertation, p. 74). Although these two collections are published sixyears apart, the last story taken up in Not for Publication appeared in the Kenyon Review in 1965 and the earliest written story to be taken up in Livingstone's Companions appeared in the NewYorker in 1966. Thus the sixyear break between these collections is an artificial one and does not imply a break in Gordimer's short story output at all. The bibliography here (see pp. 108-113) started essentially as a composite of earlier bibliographies on Gordimer: Racilia J. Nell's 1964 bibliography, John Cooke's in 1979 and Robert Green's in 1985.The last two bibliographies were both published in the Bulletin of Bibliography. Other sources occasionally helped to fill out the bibliography here, all data being subject to my own checking. This bibliography also functions as a record of stories which have not been taken up in collections, as well as a means of keeping track of stories appearing under more than one title. Altogether the bibliography reveals a number of significant points: 1) Apart from the beginning of her career as a short story writer, Gordimer has maintained a continuous, steady output of stories. 2) In years other than those when collections have appeared, Gordimer has produced between one and four short stories annually. When collections do appear, the number increases slightly.

1 Stephen Clingman (ed.), "Selecting my Stories," Nadine Gordimer: The Essential Gesture. p. 94. Full publication details of all works cited as to be found in the bibliography. 3 3) The 50s and 60s were particularly productive for Gordimer in terms of her short story writing. 4) Apart from those in Face to Face, most of Gordimer's short stories are published separately before they are taken up in a collection. To date, most research on Gordimerhas focused on her novels or, on occasion, on her novels and short stories combined. Of six book-length studies on her; only the three by Stephen Clingman, Michael Wade and Robert Haugh deal to any extent with the short stories. Wade and Clingman discuss those short stories that are relevant to their analysis of a particular novel and highlight links between the story and the novel under discussion - Wade in terms of tone, point of view and theme.2 Their interest in the short stories is therefore of a subsidiary naturein their discussion of the novels. Haugh, on the' other hand, devotes approximately a third of his book to the short stories and displays considerable sleuthing talent in detecting the influence ofEuropean and American short story models in them.3 Such an approach therefore focuses on the derivative nature of the stories rather than on their uniqueness. This apart, however, one of the four chapters devoted to the short stories deals exclusively with race and is therefore ofspecial interest to this dissertation.f Most of the shorter critical work on Gordimer's short stories has appeared in the form of reviews, generally at the time of the publication of a new collection (see Select Bibliography). Although such a review occasionally reaches the sophistication and length of an academic article, most reviews, by their nature, are short and rather generalized. The exceptions seem to be determined firstly by the profession of the critic and secondly by the academic or literary nature of the journal. Examples of these exceptions are the following reviews of Something Out There: Salman Rushdie, "No One is Ever Safe" in the New York Times Book Review, Menan du Plessis, "Literary Realism at its Furthest Limits" in Contrast and Stephen Clingman, 'Writing Out There" in The English Academy Review. Consistently, however, the most significant difference between the more general reviews and articles of an academic nature is the recognition given to the socio-political - ~..~------_._------.

2 Michael Wade, Nadine Gordimer (1978) and Stephen Clingman, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside (1986). 3 Robert F. Haugh, Nadine Gordimer (1974). 4 See Haugh, Chapter 2: Blackness and Its Power. 4 environment in w~ the~ri~1i_Q.Ij~pa~e. Most of the shorter reviews take cognizance of this environment and comment on aspects of it as they appear in the fiction. As early a review as Lily Rabkin's of Face to Face in 1949 comments on the importance of the existence of apartheid in South Africa for Gordinier's short stories. Many reviews suggest in one way or another that Gordimer delivers her best work when her material is specifically South African. Even more surprising is the number of reviews that reveals an awareness of the presence of race and gender issues, and occasionally also those of class. Admittedly these issues tend to remain unexplored within the confines of a review. Contrastingly, articles of an academic nature tend to ignore the socio-political aspect of the short stories in favour of a more formalist approach which focuses on theme, imagery. and short story development. In focusing on race, gender and class issues in this dissertation, I willtherefore examine, in a more comprehensive manner, what most of the reviews have already at least recognized as issues in Gordinier's short stories. From the more academic papers on Gordimer only those that deal either with the short stories or with the issues of race, gender and class have been included in the bibliography. Yet of the twenty-one articles listed there, selected as they were within the given parameters, only eleven deal with the issues of race, gender and class. Again, only ten out of the twenty-one articles deal exclusivelywith the short stories and of these only two select a single story each for investigationr/ a meagre showing considering Gordimer's considerable output in this genre over the last half century. Of the nine theses which either focus on Gordimer exclusively or which include her in their focus, only two consider race, gender and class issues to any extent in their discussion.6 The others all look at either theme, structure, short story development or imagery. Given the wealth of critical writing on each of Gordimer's novels, her short stories have failed to generate anything like the same scrutiny. In particular an examination of the interaction of race, gender and class in the stories could produce as yet unmined riches. Such a project is sorely needed to free these stories from the aestheticist and formalist frameworks in which they have been discussed until recently.

5 Evelyn Schroth, "Nadine Gordimer's 'A Chip of Glass Ruby': A Commentary on Apartheid Society," Journal of Black Studies and Viktor Link, "The Mrican Magician and his Western Audience: Norms in Nadine Gordimer's 'The.Mrican Magician," Commonwealth: Essays and Studies. 6 See the M. A dissertations by Michael King and Karen Lazar. 5

In this dissertation the interaction specifically of race, gender and class within a short story is examined within a broad feminist framework. This formulation contains the recognition that black women and white women have different histories and different relationships to current power struggles. It also widens the debate beyond the materiality of biological difference to include the material base of white women's power in relation to both black men and women. There is therefore not only one femininity in opposition to one masculinity, but there are differences between different groups of women which often constitute areas of conflict. Clearly the interaction of race and class Pos~~J~ssQta_p:[Qbl~Il1tb.£lnpositingthe '~-'---'-~ ~~------'-~----"---'-'-- ..'- .- .._-~~-- .._,.-._._--~-- ---, interaction of the structures of race, gender and class since lines of race .. and class o-~~_,~_._,__ ~. ·- • --~ - ._--~-.--,-_."--- coincidefairlyobviouslyjn societies where the labour force or working ..class..consists predominantly of a racial group different from that of theruling class. In South Africa, _,.7_'-' ~._._.__ .__• __.~. ._ ---"'-_."--_._-_ ,.-_.~_.--_..---"--'-"->"-' . 6·_.-_-..-.<,_····~_~ __ .... _.,•• _._ ._~_. ~ specifically, a politically oppressed black population is also, on the whol~, a d.isp?ssessed

•.. .T ~ -~ .- proletariat. ------" .•~-_.-. Race-class literature, however, gives little attention to the differential exploitation of women as a caste, at home as well as in the work place. To the extent that gender class literature, on the other hand, concentrates on women's participation in paid labour and their need to escape from the confines of the household, it is unable to explore the different reality of black women's lives. Black women's commitment to eradicate racism has often led them to see feminist issues quite differently from white women. For example, whereas Western feminists have generally seen the family as a repressive state apparatus, women in the third world have argued that "the family can also function as a site of resistance, for example, during periods of slavery, colonialism and under authoritarian regimes.,,7 Neither a race-class nor a gender-class analysis enables as broad a perspective as an exploration of the interaction of the three structures combined. Each of these

~-~_._._------.--."" _.. --- constitutes a variable which impacts significantly on the analysis of the .remaining _.._-,." -----,--,---'--'-- categories. Furthermore, the concepts of race, gender and class together form a phrase "'- ,--' - _. . -". _.-.~-_.- ...-_. ~-,~-----

7 See Shireen Hassim et aI, '''A bit on tire side'?: Gender Struggles in the Politics ofTransfonnation in Sonth Africa," Transformation, p. 20.

\ 6 that often appears in more recent feminist criticism in discussions of the process of identity formation--an(rsclf~perception.--"i~-~--~o;i~-;;st-~~'--~h~;~~h~;~-~s-'~d-~;ina~t ______~--;.....---'-~~,.._~- .,_.__.__ .~ .. """'."" ', _. .'__,.,_._ .. ~_ "'_._. __ '_ ':'"--.... --.-~'.----r-- _._, ., ' "., ~.--~.,_ ~._.,_.~ __.._.. ._.._~.. '~,._~_.. .~ .•.__..__.._.~_~,,_~._.. _.._. _ hegemonywith specific i~eol'?gie~iI1_~~~p.~(;t-()t the categories of race,geI!~e~and class, ~--~-~-_._-~-.----~--,..- --,--. __ -, - .,' .. -',,, _.._.._.,-'---~-_."~_._-_. __ .- it is indisputable that the individual's subjectivity... whether situated within thehegemony ,.------~._-_..-- --- ~-~--_. ' or within anyone of a variety of positions hostile to it - is premised uponthe signification of t~~~~.~'!tegories. While acknowledging the importance of these categories for subject formation, feminist criticismhas offered too little discussion to date, especiallyin the area of literary criticism, of how the three categories interact. This dissertation hopes not only to contribute to this area of feminist literary criticism but especially to indicate how Gordimer - given her consistent interest in the structures of race, gender and class might be appropriated for such a broad feminist project.

For the purpose of this dissertation the concept of race is regarded as a social construct, thus encompassing other perceptions of it as a sociohistorical and a political category. TE.. regard 'race' as a social construct is to emphasize perceptions of difference, both from

----_._-~----_.-._----_._- within and outside the group. Of even greater significanceare the different ways in which .. ""~-"---'-' ..._.~. ---_.--.-.------"'- -.. - ---" -- perceptions of _racialdifference have.beenemployed, The negative uses to which the _..----.-" -- -_.. ' .. . ._.•. _-'._~_._~.,._~,--..-.--_...... _._.• ~ •.•.-...__ .~_ ...... _--, ,-" notion of racial difference has been put need not be described in detail - suffice it to suriimanse-som~--oi"these as motivatedby economicforces,-as in the case of European colonialismwhere a need existed for cheap labour, raw materials and markets to support a growing economy. In the South African context, one is so overwhelmingly aware of the negative uses of the concept of race, that one tends to overlook a more positive aspect of the notion. At the other extreme from the negative connotations of race, being black has also acquired a positive value as a symbol of solidarity and collectivity for all those who do not possess a white skin and who sympathize with the oppressed, Gordimer is very aware ofh~~ the concept of race in this context can provide a group of people with a sense of 'peoplehood' and of how it can be instrumental in achieving economic and political goals, based as 'peoplehood' is on racial and ethnic bonds. 7

As regards the representation of race in South African English literature, one observes firstly that an English literary tradition begins to develop in the nineteenth century - characterized by such racial conflict as the Black Circuit of 1812, the Slagtersnek rebellion of 1815, the liberation of slaves in 1834 and the subsequent Great trek after 1836. In the first half of the twentieth century the "early inhabitants of the '------__--.-~~.__.._----_.__._ _--'- .~-_. __._-_._-----~._-----_.,~.-_.., ~_.~-- -~..~-----'_ _ - -,- .•••- .. _c. - country... were usually depicted... as ridiculous or comical background figures. Earlier ---_.__ ._._--~-~~~-~"-----''''-'--'--''-'''''''---'-'-- writers subscribed to the stereotyping of these groups as slaves, servants, barbarians,

'-.--- "--~-----~~---'--' ~, '" ------,--"~'-----, pillagers and so forth.,,8

______--'''----.--- " "O __~_<,_.._,__..•~ .~_. __.._ During the second half of this century writers have focused their attention on the consequences of "urbanisation, industrialisation, the large scale use of black labour, the disruption of the traditional tribal life, etc." (Race and Literature, p. 4). The treatment of the racial theme in English literature, however, has varied considerably between the two extremes of covert racism to avowed sympathy for the oppressed. Either way, it has remained a crucial factor that "For longer than the first half of this century the experience of blacks in South Africa was known to the world as it was interpreted by whites.,,9 Malan remarks that "It is striking that many writers who do indeed examine race relations prefer a rural context to the explosive world of the townships and the cities" (p. 11). In this context Gordimer is an exception, for much ofher work examines exactly the individual in his industrialized, urban environment. Finally, and perhaps in support of Malan's introductory remark that race is no longer an issue, it is interesting to note that at the meeting between a group of whites and some black ANC members at Dakar in 1987 it seemed as if polarization based on colour was no longer of central concern in the face of the larger process of democratization. Class, and not race, is central to discussions of Marxism and socialism, although, as Malan states, these two are inextricably linked in the South African context.

8 Charles Malan, "Introduction: Race and the Writer," Charles Malan (ed.), Race and Literature, p.3. 9 Nadine Gordimer, "Livingin the Interregnum" in The Essential Gesture, p. 228. (1\ \ 8

'Class' will be used to refer to a substantial collection of individuals at the same economic ------_.--- ..-.---- _...__...... •.... - level. In a country such as South Africa with its specific race ideology, it is more immediately--- obvious how one's racial - as opposed to one's class - extraction contributes to one's subject-formation. And perhaps, because of the predominance and explicitness .._.,._--_._._,_ ...~-_.,~ ..• ,- ..-.- ~"~ -. of race issues, the way in which our membership of a specific class not only contributes ~ ., __ '._'_ ",_T"-_·~ .····'·__'_'_~_· _ •• ,_.._ •.... _'_._, ..._ .•_ •• " .••. _~ •..•• ~~~ .__• • __ ~_.~._._.~ •. _~ •• _,_. • __ ._,, <~.__.... ,.•.. " •.•.-_", to our self-image but to a large extent determines the actualization of our individual potentiarfiaS--been-ob~cured. The power of class as a categorycanbeseen 0ll._Cl very

"'"'-- --_._-~--'~-'-~-----'--'- .~. '---_.~---~,- basic level: for example, an individual's class membership can have a bearing on her life ~~-, ~-".-.~-,,,~. "---'--~----~-'-'~ --"~-~-'~-~--"---~'--'-'~" --~-.,.,~_ ..... _•.. __. -.-.,- . __ . --._-.-. __._-'..... _...... - ,.. -. expectancy and mental health, as well as determine thequalityof nutrition which is

~-~--_.-..•-_._~..-~_ ..--,,---_.-'- ...-" _._---- crucial for the adequate developmentof. the brain and nervoussystemin terms of, say, __-"~••._-~_. __ '. ~ •• _~ '_ C~_ •. _._._,_ •. _ ..••• __ '_,_,'_"•. '.'__ education. --The decisive factor in determining the class position of a woman seems to be -.'.- ----,- _-_._--_.-' ' __ ..--.--,_'_'_-_'- - _._-_._---~-_.-._------_._-_ ..- - -, _ _~ ----._,.._~._----~--,--p-_..~_._._--_._~ -_._._-..- whether she enters the labour market or not. Non-working women, whether married or single, by i~pJi_~~t_~

10 For this discussion of discrimination in the labour market see Pundy PiIIay, "Women in Employment in South Mrica: Some Important Trends and Issues," Social Dynamics, pp. 20-37. 11 Michele Barrett, Women's Oppression Today, p. 133. 12 This is the current situation in South Africa. However, in the pre-Civil War era in America, under the.slave system, women worked as hard as men, a factor which discouraged male supremacy in black men. "Women were not too 'feminine' to work in coal mines, in iron foundries or to be lumberjacks and ditchdiggers," See Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class, p. 10. 10 Furthermore, while White women "to a large extent occupy the majority of

~-----~---:~--~,~----_.._--_... ~--'_._"-_ ..,.-._---..-'." .~._--_._'---'_._-_ .._--_.~--_.._- .._------._~-~-,_ ,. positions in the 'higher' professional, managerial and clerical categories", the vast majority of 1\.frk~~;~~~~ "are employed as farm labourers or as domestic servants, the two ------"------"--- " --" sectors generally acknowledged as the lowest paid" (Pillay, pp. 27-28). In the area of domestic work, sexual and racial hierarchies have fused: "Domestic work is inappropriate to men; unskilled work is inappropriate to whites.1t13 . It is clear therefore that, whereas white women with a feminist consciousness often enter the labour market as a way out of their confinement to the domestic sphere, black women do not necessarily experience their labour as liberating.

Gender

In their theorizing about gender, feminists have concentrated on women and how they have been restricted and misrepresented by gender roles. However, in as far as a sign derives its meaning only in its difference from other signs and in as far as binary concepts such as good/evil, male/female depend on each other for meaning, the notion of female roles necessarily entails the notion of male roles. In "The Social Relation of the Sexes" Joan Kelly-Gadol has the following quote,

It seems to me that we should be interested in the history of both women and men, that we should not be working only on the subjected sex any more than an historian of class can focus exclusively on peasants. Our goal is to understand the significance of the sexes.... Our goal is to discover the range in sex roles and in sexual symbolism in different societies and periods, to find out what meaning they had and how they functioned to maintain the social order or to promote its change.J'I

As necessary as it is to recognize that both men and women are subject to gender roles, it nevertheless remains important to .~~~_~l:1Y.WOm~D function asasubordinate group J~ .. ---- ~-~,.~.--~,..~_.--'-.~,._~./_..-.-..-

13 Jacky Cock, "Domestic Servants in the Political Economy of South Africa," Africa Perspective, p. 47. In another article from the same publication entitled, "Domesticity and Domestication: A note on the articulation of sexual ideology and the initial incorporation of black women into wage labour," she comments on the definition and evaluation of the educational objectives of especially early missionary education in terms of "their appropriateness to a colonized race, subordinate class and female sex" (p. 20). "Domestic service was the occupation par excellence for a subordinate class, oppressed race and inferior sex" (p. 23). Quoting from Natalie Zemon Davis' address to the Second Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in October 1975, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, p. 817. 11 society. Feminists therefore have needed an analytical tool to discuss the un4~.IJY!Ilg '_•.,'------""------_.. _------,.__._--". ,._-._-_._---~-~-.• _.•-_..• - < .•,,-_ .. ---,-~----.-._-. __._~---~---_•• -_ •.• _---_.__ • political nature of the relations between men and women which manifests itself in social relatlonS--baied-~~--;;;~l;-;~p-~~i~;~~_~~~~d ..fe~~j~- '-j~-furi~ri;~-iience . the concep~ of

___ --~-- ~.~_._,_.~ --'••_'<._ • ~_~--.,.~ .. r___.--.-.-'_.-"._.._~.".,.,.,. ~~~.~-.•--_.~•.~ ~'-'" 'patriarchy.' It is in this regard that the general categories of the Marxist problematic, such as class relations, the labour process and the state, fail to confront the specificity of women's oppression.15 Research suggests that in pre-industrial societies the division between 'home' and 'work' was far less explicit and that where a sexual division of labour did exist, female labour was not necessarily less valued. In Women in Southern Africa Christine N. Qunta writes in her introduction to Part II, Azania: "European colonization ofAzania had a dramatic impact on the lives. of African women. From being respected members _<:!-f~()ciety with a defined and valued ______----.--~~~ .. ,_, --_._-~~~'~J_~ economic, social and political role, they were reduced to landless farm labourers, ~. _._------'-~_...--..-.------._--~-~_.- ._'" -,._~-----,,--..--,.._-- --'-- domestic servants and perpetual minors" (p. 80). Although this statement supports the ~ . -~-.------_.- - _._- distinction that was drawn between pre-industrial and industrial societies for the situation of white women, the oppression of black women is laid at the door of colonization, and not capitalism or patriarchy, although these are obviously closely linked to colonization. The situation for African women untouched by colonization seems very different from that of the white women in Europe: "They did not constitute a separate class, were not oppressed, and were not separated behind a tribal kind of purdah. They shared the ranks of their fathers and husbands, and held an honoured, if junior position in their domestic households.,,16 One could counter this statement by asking why, if black women were not oppressed, they occupied the dubious "honoured" but 'Junior" position within the household. Nevertheless, observations like these do suggest an absence of relationships of domination despite a distinct division of labour and sex roles.17 The interaction of gender and class as discussed earlier did not include the feminist perception of the crucial role of the family in women's oppression under

15 See Kuhn and Wolpe, Feminism and Materialism and Barrett, Women's Oppression Today. for detailed comment on the relations between feminism and Marxism. 16 J. Simons, African Women, Their Legal Status in Southern Africa, quoted in Smart and Smart, Women, Sexuality and Social Control, p. 37. 17 See also the article by Pumla Mtongana, "Black Women in South Africa Today," delivered as part of the vcr Summer School during February, 1973, where she argues along these lines. 12 capitalism. In the family the woman functions as childbearer, childrearer and domestic labourer. In his writings about the situation of women, Lenin insists on the importance of the family as a key to understanding "the persistance of women's oppression across different modes of production and classes."IB In respect of housework it is important to remember that the desexualization of domestic labour would not alter the oppressive nature of the work itself. Being the breadwinner is also not the necessary preferable alternative to domestic work. It entails being locked into the pressure of wage labour but having to remain politically docile to safeguard jobs, as well as the deprivation of significant access to children (see Barrett, p.217). What is more important than whether the household falls within the arena of capitalism or not are the effects on the consciousness of the working class and hence the possibilities for political action that the structure of the household and the ideology of the family have. Nevertheless, any analysis of gender has to look at the household because it is such an important site for the relations between men and women and for the construction of gendered individuals. Once again, the position of black and white women within the unit of the family seems to differ greatly. Because in the U. S. slave women were the equals of their men in labour, "they enjoyed a greater sexual equality at home in the slave quarters than did their white sisters who were 'housewifes'" (sic). The reason that domestic life acquired such importance in the social lives of slaves is that it provided them with "the only space where they could truly experience themselves as human beings. Black women for this reason...were not debased by their domestic functions in the way that white women came to be" (Davis, p. 230 and p. 16). Much offeminist writing has explored the exact nature of the interaction between patriarchy and capitalism. However, as long as such exploration rests on the assumption that economic hierarchies and gender hierarchies originate in separate spheres, that is, in the mode of production and in the sphere of familial relations, these discussions will run the risk of determinism and reductionism common to many dualistic models. JUdy~ Lown argues persuasively that if patriarchal relations "are recognised as a pivotal -- _.'-~--- ._- --_._-', --"'. ---'-'--~-'-'''- --_._------..-----

18 Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory. p. 134. 13 organising principle of society", both patriarchy and capitalism can be seen as organising ~-----,_._-....__.__.."-_.._~_.-.._.. _-..-_._.._-_..---'._,~-" _..-,-'.,~ -'- '''-.. ~ , -"'.._-... -.._--.."-~""'- principles of the same social system. It is not necessary to see the one as 'causing' or preceding the other.

Patriarchal authority was not something which was 'dismantled' by bourgeois revolutions but constituted a structure and set of principles which were embodied in varying institutional and customary forms. As such, it must be analysed as part of the material arrangements of the society and subject to historical change in the same way as other material forms.19

Indeed, it is precisely in her conscious and unconscious revelation of the insidious functioning of race, gender-arid Cl~is!rstrtictutesas6igciiiiZing-pnilCl:Pfesin ~o~i-;;tY thatthe renlclrkable achleveme~i of· G~rdi~er;~-;hort-·~to~ie~-ii~~~--··_---_·_·__··· -.------.-.

III

In his ground-breaking study, Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside, Stephen Clingman remarks that in its widest context Gordimer's writing has to be seen as part of the field of African literature. He also draws attention to the close links between the development of African literature and the historical-political evolution of the continent and then proceeds to explore the more specific links, continuities and sometimes discontinuities between Gordimer's novels and South African history. He remarks that the short stories

while often rooted in anidentifiable social world, turningeneral onhuman intricacies o[a_EsY.C.hQl()gic:af~~_~~~i~~l!lria·ture,and this is the baSis.~~ll!eshort story as a.form:· Also, because the stories are by definition shorter, and expressions of a more coherent moment of conception, they are more easily susceptible to what is normally called aesthetic 'perfection', a feature for which Gordimer's stories are rightly renowned. For us, however, this is a disability; we need the significant contradictions, silences and gaps revealedin the longerwork. And the novels, due to the sheer expanse o! their explor~lion in space and tim.e~()f n_~si~-illvestigatetheif-socialand historical situation in greater deptlrandatgreafer length.2

19 Judy Lawn, "Not so much a Factory, More a Form of Patriarchy: Gender and Class during Industrialisation" in Eva Gamamikow (ed.), Gender, Class and Work, p. 31. 20 Stephen Clingman, Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside, p.19. 14 Clingman assumes here that the short stories, more than the novels, are susceptible to aesthetic manipulation and therefore tend to lack the ideologically significant "contradictions, silences and gaps" revealed in the novels. This dissertation hopes precisely to refute the validity of this assumption by making more explicit the connection of the short stories with contemporary socio-political developments. Some of these connections can be suggested very generally here. In the 40s, Gordimer's historical consciousness as reflected in the short stories is, to a great extent, contained within her chosen mode of writing. By virtue of their realist "------~,~ mode, these stories includecharacters ..Qf._QH!~I"~nt racesand.nationalltlesjtheyregister ----_ ..,_._-_.<~~------,--'---~----~-~ .. __.__ .. ,._.---'" ".~-~--.,- . .. .~_.-. a hierarchy a~?~st _~l!~.~~.ClI~~!~r§Cl!lcl Jl:1e coiI1~~9iI!:¥ of divisions of race and class. ~._._ ,_. ..h_.'_-· ··'-.--~' .. -" "'"'"'-"'_"<'.~""~"'__ "'"' __" ,;_ ,_,',_._ Beyond their realist mode, however, these early stories contain very little of the articulated, critical, historical consciousness for which Gordimer later becomes noted. The discussion of selected stories from 1949-1954 clearly reveals the absence of an interrogation on her part of the powerful political changes occurring in South Africa at that time. The characters in these stories grapple in private, decontextualized worlds with the consequences of these external forces for the individual. To the extent that the characters have not yet registered consciously how the public impacts on the private world, they are struggling blindly. Yet the fact that thesenarratives all register a struggle, .-., .,._-' -" - _.~-_._-~~.,_.~_.,. _.-.- a problematic, indicates that Gordimer is already conscious of the impact socio-political

------~------'_.~_.-_ .... _ ••-+_ ••.••- -,'- •.. -.- forces have on individuals in society, but that in terms of her development as a short _ '".__ .'_' ~ F'~ ~~"'--- -~.. __.-.-.>'-..,-.-- -.,"--.<--.,-- -.-- story writer she is only be&inning to explore these links. __---.-.~••• - •••••----•• " -"""'-"" c Whereas it was up to the narrative voice to establish what socia-political context there was in the short stories until 1954, in the stories of 1954-1960 the characters '-~._-,-"--_'_.-' ,•...._-_ .._...~---._.-- -".~.~--'------' themselves begin to articulate and debate this context. Tentative links between patriarchy

.-' ~.T•. ' •.. _~_ .•·~~ ·_·_ ----~--"--~-~.~- and racism are also explored. Stories such as "The Smell of Death and Flowers" and 'WinctiNew E~;~~ldthat be?" quite obviously have their being in the "general ethos of multi-racialism" characteristic of the forces opposed to apartheid at the time (Clingman, History from the Inside, p. 6). In the 1960s a greater percentage of stories are situated within a black perspective and blacks are no longer presented as mere victims but as active participants in acts of resistance. Some of these stories clearly show Gordimer responding to a revolutionary moment in South African history. In the aftermath of this revolutionary moment 15 Gordimer turns not only in her novels, but also in some of her short stories such as "Open House" (1969), to a revolutionary underground (see Clingman, History from the Inside, p. 6). The effects of a culture ofI?9Ii!i~1 repression and of human needs ------·~-~~'"-----··-..-._'...~R~_._._. __.... _. ~ . continually vying with political p!iQtitie~_I)()\V_C;()II!~~_:,:!!!g>~!"_c;lQ~e_scruti:l1Y~__ -~'-'-'-'~'~-'"'--~"';-~'.~---"._--._-..-",. __ ._----~_._~------,--.----_._.~- . -- - -- ." ... '-_.._.~_.~. __.- As uncompromising as Gordimer is in her exploration of white racial hypocrisy in the earlier stories, so she examines with equal candour the pitfalls surrounding the creation of a new social order. In the eighties Gordimer unequivocally declares herself a citizen of the new South Africa "struggling to be born" ("Living in the Interregnum", The Essential Gesture, p. 233) and reaffirms her dedication as a writer to this struggle. Broadly, then, this brief summary shows that there is indeed the development of a socio-historical consciousness in Gordimer's short fiction. This dissertation therefore uses a methodology, unlike those used by previous approaches, which it is hoped will prove to be the key to unlocking these texts for such more culturally specific readings. Some recent attempts, such as those by King and Lazar, which incorporated the structures of race and gender respectively, have already attempted to advance the study of Gordimer's short fiction in this direction. However, the structuring of the lives of ----,--~~-~------_.~--_.-._~- -_._..._---_._-_.--_.---~- individuals in society, and especially in South African__sg_ci~ty, j~ an infinitely complex process - -one-alai [sshap~d>by>~;~; variabl~~.--T~ focus on only one of these variables, --'--~-.._-- -_.- as King and Lazar do, leads not only to over-simplification, but also stops short of exploring the full complexity of Gordimer's short fiction. By using as its methodology the interaction of three structures integral to the dynamics of South African society, this dissertation hopes to draw attention to the complex layering of Gordimer's short stories. The stories that comprise the first period, 1939-1949, suggest themselves as a grouping thanks to the panoramic view ofSouth African society that they offer: they pan over the surface without focusing more closely on the underlying detail. Neither do these stories seem to select a specific area of South African society as its subject matter; rather, they leave the reader with a sense of a multiplicity of cultures. The secondperiod, 1_~49 1954, emerges when the plurality and broad sweep of the first grouping give way to a '---_.~---_._------~~--_. ------~" ~"._---_ ~---'---~---'-"'--'- "--'-"~""-~'--'.' ------_._-- - - .-._--.- .. _.. --".- -- more deliberate selection of situations rich in the ironies and ambivalences of South - ~------~- African life. Most of these stories deal with black-white relationships and significantly

• __ ~....------_' . . -e.--.---__._._ __•. _. .~~ __ they all reveal narrative_~ifficulties in their different attempts to depict the contradictions

------'-- .,._---... ._-<...--_....,-~---,,-~_._--~---~._--"'''"~-_. ~--'----' and divisions of human relationships in SouthAfrica.These stories develop into the third ------...,--- ~_ •.. '-- - '--"'~' .. "'-.

1/ -.t-- 16 period, 1954-1960~hen the meetings between black and white seem to become less _.__ ._._------_._~--_.~_., .._-- ..._------"------_._------"_._.----,.,,_._--_ ..~.-._._._._~_.--,, .._.------~,._. __._-_._. __.._..-- oppositional and to emerge more from within the parameters of a common political ------~-----.-.--~--.-.,~.--, ,.,.~_.~+_ _~._,~.- --"--'-"'--'-~--'-~'-'--'_ --._._._~_"_ r------.. -> ..•. - •••.• -;-.•• _._•.••. ,,,•. , ,,--,-_.. ..__ ..._._..-._...•. ..---- ... .._.,. __ perspective. In chapter four it is the fragility of what appeared to be commonly held -~-~-- ._-_ ...._.-._--_.._ .._._..~...... _-_.... i?eological c~ytcti~ns th~!.-m~~~!~e~s.tories of the ne~_p~rio~,_!~.?2~}?67. The ~ll_~xtent of-=----' the frag~!Lty,. IlQ!QIlly of.thebondsbetween.. people, but of the)I1_qiyir.i.u?Jp~ycJ1~_. itself,. . seems to inform the stories of 1967-1974. In terms of Gordimer's perennial concern with ~------~_ -.__ ._..__.. ~.._._._ _-- ._---_ _.- __..-_._ _.. _ -_ -.__ .-. .' the impact of the public world on the private, these stories show her probing into the ~,.__._._.- .• _-,,~-~-~_.- •• '-," - -'~'-"""'-- -"~-' -, ",- "--"< deepest layers of interpersonal relationships. ------._~---~------_._-_. - --' T!J.e. last group of stories is t~~.!~!g~~!._ClIl~sEan~__!l!t?_y_~a.:~s!_~7.5 to .!l1f?p'~~s_~nt. < ---~~_.-'"- -_ .• ,,,,- Because many of these stories are fairly recent it is difficult to suggest where the beginning of a new grouping might be observed. Nevertheless, attention is drawn to some changes in her narrative mode which might indicate the emergence of a new phase. Although there is some re-exploration in these stories of earlier themes, in terms of the __----.~"._._~' _ ... _..~._. __ .~. •. _. ,,',_ •. _ · ~·_·_·__·· __ ·h~ .' .. '. __ . .. _. __ ._.• _ •• _. '.~ ".~. development of a historical consciousness the prime marker of this period is Gordimer's ~--~-----.-~-~-."_.__ .__....._._"' .". '.- -,---,- . commitment to a new post-apartheid South African culture. Thus it is primarily the ---~---~_ ..-._------_._ ..._" - ....._.. -- -....,- - - observation of subtle changes in Gordimer's focus which determined the points of division forthe vari;us p~ri~d-;.~- ~----- ..------_. ~ ~,. .•. __ .-._.-._"~--_.--~._-'.--- In breaking down the short stories of Gordimer's oeuvre into smaller groupings with clear chronological boundaries, it is hoped that their links with Gordimer's perception of the socio-political climate of the day will be more easily discernible. Only through examining smaller, successive units will it be possible to determine whether or not the stories exhibit a developing historical consciousness. In each of the six chapters •.'--.- ..• _-_., •.._---_.--_.---- ->- the structures of race, gender and class are employed as tangible markers of a historical --_ .._-_.._----'~~-,._'- - consciousness, an~th~. extent to which they, as well as their interaction, are explored in ---~ .._~ _,.~_.,. ~----~- ...... -.-_ .. _, ..-.•.- .... - .. ..._._ ..,._ .. ...,.... ,.-...... the stories will be examined. These structures may either be altogether absent or they ----_..,.,_._~--~-~._--~.•._-~-----_.------.-. may be present on a continuum ranging from the unconscious to the explicit. This dissertation hopes to show that these structures - race, gender and class - are indeed ....------~ '-'---~-----_._.------_._~ ~"._"' -- .._.-.__._-'- .." ... present, and that th~i! develoPIl1~I1!.!~~~.~~houtthe different periodsdoes indicate an unfolding historical consciousness in Gordimer's short stories. __ ~_.~_._"_.~._ ." __.. _._. .. . , A.--.-~~_.r<-----_·---I._ -" .._. - . 17 Chapter One

A POLYGLOT SOCIETY: RACE, GENDER AND CLASS IN THE EARLY STORIES

This chapter examines ~ordimer'~ employment of race, [en~~£~Il(.} c~l~_ssjph~!_y~!y~~!ly stories. Taken as a whole, these stories reveal the heterogeneity of the society in which "--~_ _~./__ <.~,~~~,_~_. ~",,-,_,._,_•. _'" - -, ~· .•~.d~' __ ~·' __'·_"·_""~· __~~·__'· __~~_·····_· ---_., "'~-",,~,_~,_~,_,~~.• ._. ~_. Gordimer exists as a writer. A more detailed analysis of a representative sample of these ---- ... .-.---.-,"_ ..~., "--~'.--'--'-'. -~ ,~ ~._--_.~-_.-._-~.__._. - stories showsthat this surface heterogeneity, for the most part, rests on submerged race, gender ~~d~ia~;di~;i~;;~~-Ai~h~~~hthese~ivisions unclo~btedlystructure the society,this

"·-_. ~·,~ r·_.· chapter hopes to show thatGordimer's narratives.jn this_ .perioddo not g() beyond --_.-.~-----~"-'-""------~~-'~'--~-"----'- ...... • "-_.._... --_.. - ~. -- ,-'" _ .. ~ registering the surfac€?_<:l!y-e_~~i1:y~hich they give rise to. The first group of stories spans the years 1939-1949, the first half of which also covers the Second World War. Gordimer remarks that her stories followingthe outbreak of war "were not much influenced by the war. It occupied the news bulletins on the radio, taking place a long way off, in countries I had never seen.... 111 . Many of what would come to be called the typical features of apartheid existed before and during the war, but it was the election victory of the Afrikaner Nationalist Party in 1948 which firmed up the system and the ideology of segregation. Of the fourteen stories comprising period one, only three cover the terrain of white-black relations: "No Luck Tonightll (1944), liThe Train from Rhodesia" (1947) and liThe Amateurs" (1948).All three of these initiallyappeared in different magazines - The South African Opinion, Trek and Common Sense respectively, but were eventually taken up in Gordimer's first collection, Face to Face which appeared in 1949. Of these, only "The Amateurs" affords limited insight into a black point of view. In addition to these three, another seven stories contain a few or single passing references only to "natives" or "servants," These stories cover a range of subject matter within the white world: the monotony of a w~~an's-mairiage;-thehoITor·oTagelrig-as-againsftfie-nairor Ofdyiiig --~------~~.~. ,_. ---~ .._.-~~ ~... ~ .. -' ._-~~ ,

1 Nadine Gordimer, "A Bolter and the Invincible Summer" in The Essential Gesture, p. 19. 18 young in the war; "the fulfilment of the will to kill"; a young ma~'s ass~rtion of s~lf against his par~nts ClmLa_moment_Qtlll~J:I!_!~.~~n when he realizes his continued ,------._---,,~---- _..-....------_....--_.•.. _-.- .... --.-- dependence on them, as well as the opposite, the unappreciated, lifelong sacrifice of two _____ · "'"""_-.-_~_>-'>_...._.,.....~,.~~.~ ..r_~.__ ··_·'s ~_.._ parents when their daughter finally rejects them in her adulthood. These stories are respectively "The Peace of Respectability" (1945), "The Menace of the Years" (1945), "The Kindest Thing to Do" (1945), "The Umbilical Cord" (1948) and "The Defeated" (1948). "The Peace of Respectability" was first published in The South Mrican Opinion and a revised version then appeared in The Yale Review (1950) as "The Hour and the Years"; this latter version was eventually taken up in Gordimer's second collection, The Soft Voice of the Serpent, in 1951. Similarly, the other stories, with the exception of "The Defeated" which appears only in the second collection, are all included in both Face to Face and The Soft Voice ofthe Serpent after initial publication in a variety of magazines. Only "The Menace ofthe Years", published in The South African Opinion in 1945, does not re-appear in a collection. Three stories from this period contain no references at all to blacks: they deal with the ineffectual facade a young girl presents to the world in an attempt to cope with a broken relationship, the relationship between an alcoholic mother and her daughter and the contrast and similarities between a father and son from the perspective of a young girl. These are "The Shoes", published in The S. A. Opinion (1944), "APresent for a Good Girl", published in Criteria (1949) and "Poet and Peasant", published in Hashalom (1949). Of these three only "A Present for a Good Girl" appears in Gordimer's first two collections. It is clear therefore that only a small percentage of the stories from 1939-1949 deal to any extent with South African race relations. However, against the background of rising Afrikaner nationalism in these years and a wider world fascism at large,2 it is significant that four stories deal with relations between indigenous inhabitants and 'foreigners.' In "The Umbilical Cord" (1948) an antagonistic relationship exists between an Afrikaner Nationalist and his foreign, store-owning neighbours:

But Marius Coetzee was a passionate Nationalist. He neither mixed nor traded with anyone who did not believe as he did, in the Republic, or live as he did, assiduously

2 See Clingman, History from the Inside, p. 22. 19

treating all dark people as his abject servants, resenting his polyglot neighbours - Jews, Italians, Portuguese and English - despising his brother Afrikaners who did not do the same, and never, under any circumstances, allowing a word of English to form in his mouth. Marius Coetzee drove in to shop at the big Nationalist Co-op in the town every week! Why, he wouldn't have bought a sixpence mealie-meal in this store.3

The story is presented from the perspective of a seventeen year old boy, the son of the shopkeeper and his wife. Although the nationality of his parents is not stated, the odd detail suggests that they are Jews and it is the unexpected appearance of Marius Coetzee in this Jewish-owned shop that occasions the protagonist's thoughts above.4 Mr and Mrs Saiyetovitz in "The Defeated" (1948) are clearly Jews: "She had the short, stunted yet heavy bones of generations of oppression in the Ghettos of Europe.... Her features were not essentially Semitic; there was nothing so definite as that about her: she had no distinction whatever.Y There is a sharp contrast, in terms of both appearance and class, between Mrs Saiyetovitz and her daughter: "She was a tall girl, now, with beautiful breasts, and a large, dark-featured face that had a certain capable elegance....Her parents were peasants; but she was the powerful young Jewess" (pp, 206 207). In "Poet and Peasant" (1949) the contrast is again between a child and a parent.

~----,-----_._--_._--_.,-----.""._.,_._--_._---~--_._-._._----,,- The child is a budding poet with a brilliant mind and an infinite capacity for life; the father

... was a peasant from Western Europe, who, full of contempt for the life of the soil from which he had sprung, was yet unable to make a living at anything. For twenty-five years he had dragged his wife and first one, then two, and after the birth of the poet, three children round South Africa in the dust of the native store that went bankrupt in Swaziland, the diamond digging claim that yielded nothing at Lichtenburg, the bicycle shops, the general stores, the junk yards that had petered through his hands from Cape Town to Salisbury.6

Despite the cultural and intellectual difference that exists between the father and his son, ------~._~--_._._._--._._--.~._.- _._-~--~_.- _.~,._._---,----_." _•...._-_ ...... •. _..-. . ..._. ,-----", _.•.. , _. __ .__ .__.. ,'" ._.,."..• the story ends when the female protagonist realises that they are similarin the father's

~------_.._-_.. ------...... _------_.... - ....._... ~----_ ..~-- physical abuse of the poet's mother and the poet's intellectual cruelty to herself.

3 "The Umbilical Cord," Face to Face, p. 3l. 4 In 1941 Jews were excluded from membership of the National Party. This was valid unti11951. 5 "The Defeated," The Soft Voice of the Serpent, p. 198. 6 "Poet and Peasant," Hasholom, p. 28. 20 In another uncollected piece which appeared in Common Sense (1949), "Sweet Dreams Selection", a Greek cafe owner gives a box of chocolates to a young girl in an unconscious attempt to get her out of his cafe; she had come down from the flats above the cafe "to sulk pertly over an icecream drink after a quarrel with her husband"?

It was nine o'clock, half-past nine, ten, and upstairs all the women were cleaning their flats. But she sat there deliberately rotating her foot on her swinging leg, with the bed unmade, the kitchen helpless beneath dirty dishes, a pot of last night's uneaten stew hardening dark under a scum. (p.502)

The gift bolsters the girl's confidence and suddenly she cannot wait for her husband to return: "suddenly it wasn't a quarrel, it was a game, and she couldn't wait to begin" (p. 504). However, the game takes an unexpected turn when the explanation of the gift arouses the husband's aggression against the cafe owner and in turn makes the girl suspicious of the Greek's motives. Both the husband and the girl finally express themselves in terms that clearly draw on an ideology of the 'other' as marginal and inferior. Of particular interest here is the hysteria that is occasioned by any approach no matter how innocent - from the 'other' to the women of the indigenous group:

His belligerence excited her and she sobbed louder than ever, letting her shoulders shake with rough spasms: "B-bloody cheek! Starting with me - " And heaving herself up she clutched and cried against her husband's chest. ... Theywere man and wife,hissurly indignance, her affrontedness wrapping them round indivisibly in a fierce possession.... "I'll go down there and knock his bloody teeth in - " he said. "And don't you ever go into his dirty shop again, the damn dirty Greek...." (p.505)

In terms of the interdependence of race and class for the majority of blacks in the ------._----- South African context, it is interestingthat inthese four stories natiQIl~lityJIIl~t~l~ss also se~i~~k;- ~he 11~-olygl~~11 forei~~~~-~;~-~ither store-lc~~Q~I~_QLpr~carj()l1~l;~

-_...•- ._-,--.-----,,------~--~_.-,--,--,-~_._~-_._,..•_.• -.- -- _.,~_. __...-._.-..• __ .....---_._----'-_. __.. _. - , ..... , •.. ~--- ofantrad~~. Although in the case of "The Umbilical Cord", "The Defeated" and "Sweet , - Dreams Selection" the store-keepers own their means of production, they are not unequivocally depicted as an up-and-coming petite bourgeoisie; elements in their presentation suggest rather that they are constructed as belonging to an extended proletariat. In these stories, for example, the parents are commonly rejected or despised

7 "Sweet Dreams Selection," Common Sense, p. 502. 21 by their children, who are mostly university educated, and it is the children rather that are seen as constituting a petite bourgeoisie. This class depiction ofthe parents is achieved ptimarily through an almost abusive physical portraiture, especially of the women, with a cqncomitant exposure of their lack of sophistication, sometimes bordering on coarseness, without however denying them humanity on an emotional level. For example, Mrs Saiyetovitz in "The Defeated" is described as follows:

And the woman lifted her head from where she sat, wide-legged, so that you couldn't help seeing the knee-elastic of her striped pink silk bloomers holding over the cotton tops of her stockings, and said, peering, "Take it! Take it! Go, have it!" ... she did not seem to be seeing me very clearly: indeed, she could not, for her small, pale, pale eyes narrowed into her big, simple, heavy face were half-blind, and she had always to peer at everything, and never quite see. I saw that she was very ugly. Ugly, with the blunt ugliness of a toad... And yet her ugliness was without repellence... She was only ugly... breasts, stomach, hips crowded sadly, no height, wide strong shoulders and a round back. Her head settled right down between her shoulders without even the grace of a neck, and her dun flat hair was cut at the level of her ears. (p.198)

In "Poet and Peasant" the father is described as:

This surly, uncouthpeasant, who, it seemed, grunted more naturally than he spoke, who had slothed awayin the primeval slime of his own few crude instincts, who had reached up for nothing, nothing from the shelves of the storehouse of human achievement except a pack of cards.... . (p, 31)

It is the young girl who so sharply characterises the father in" contrast to her reverence for the son. Nowhere, however, does the narrative question her evaluation, not even by suggesting that she is guilty of intellectual snobbery, a~d her r~cognition of a similar brutality in the son is the concluding revelation of the piece. The characterisation here borders on the vitriolic and there is nothing. remotely romantic or idealised about Gordimer's presentation of these foreigners ~_~PlgJ~t~Qan 'other'," ',------. __ .•_."•• _.0""·

8 See RichardHoggatt, The Uses ofliteracy as quoted in Raman Seldon, pp. 522-523, where he comments that "the romanticisms which tempt anyonewho discusses 'theworkers' or'the common people"aswell as the stereotyping ofthese people present greater difficulties than the difficulties of defining "'the working-classes" (p. 522). 22

As regards the South African context, what are noteworthy in these stories are the ~------.-_.._--~--_.__._._..,-----_._-----_.._--_._'.~.---_._~------~_._-~~.,-_._._--_...~._-_..... - ~. hierarchical relations tha!_~~~!_~~~ee~indig~~oll~_~~i!C:?,!<:>_~~~~!~n~i?digenousblack. As was seen in ''The Umbilical Cord", Marius Coetzee relegates his "polyglot" neighbours ---~------~--~------to the margins of his known world; they in turn have a pr~~mi~~!11JYJ?1~_c;K£!i~!1J~le: ,~------~--~-,---~._-- "Now he could smell the store too; the smell of furzy woollen blankets, strong soap, cardboard and paraffin, heightened every now and then with the -highly personal sweat smell of an anxious native customer" (p. 26). In terms of the race ideology of se~gation ... ~------._~~------,...,.,- both Jew and Mric~!1__~!~Jllarginalized_in_Marius_{;Qetzee:s~Qns_~iQu~:ne~~J)llJi!J._t~!"!TIS _!h_~_Mr!~lln. of~ a class hierarchy the Jew~ occupies__~ a more~ privileged._.. -cO positionthan_c'_c _ .. In "The Defeated" the first person narrator returns as an adult to the Saiyetovitzes' store only to find out that Miriam, whose brain, as a child, ''blazed like the sun" to her parents, 'warming their humbleness", now seldom visits them, and that the only time they have been invited to her home has been on the occasion of their grandson's birth. The narrative then proceeds to draw a parallel between Miriam's rejection of her parents and their unacceptance of their black clientele:

But in a little while a Swazi in a tobacco-coloured blanket sauntered dreamily into the shop, and Mr Saiyetovitz rose heavywith defeat. Through the eddy of dust in the lonely interior and the wavering fear round the head of the native and the bright hot dance of the jazz blankets and the dreadful submission of Mrs Saiyetovitz's conquered voice in my ear, I heard his voice strike like a snake at my faith: angry and browbeating, sullen and final, lashing weakness at the weak. Mr Saiyetovitz and the native. Defeated, and without understanding in their defeat. (p.212)

The narrative here again explicitly links the marginality of_~~~_"foreigner"aJ:lc.lc!he - --'-'---""'- indigenous black and presents them both as victims, Clearly, too, they _botl!._~!1joy the '------._----~----~-'_. _._~ ._.,~-- -~-"_.- __._---.__ .._-_. __...... , .._._, ... __ - --,-, ------•.._---- sympathy of the white, female narrator. Given that the narrative places black and -- --- foreigner in equivalent positions, the reader might justifiably wonder about the divergence in their respective characterizations. Compared to the harsh depiction of the Saiyetovitzes, the Swazi in the above extract is presented decidedly more sympathetically. Granted that his or her appearance is brief, it nevertheless seems that here, in the 23 characterization of a black proletarian as dreamy and vulnerable, traces of a potential romanticisation of the working class can be found. This romanticisation is already prefigured in the third paragraph of the story when the narrator describes the immediate surrounds of the Concession stores. In opposition to her mother's warning not to go near the Concession stores because they "smelled, and were dirty, and the natives spat tuberculosis germs into the dust" (p. 194), the young narrator craves the "rich and careless... vitality" of the crowded pavement of the stores. What follows is a vivid and detailed description of the variety of vendors who trade informally on these pavements. To a great extent the narrative is able to sustain this buoyant evocation only because it does not progress any further to interrogate the reasons behind a black informal economic sector. Indeed, the 'unsaid' of the text at this point is of great ideological significance. This understanding, however, is afforded only by the methodology of this dissertation; the formalist observation that the wealth of detail in "The Defeated" is excessive for a short story (see King, p. 24) clearly shows the limitations of a purely formalist approach to Gordimer's short stories. The quote describing the Swazi customer reveals another victim: Mrs Saiyetovitz. In a short phrase of eight words describing her, not only one but two words are used to indicate her defeat: "the dreadful submission of Mrs Saiyetovitz's conquered voice" (my underlinings). Although "dreadful" suggests that the narrator is not unsympathetic to the older woman's plight - the specific nature of which is not explored - Mrs Saiyetovitz is nevertheless absent from the last two, decisive paragraphs. The general South African context of the story is given a political edge in these two paragraphs, a politics from which women, both white and black, are blatantly absent. It is in an earlier, strongly woman-centered, story that the dreadful nature of a submission similar to Mrs Saiyetovitz's is explored. The "Peace of Respectability", published in The South African Opinion in 1945, focuses on a woman caught in a stale marriage; a woman who always hopes for change but who herselfis incapable of initiating the change she so desperately wants. In 1950 this story appears, in a slightly altered version, as "The Hour and the Years" in The Yale Review. When appropriate, attention will be drawn to some of the changes, in which case references to the later version will be to its appearance in The Soft Voice of the Serpent. Otherwise the discussion is based on the first version. 24 The narrative is absolutely sure-footed in its exposure of the endless monotony of the woman's life as encapsulated within the marriage. This is achieved through a contiguity between the atmosphere within which the story is set and the dullness of the marriage, as well as the use of light imagery. The second paragraph of the first version 4 opens with the following sentence: "It was one of those days which bear the characteristics of no particular season... it might have been spring, summer, or autumn."? In the later version of the story this sentence becomes the opening one and its importance for the story as a whole is clear when compared with a description of the marriage towards the end of the story:

Everything was less dramatic than she had expected: no radical sudden tum in the course of living, just a gradual emergence from one year into the next, each event slowly conforming to, becoming lost in, the familiar pattern. (p. 31)

The lack of differentiation between one year in her marriage and the next is subtly prefigured in the indefinite seasons of the story's opening. In addition, the dark interior of the house the couple shares and which symbolically contains their marriage, is consistently contrasted to the bright light outside the house. A number of details - being given a dog by her husband which he consi?ers a proper watch-dog but which is not the Sealyham she wanted, looking forward~ to ~ the "simple stir of life along the shops" as opposed to the lack of life at home, and ~he admission that she used to love perfume but that "There's always something more prosaic to do with money these days" (p. 10) suggest a lack of fulfilment and an impoverishment of the woman's life within marriage. The monotony of her life is interrupted by the weekly luncheons with her husband's young brother and a friend:

The advent of Lewis and a friend for luncheon each week was one of the small pleasures . upon which she hinged her days. She had never been able to cure herself of the childish, need to have 'something to look forward to.' . (p.l0) :

One friend in particular comes regularly and the central event of the story is the exchange of a kiss between Paul and the female protagonist. At this point it becomes

9 "The Peace of Respectability: The SouthAfrican Opinion, p. 10. 25 problematic to read the story as feminist, despite its denunciation of a stifling marriage. For the opening paragraph of the original version clearly indicates that the protagonist associates the kiss with danger and a frightening disintegration of her known world:

Whenever she heard people speak of danger, her mind went back to that day and she saw once again the ground opening up under her feet, felt the strong; cold breath in her nostrils; smelt the dark frightening ecstasy of slipping, slipping... She had been there, she could give one swift look back into that place. She drew breath. Yes. Yes. I know, she would say. (p. 10)

Although the negative association of the kiss with danger and the forbidden rings ~ ~----~---'----'-'-'~~---- ._.-. ,-~,~ ---~, ~-"------"-'--'------'---'-' ". '.- psychologically true for the woman, the narrative.do~~,:QQLmQye_beyondJhe1poment of ~~ . _,~~c_~~,_~..··,, __._,_~··~··3."_'. __.__> .• '_'---"'__ "'"_ ~_~ ... _ •• _ ••. _.~. . ... _ fear of the unkno~ gr f~?!".~()f the forbidden to a position where,thekisscan suggest that ...... -~-- --- ·~·-·-· d··_·~'~ ~'-·-"· ·'·_·'_··_"__·-'-"·~ "'_'_.• "~ .• _._ .•.•.,_•... ,__ .. , -~._-.--..------. ..--- alternative relati2!1~h!Q~PQ~~!QI_e. Instead it locates the kiss \''ithiJ1_a.JClI1tasy.world, ------._'-~-- . - -~-..::.~ --~-_.~------.._._,._.--- a world of unreality so as to undermine its potential ~iSn:lE!!Y~. .22~e!": when the ______----.------.--~..r.-.---.->.. -- ..~----.---."- .•.. "-"'--'---'-".~- protagonist and Paul enter the dining-room it is described as a "strange, dark place, shot with stars and trailing meteors of orange, green and purple" (p. 10); a car colliding with her unwanted dog awakes them from the kiss, and the awakening is described as a "rude contact with the glare of sunlight" and "As if she had come down from a distant planet" (p.31). Even worse than its denial of alternatives to the monotony of marriage is the narrative's silent complicity in the woman's view of herself as powerless to effect change. In her view of change as a violent rebirth, the magnitude of what it entails presents to her simply the impossibility of change:

And it came to her - dimly, because she was not a person who ordinarily understood or examined the negative reaction to events - that there is no such thing as finality. There is no end. No matter what happening hits your life, no matter how you are destroyed, you go to bed at night and get up and eat your breakfast in the morning.... You cannot cast yourself in the violence of upheaval, and be reborn. (p, 31)

Instead of a period of tranquillity, "The Peace of Respectability" of the title is finally simply a "sea of commonplace" (p. 31). But despite the bitter irony of the title, it is clear that the narrative does not present a feminist response to a crucial women's issue. Whereas Gordimer is able in "The Defeated" to pose a-social context for her view of black and foreigner as victims, as well as point to the interrelatedness of their respective 'fi'~--'- 26 race and class positions, the presentation ofthe marriage in ''The Peace ofRespectability" is as insular as the protagonist encapsulated within the marriage. Had Gordimer presented this marriage within its social matrix the story might well have become, in this case, feminist. By not establishing an outside perspective in terms of race, gender and class, Gordimer almost seems to collude in the marital entrapment she depicts so sharply. It is precisely the presence of such an outside perspective that makes the later stories so much stronger. In the later story, "Sweet Dreams Selection" (1949), the unambiguous depiction of set roles for women in the household, the menial nature of household duties and the women's apparent unquestioning acceptance of these roles present a potential feminist subtext in the narrative. The force ofthe story lies, however, precisely.in the protagonist's willingness to ignore these issues in favour of uniting with her husband against the 'otherness' of the Greek. In her handling of the narrative, Gordimer's feminist consciousness seems not only alert but relatively developed. This early story is therefore extremely significant for Gordimer's later position on feminism. The following comment by Gordimer on feminism is typical of this position:

Yet the fact is that in South AfricaLnow [1987] as then [1880s], feminism.is regarded by people whosetIllnking on race, class and colour Schreiner anticipated, as a question of no relevahce~to-llie-aciriaIEroblem of the country - which is to. free the black majority from. wliftemmontY-nile~'o ------:.~

As Gordimer's writing career progresses and her socio-historical consciousness sharpens, ---_. ---- _ ....----- she apparently deliberately makes the choice to relegate feminist issues to a secondary place------in terms of her own perception of political priorities in South Africa. ---_.--_ ..,-- . __... The three stories of this period that do deal with white-black relations have nothing in common as regards the presentation of these relations. In the first of these, "No Luck Tonight" (1944), there is seeming collusion across race and gender when a white "master" turns a blind eye to the domestic's resistance to a police search for illicit liquor. Once the police have gone, having found nothing, he returns to the house:

10 Nadine Gordimer, "Mterword: 'ThePrison-House ofColoniaIism'" (Review of Ruth First and Ann Scott's Olive Schreiner), Cherry Clayton (ed.), Olive Schreiner, p. 97. 27

... I go around by wayof the front door, because I do not wish to meet Letty, carrying the gallon of beer across the yard from the kitchen back to her room. Come to think of it, there's no reason why Letty shouldn't always do the mending, and relieve Ruth of the task. Although the work-basket isn't usually so full as it was tonight, with the tin of beer weighing it down, there's enough work in it, as a rule. And Letty looked quite at home, sitting there, dipping into it for a sock or a fresh thread, as if she had done it all her life. So natural that when first I saw her, even I did not realise that the sight was unfamiliar....II

Although the ironi~-!itl~,.Qtth~~~!()I)'~~eems to ~~gg~st a victorious collusion between - . ~------~~----'-----_._-_.,_._._--_. __."._- -~-"..__.,_."-- employer and employe~JQJh~g~tP:rI1.ent ofthe South African police and what they serve ~~-_.~_.~ __.".., ,.,-."" ,.. - -- .._".,.----~._<_ .. ------~._--_.,,_., -... - to uphold, the story also cOIltainssigI1ifj~~~I1!(;OI1!radictions. For ~~~-~ple, haVing colluded _____ •__ ~,,_....__ -"".-. _c- .•,._ .••." .•....• - .• ,.,,',- .. ",. - .. " ... '- ••.-.,. "-_ with Letty by turning a blind eye to her unexpected presence behind the work-basket, the narrator nevertheless fOI!J:!.LnQoJ:>QIl"Lwith.. b.~~:_ In contemplating the possibility of her always doing the mending, he is in fact thinking of increasing her workload and so oppressing her further. Far from being a "contrived ending" in formalist terminology (see King, p. 23), the ending of the story is almost inevitable given its realist, albeit unconscious, rendering of the interaction of the structures of race, gender and class. In "The Train from Rhodesia" (1947) a wife feels betrayed by her husband's bargaining with a native vendor over the price of a carved lion that she particularly admires. As the train pulls away from the station, he hands the lion to her, saying that he got it for one-and-six instead of three-and-six. She reacts by furiously throwing the lion onto the seat.

One-and-six for the wood and the carving and the sinews of the legs and the switch of the tail. The mouth open like that and the teeth. The black tongue, rolling, like a wave. The mane round the neck. To give one-and-six for that. The heat of shame mounted through her legs and body and sounded in her ears like the sound of sand pouring. Pouring, pouring. She sat there, sick. A weariness, a tastelessness, the discovery of a void made her hands slacken their grip, atrophy emptily, as if the hour was not worth their grasp. She was feeling like this again. She had thought it was something to do with singleness, with being alone and belonging too much to oneself. She sat there not wanting to move or speak... Her back remained at exactly the same angle, turned against the young man sitting with his hands drooping between his sprawled legs, and the lion, fallen on its side in the camer.l2

11 "No Luck Tonight," Face to Face, p. 143. 12 "The Train from Rhodesia," Face to Face, p. 100.

~ Ii • If 28 Although the acts of trading and barter are evocative images of colonization and exploitation, of even greater significance is how Gordimer's construction of the narrative suggests that the man's bartering with Africa connects with his bride's well-being. The souvenir-toy is simultaneously an acquisition and a means of pacifying the girl. cAs a symbolit therefore points to bo~_h colonialism _~~~tEat!:i~!£bY.:.WQ!!1~n,Jjke_~hi!Q!~n, can be controlled thLQl1glL9J.?je~!~~ When the wOmanL-h9..w.eYer,JejectLthe-.19'y~he ~ . -- changes its meaI!il!g"-..Ins-tead_oLpacifyjngJH~I,jtpeI!~bs a sense of difference in her. ~-- -._~-'-_. .' --_._ _ -..-.. _ _ When the train moves into the little station, it encapsulates both husband and wife against the exterior world. The lion's invasion of this world, however, not only brings the outside world inside, but effects a realignment of the woman with this world - an alignment which excludes the husband. The manner in which the narrative is constructed

-,-". ---~- ,,' ~_._._- -- -_._. ---',. • ••• -,._,_. ,,_,~ __._,_,_ '0' , ••,," therefore suggests an a.wareness on Gordimer's part .. of the connection .. betweenthe '- _ ••...... -_ ._".' ._. __ , h_J'~' •• ~-~"- ~ • .- --. ~-- '"-- .- -p.-. - ~. ~ - .~_. ",.~ ..- ,-.~. . _.. < 0 '.~_ .... - personal and the political. It is notable, though, that this consciousness is not extended "" -"'-"-_'0 ~ _<.,~._ ."._,'_',-"",,' ,~~ •.. ~_ to the female character in the story. The incident leaves her feeling sick and lonely. In '-- her consciousness racial exploitation or connecting with her environment are subsumed .---- ._ -- . _.~. into a general quest for meaning and the problematic. dynamics of relationships in ------._----~-_ .--_._---,._~._-_._-~_ . .. ------general. As opposed to Gordimer's consciousness, the female consciousness in the story depoliticizes------the significance of her moment of illumination. "The Amateurs" (1948) refers to a group of amateur actors who go to a township to perform Oscar Wilde's The Importance ofBeing Earnest. Given the contrast between the "witty fripperies" of the play and the reality of township life/3 the audience watches the performance with lithe attention of mystification."14 The actors, on sensing this "complete attention, the appeal of a great blind eye staring up at their faces" (p. 77), start hamming it up. Afterwards, a young African girl thanks the players for their efforts. Rather than a comment on the play, her acknowledgement is a revelation of daily life in the township and consequently illustrates one facet of Gordimer's historical consciousness:

This play tonight not only made us see what people can do, even in their spare-time after work, if they !!jj it's made us feel that perhaps we could try and occupy our leisure in such a way, and learn, ourselves, and also give other people pleasure... "I ask you" she

13 The terms are Michael King's, p. 32. 14 "The Amateurs," Face to Face, p. 77. 29

cried out, and the players felt her voice like a shock, "Is this perhaps the answer to our Juvenile Delinquency here in Athalville? Ifour young boys and girls... had something like this to do in the evenings, would so many of them be at the Police Station? Would we be afraid to walk out in the street? Would our mothers be crying over their children?" (p.80)

Earlier, when the players were getting ready, a male player had suggested that they need not bother with proper make-up and other items indicating period as these would not be understood anyway. A young girl then insisted that they do things properly. This girl is the only one of the group who is affected by the earnestness of the African girl's acknowledgement as opposed to the insincerity of their hamming during the performance: "The girl was plucking sullenly at the feathered hat, resting on her knee. 'We cheated them; we shouldn't have done it,' she said" (p, 81). In both the last two stories it is white women who suddenly come to realise and ------~---,--_."-_ .._~~_._-_.. _--~-_.~- - -.--~.-._,,-.--.------...----- ... -._-,- express a sense of injustice at the race relations of their specific situations. Although it ______"'---,--'~~._-<-"'-.- __'. ._~ --'n ,,_,_, __ n __', ' .•.•-_."._,, __.__ ._._.__ .~_.• __ • J '_'_'.. '._ ••..• ' ,. ,. _ ,------••- ..•• _~__.• ~ is the white male narrator in "No Luck Tonight" who colludes with Letty in fooling the ~ --~------..------police, this is not done out of a sense of sympathy with the servants:

All this year the CivicGuard has been making periodical raids on our servants' quarters. Our servants brew Kaffir beer; we know about it, and so does the Civic Guard. The only difference is that the two men who conduct these raids would like to get our servants convicted and imprisoned for the offence, whilst we do not wish to have to go to the trouble of training new servants. (p. 135, my underlining)

P~rsonal com_fort and a disi~~li~~!i_()Ilt()t?"Pend energy motivate the narrator's complicity. ~-""'-- In this story there is also a marked difference in the reactions of the black male and female servants to the police. While the police search the garage

... the boy Solomon stands like a shadow, his thin black legs tense beneath his tom trousers. I can hear him breathing hard with fright, and a fast-beating pulse agitates the skin of his neck. The raw smell of his sweat rises through the garage like the odour of fear emanating from a trapped animal. (p. 137)

When the police search Letty's room, they find the cupboard locked. On the insistence of the narrator, they go to Letty in the kitchen to find the key: 30

Letty hands over the key ofher wardrobe sullenly... And she stands there, breathing hard, not in fear, the trembling abjection of the native boy; but in withering, insolent dignity. He [the Corporal] feels this, and he speaks loudly, brusque and swaggering in his discomfiture. (p, 141)

Black male and female are not merely opposed in their respective reactions of fear and sullen resistance, but it is the woman who is afforded the defiant and dignified response. In this period, blacks appear briefly or otherwise in the roles of domestic servants (four stories), consumers (three stories), vendors (one story) and teachers - the mystified audience in "The Amateurs." This limited range of character roles for blacks is probably an accurate reflection of the occupational status of blacks generally at the time. But it is equally an accurate reflection of the restricted access of whites to professional blacks - as numerically small a group as this might have been. In contrast, the indigenous white characters of these fourteen stories consistently occupy the middle class, the only exception being the young married couple in "SweetDreams Selection" who are depicted as working class. Clingman's observation about the limitations of Gordimer's historical consciousness, given the social divisions of her immediate environment, clearly applies to her treatment of race and class in the short stories of the 40s (see History from the Inside, pp. 14-18). Another ideological contradiction in the stories of this period is the imagery used to describe black and female characters. Although these narratives clearly register the ______~. . __.• .'_ .. 4 __ ._._,~~__~ __• __ arrogance and irrational nature of the ruliI1gj~.~()!9gy.'Sotheringofpeople to marginal ana-iiiferiill-po~;'-~~d~i~houghthey often show women rather thanmen as keenly registenng't~-~bitrari~~;;-;~d unfairness of this 'othering',1?.1~~~san.d foreigners are ...... _---_._.-.,.,_._~ ..,----.---- ...~--- .._-~~._.--~-~~~_._<~,,--.,'~- consistently described through animal imagery and blacks andwomen are often compared "------to or grouped with children. In "No Luck Tonight", for example, Solomon is described ------'----- as standing "like a shadow... The raw smell of his sweat ris[ing] through the garage like the odour of fear emanating from a trapped animal" (p. 137). The function of the animal imagery here might simply be to describe the intensity of his fear as well as the primeval nature of the emotion. Yet even such an 'innocuous' function becomes problematic in the context of South African race relations often characterized by simian analogies. The 'innocence' of the comparison is further questioned when the same paragraph ends with another comparison, this time even lower down the evolutionary scale: 31

... the boy shifts his gaze to me. As I move about the dusty chill of the garage, I am conscious of this unwavering attention, focused upon me wherever I go. It becomes an almost physical thing; I want to tum and brush it from my shoulder like a burr. (p, 137)

The description of Letty's room also contains an animal image: "Scraps of ribbon, bits of brilliantly coloured china, have been collected to adorn this room as a monkey will hoard bright objects in the comer of his cage" (p. 140). Whereas the reference to "monkey" might undercut the surface benevolence of the narrator, mention of the cage, however, accurately captures not only the entrapment of the domestic in the household situation, but also the general situation of the black person within the South African labour market. In "The Defeated" the old Saiyetovitzes, the foreign 'others', are also described as sitting "... glumly, with patience, waiting.... As animals wait in a cage; for nothing" (p. 200). The narrative of "No Luck Tonight" - the main story of this period dealing with race relations and the role of a state apparatus, the police, within these - approaches an analysis of these relations on one or two occasions, but does not establish an oppositional relationship between the narrator as defender of the rights of black people and the state as aggressor towards these. Rather than acquiring a cumulative effect, the moments of ~- - - ~---" _...- -- --, -_.---_.~,..__. _.------_._._--~ resistance in the narrative are dissipated. This is mainly because of the personaofthe ~------,_._~._-~-,-~"-- ~.,-,~, - - w~te~~~~_narrator \\,h~~,\\'.hi!~~~:ticulating at times the inhumanity and absurdity ()fJh~ situation, simultaneously reveals a partial internalisation of apartheid ideology. --_.__ ~_.. _._. . -.-....•- . In the use of race in these stories of 1939-1949, traces of the support for and understanding ofa black perspective apparent in later stories can be found in individual, often white female characters. But there is no sign of a consistent and articulate analysis of the issues surrounding race in South Africa, or even of a remote understanding of racial and gender ideologies as dual oppressions. Rather, an understanding of race as a determinant of class is embedded in the unconscious of the text which from time to time 'suggests itself in the use of multivocal metaphors such as that of the cage above. Gordimer states that "the 'problems' of my country did not set me writing; on the contrary, it was learning to write that sent me falling, falling through the surface of 'the South African way of life'" ("A Bolter and the Invincible Summer," The Essential Gesture, p. 20). In these early stories Gordimer is clearly still "falling through the surface of 'the South African way of life'" and it is only in subsequent years that her conscious

. ~ ..... ~'t- {I 32 grasp of socio-political forces develops and thus enables her to offer the sustained, evolving critique which finally earns her the Nobel Prize for Literature in October, 1991. 33 Chapter Two

"AH, WOE IS ME": THE TRIALS OF THE EARLY FIFTIES

The second group of stories to be examined spans the years 1949-1954 - a period which mainly saw the consolidation of Nationalist power after their election victory in 1948 in such acts as the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act and the Suppression of Communism Act, all in 1950. In 1952 African women were singled out when- the Natives Act necessitated them to have 'reference' books for entering urban areas. Nationalist consolidation culminated in the Public Safety Act of 1953 which gave government the power to declare a state of emergency and to rule by decree without parliament. Some opposition surfaced in the form of the Defiance Campaign in 1952. As was the case in the first group of stories examined, the second group seldom explicitly explores the existence of larger social and historical forces that shape race, gender and class relations in South Africa. This is not to say that no story deals with race relations, but rather that race relations are primarily-explored in terms of interpersonal dynamics. Similarly, gender relations and, more specifically, female identity, is explored

"- -._--- _._.__ ._"~'--"-'--'-- in many stories, but usually in terms of an enclosed, private woild.-Be'causeof •the diSSOCIation -of this private domain from a larger social context, the depiction of race, gender and class relations is essentially a depiction of a series of perpetual motions impervious to change. ,._.----~--'--.- In his book on Gordimer John Cooke states that, because of apartheid, interracial

~_._.__._._-_._-- contact had tended to become "limited to master-servant relationships, radical political partIes 'and the university and bohemian fringe."] This is largely borne out by the stories of these years. Of the twenty-two stories comprising the period 1949-1954, sixstories deal quite explicitly with the issue of race relations and, of these, four deal with the issue in terms of an employer-employee relationship in a household context. It is only now that the breakdown of the reserves in the 1930s and 40s, which resulted in the absorption of black women into the labour system, finds resonance in the stories.

1 John Cooke, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer, p. 48. 34 This group also contains four powerful feminist stories, feminist because they present quite unambiguously the trap that motherhood and wifehood can become to a woman when these roles are unconsciously moulded on social stereotypes and because they highlight the conscious struggle that is necessary to avoid being ensnared. The obvious common denominator presented in the above stories is the household context. Three of the race stories are 'maid-madam' narratives, each of which provides a different aspect of the larger picture. "Ah, Woe is Me" (1949) was first published in Face to Face and is titled after the comment by the African domestic, Sarah, on life. It is significant, however, that the first story to focus to the extent that this one does on the tribulations of a black woman and her expectations for her children should characterise her in a manner which sets her up as non-representative of her race. First, Sarah is shown to have internalised an understanding of society as permanently stratified - the legacy of her Mission School educatiorr' - and last, because of her single-minded obsession with educating her children, she is portrayed as alienated from her own people (see p. 22). The first narrative to focus more closely on the life of a black woman therefore constructs a character who has to -an extent assimilated the values of the dominant culture in terms of all three criteria. The story unfolds from the perspective of the white madam and ultimately leaves the reader with an overwhelming sense of the inadequacy ofthe white woman's response to Sarah's increasing problems. Because of "bad legs" she has to leave her job and take on piecemeal work from home. Her reduced income then forces the return of her children from the boarding school where she has sent them. Nothing comes of Sarah's hopes for her children: her only son ends up working in a dairy; one daughter marries and moves away; and Janet, the daughter for whom Sarah had the highest hopes, finally has to stay at home to look after her when she is sick. Periodic visits by Sarah, later Janet, to the madam keep the narrator informed of each successive stage in Sarah's losing battle. Yet the narrator's response is never different: a few pieces of old, discarded clothing, an apple or tea and bread, and a couple of shillings. At the same time, of the stories to date, the narrator in "Ab, Woe is Me" provides the most articulate critical perspective on how as basic an ideal as education for one's children becomes a struggle

2 See nAb, Woe is Me," Face to Face, pp. 16-17. 35 in South Africa when one is on the other side of the fence. The story therefore does present us with a closer focus on the struggle that is a black woman's life, but it can only take this step forward through a particular construction of the black woman's character and an immobilised, cerebral understanding on the part of the white woman narrator. Through its-narrative techniques "Monday is Better than Sunday" (1949) - collected in both Face to Face and The Soft Voice of the Serpent - is able to present more of a sense of a black perspective. Whereas "Ah, Woe is Me" presented a glimpse of Sarah's difficulties through the eyes of her madam, here the third-person authorial voice provides Elizabeth's perspective in what appears to be an unmediated manner',The reader is again made aware of Elizabeth's alienation from the family for whom she works. The narrative techniques contribute to creating this sense of distance: the children of the household and the "baas" all express their opinion of Elizabeth in direct speech to each other at table over breakfast or in the bathroom during their morning routine. The proportion of the narrative given to Elizabeth, however, is always in reported speech - except where she responds to a question - and is limited to a kind of externalised documentary of the endless number of activities that make up her day. Her opinion of the family is never given but is suggested through her deliberate lack of emotional response to them. For example, when Elizabeth takes the kippers that she had fried for breakfast to the table, only to be told by the daughter that she does not eat kippers, we are informed that "Elizabeth stood there with her tray, offering no solution, giving no reaction; merely waiting to see what w~s to be done." Thus, although "Monday is Better than Sunday" moves closer to the feelings of the domestic through the portrayal of the family's complacent and Insensitive use of her, it is ironic that the primary narrative technique which establishes our sense of Elizabeth's abuse and isolation is the fact of her voicelessness and marginality. We are still trying to look in from the outside. If Elizabeth :is voiceless in this story, the "missus" is a nonentity. Only one paragraph is devoted to her:

... the missus appeared in the kitchen doorway, blinking in her checked dressing-gown. She was a fair woman with thin hair slipping the curlers on her pink scalp, and as she was much alone and no-one talked to her very much, her mouth always moved a little,

3 WMonday is Better than Sunday,WFace to Face, p. 159. 36

soundlessly, around the things she might have said. She looked slowlyaround the kitchen and then went back to the bathroom. (p. 157)

Although no alliance is established between Elizabeth and the white woman through imagery or other techniques, there is a sense in which they are both browbeaten by the white woman's husband. The white father is the most vocal and explicit in his impatience with Elizabeth: '''Blooming girl - does not listen. If I've told her once -.''' "'Daddie"', the appellation his wife uses the only time she addresses him, clearly marks his patriarchal function. The two women differ, however, in their reactions to his bullying: the white seems to have been cowed by him, whereas Elizabeth's noncommittal attitude to his constant criticisms suggests a silent revolt. The narrative clearly invites some sympathy for Elizabeth but is more ambiguous in its presentation of the white woman as so timid and mouselike. The father is clearly disparaged:

He stood looking at her out of his small, restless eyes like the little eyes of a big animal, bison or rhinoceros, always uncertain whether or not to charge; but he could think of nothing else. He grunted and left.

J-~)r) I~ i) The oppression in this story is unambiguously racial, economic an~JJ.atriarchal. Yet~.hil~ " ~ --~----_.__._._-._-- - - _.. I~-~---"·----->··~·~·--··-~-·'~--··"··---'····· .-.. ~.,------< the reader might perhaps recognize the shared submission of the womenor; the level of . ------_.._'--- -" - -, .._------_._-_.------_._-_._ ... ~ gender, there is not the least sense of such a sharedexploitationinthe consciousness of eitner-EfiZ-ab~th--~~--the white woman. Their differences of race and class effectively prevent this. -,.~~-_..------The next household story first appeared in Forum in 1953 and was later collected in Six Feet of the Country. It is not a maid-madam story as it features an opposition between the white owner on the one hand and his wife and black labourer onthe oth~~~4-1-'~ix F;;~;;~:-~::ntry"de-a~s with the dea-th of a farm labourer's brother on -. --. ,,- -~ -r-'":" - the farm of the narrator and his wife. The brother illegally enters South Africa from the

4 This is only the third story dealing with race relations that has a male narrator and all of them have been white. This is significant in as far as it suggests the effects of an interlocking of race, gender and class on Gordimer herself. She seems to empathize more readily with white male and female protagonists - shared race or race and gender - and black women - shared gender. It is only in the late .fifties that the consciousness of black males begins to be explored. "The Pet", the only prior exception, deals with a black male in the traditional female role of domestic worker. 37 then Rhodesia in the hope of finding ajob, but he dies as a result of the exposure and ___."~----_.__• __._._,_._._.-.~~..c,..,_.,.,,_.,.• _ ...•. ~._ ••• _.,....-~.>._--~_. T~j ....• , hardship of the long journey on foot. Because of his illegal status, the issue of the dead ,--.-.~_.------""""'-'•...-...-_., <.~..•._._ -- ' man becomesamatter for-both the police and the health authorities who remoyethe -b?dYf9;-~~ost-mortem. Whe~th~'<1id'father travels down from Rhodesia 't~~~end his

./,,/ son's funeral, the White narrator enters into a protracted struggle to recover the body - .,~-_.~.,- -'- -_.- -_.- -'- ..-_._-.. -_._-----~_._" ,._~.._..__.__...._.._...•__ ._~-~ •... ,.~-~-" which has disappeared in a pauper's grave. Eventually a body is provided and the funeral '};ke~place. Halfway through.the proceedings, to everybody's horror, it is discovered that ...it is the body of a;t;~nget~ '...... ------_. The alliance between Lerice, the narrator's wife, and Petrus, the dead man's brother, is established through the perspective of the narrator. He is often irritated at his wife,both at her "earthy enthusiasms" and her "histrionical on~;'~._~nd speaks of her in a facetious and belittling manner; He IS ~qually irritated at Petrus for not comprehending .the difficulties invol~~-~ in gettingili~-d~~cCDoay ha~k~-~ven more for being willing.to . _.. ~--._.- spend four months' wages toenable this. The alliance, however, is suggested more clearly "in the narrative when the narrator reports back every evening on the progress, or lack of progress, in finding the right body: "She and Petrus both kept their eyes turned on me as I spoke, and, oddly, for those moments they looked exactly alike... " (p. 19). Once again, neither Lerice nor Petrus, the gender and raciaJ~9thers' of the story, . ._----_ •..._..,-'_._ ..-._---~ •...,---- ever speaks for themselves and the narrator clearly disparages their concern over a _c ·------~.. _.·._,~ __ ~ __ matter which to him is simply irksome. Although his is the controlling voice, the last two sen~~-~;-;i·th~~;~~~i~;c~early suggest the i~~d;~~~~-~fth~~~rrato;:~-hu~anity and

insigh!~_

»>:

So the whole thing was a complete waste, even more of a waste for the poor devils than . I had thought it would be. I The old man from Rhodesia was about Lerice's father's size, so she gave him one / of her father's old suits and he went back home rather better off, for the winter, than he I had come. I ~~

The question of waste does not even arise for Petrus and his family. In their culture tradition dictates the appropriate response to the significant markers in human life bi~!~J_£oI!!i!!g.()f age, marriage, death - and this is the only course of action available to

5 "Six Feet of the Country," Six Feet of the Country, p. 9. 38

~~~m. As far as t~,~_I!arrato!_~~.9~~rn~d_~~erything was a waste because nothing had been ach~evecf~~heenterprise produced no p~~fit: or gaiit. tti~~arrator's materialism is Z ----. -~--'--_._-_._------_ ----_ .- exposed when he_!hinksthaLilie-1!.f_'l.?isition of an extra suit is recompense for the ~_.'--'-" --.------~,-_._.------..-~.--._,---_ -.-~. -.._-•._._.,-~-- .. ~._- .. "-"-"._- -. -----······--.k··· ._ . .'A __ __ . __ "_,,_,, ',.,'" .....•...• . l~!hl:?r's double loss: the loss of his son and the loss of being able to take leave of him /" ' - _.__._--_.,------_.- according to the rituals provided by his culture. The story opens with a paragraph that adroitly captures the tensions of the marriage as well as the couple's mixed feelings about their recent purchase of the farm. ------~------~-~~._._~-~~-,----._---_.~--+--._-._----,,_.... ~.' ..-._-- The complex positionings of the narrator and his wife within their marriage almost mirror their shifting posturings as idyllic landowners straddling the worlds of urban commerce _~~?I:~~~~-~!1!~~~_!·~;---··-.- and _.--...- _--.-- -. " .. -.p."

Soon after they acquire the farm, it becomes clear that only Lerice's enthusiasm and ten~tY-can-ensl;'~~the success of the venture.

Lerice, who I thought would retire there in Chekhovian sadness for a month or two, and then leave the place to the servants while she tried yet again to get a part she wanted and become the actress she would like to be, has sunk into the business of running the farm with all the serious intensity with which she once imbued the shadows in a playwright's mind. (p.8)

Indeed, the marginality of the narrator in the whole business of farming is unambiguously stated: "I, of course, am there only in the evenings and at week-ends" (p. 8). Yet in his . - eyes, it is his financial contribution to the upkeep of the farm that'is the 'deciding factor: - ,,-_.. ,._- -llrama--partner in a luxury-travel agency, .which is flourishing - needs to be, as i tell _ .. '. .<._•• _--.~.~-_.. .--_ .• Lerice~i?..~!~~r!o.carry on the farm".(p. 8). ~~~~~~a~'~ labour and her contribution to the household economy are thus devalued'J"ri va patriarchal crediting of dues. ~-_.~_._- , - -- ,._._~_._._-- _._"---~"-. Furthermore, the authenticity of Lerice's personality is consistently challenged by the narrator through his perception of her actions as whimsical impersonations, the dramatic posturings of a failed actress. -. -_._-'.'~'_._._--~.•---~~._-~..-'-'~'--- In "Six Feet of the Country" the oppression is no longer as explicitly racial as in "Monday is Better than Sunday." Unlike the father in the last story, the couple in "Six Feet of the Country" do not only relate to the labourers as workers. Lerice, for example,

6 It is their ambiguous position as landowners that is more fully developed in the novel on the same theme, The ConservationisL 39 often acts as midwife and medical officer on the farm. Indeed, the narrator and his wife rather pride themselves on the good relations that they have with their farm labourers and, when qtl~~tioI!~d_bytl1~>poli~~aboutJtis~~oran~~~~~h~deadboy's presence on \;::::-- his farm, the_!1_~g~t()r responds angrily: "I didn't think it my right or concern to poke my ,-----".,~- .. ," -, 4 nose into their private lives... " (p, 13). As in "No Luck Tonight", also with a w~te ma1~ narrator, there is a kind of benign_~YUI1c;!!lar_Jc:>!e~t:lI1~ewh!fll.,~lJ.~I!J~s.t~d,l1owever,has -----~-~-_~_---~---_.,_.,.~_--_.. _ ,_._~,_ ,. .. . -'" .. . ---- .. - .., .._._.~- ~ery little sub_5.-t~nce.toit, The ignorance the narrator displays about the cultural values of the farm labourers and his judgement of tl!~ir.. desperate attempt to find the body, expose him as a cultural imperialist. One, moreover, whose culture seems primarily ------_.-._-.._-~_-..- -r;":': --".~ ~ --rnformed by materialism."... I had no intention of encouraging Petrus to throwaway, on ----- '~'_~"~'~.~'~-'~"-~"-~~<. a gesture, more than he spent to clothe his whole family in a year" (p. 15, my underlining). The oppositional relationship between the narrator on the one hand and between Petrus and Lerice on the other does not develop inversely: despite the narrator's obvious shortcomings, confirmed by the story's ending, Petrus and Lerice neither grow in stature nor gain in power. Until the end they are subjects only within the discourse of the white male. The agreement between the couple in their chagrin at Petrus' plight only serves to ~ighIight their polarity as man and woman in a patriarchal world. Therefore, although the narrative suggests an alliance across race, gender and class lines, it is essentially a powerless alliance because Lerice and Petrus themselves are unaware of how race, gendeF and'class structures have interacted to constitute their.'otherness.' The last of the four stories examining race in a household context is "Happy Event", also collected in Six Feet ofthe Country. As Karen Lazar comments on the title: "... patriarchal societies have spawned a 'cult of maternity' which serves to keep women docile. This cult entails a mystification of motherhood and birth. The utterance 'Happy Event' stems from precisely this mystique" (Lazar, p. 142). The decisions by Ella Plaistow and her domestic servant, Lena, to abort their respective babies could therefore, from one perspective, be seen as feminist in that they declare their right to control their own bodies and lives while simultaneously undermining the cult of maternity. However, the story also, and perhaps more significantly, demonstrates how race divides women on issues where they might have come together as women. 40 Ella decides to abort her baby as they already have two children and the arrival of a third would have interfered with her and her husband's plans for a trip to Europe in the spring of the following year. She goes to a nursing-home where her money buys her an abortion. Although initially she is emotionally unsettled, she soon recovers and carries on with her arrangements for the European trip. Lena simply reports sick one morning and when Ella goes to enquire says that her stomach aches. Thomas, the gardener of many years, reports that he heard a baby crying late at night? But the following day Lena is back at work. It is only a week later when the police arrive at the house and question Ella about a nightgown, with her name on it, wrapped around a dead baby found in the veld, that things fall into place. Ironically, it is the same nightgown that Ella bought to take to the nursing-home and it is because of this memory that she gave it away to Lena. Lena appears in court and Ella has to testify that she was totally ignorant of Lena's condition. A post-mortem suggests that Lena's child was alive at birth and might even have lived some hours afterwards. Lena is given six months hard labour. "Her sentence coincided roughly with the time Ella and Allan spent in Europe...."S "Happy Event" is a hard-hitting expose of the economic divide between white madams and their black domestic servants. It is predominantly her class - dependent as it is on her race - that enables Ella to have an abortion in a manner that not only circumvents the law but also, through its clinical procedure, distances her - as compared to Lena - from the emotional trauma involved. Even so, Ella is initially haunted by the knowledge of what she has allowed to happen:

But mostly it grew, forced its way up out of the silences that fell upon her like a restraining hand during those first few days after she had come from the nursing home. It seemed to burst through her mouth in a sudden irresistible germination, the way a creeper shoots and uncurls into leaf and stern in one of those filmswhich telescope plant growth into the space of a few terrifyingly vital seconds. (p.32)

7 The animosity between Thomas and Lena is a significant man-woman opposition between racial others as opposed to the racial divide between two women, both in quintessentially women's situations. 8 "Happy Event," Six Feet of the Country, p. 46. 41 Given the motivation of an overseas trip, the fact that she did not really want another child and the anaesthetizing clinicalness of the nursing-home, if Ella initially struggles to adjust to the reality of her abortion, what pain lies silenced in Lena as she moves slowly between tub and line the following day or as she stands "obediently before the questioning of the detective" a week later? As enabling as Ella's class position is in respect of her abortion, so disabling is Lena's servitude for hers. Immediately after the exhaustion of labour, whatever has to be done to get rid of the baby she has to do herself. The night-time voices, overheard by Thomas, who were there to assist Lena in the birth are now absent as they would not have approved of what she had to do. Big Charlie's reaction to the baby when he finds it in the veld is set up by the narrative as representative of the attitude of blacks to children (see pp. 39-41). In killing her child, Lena is also going against her own cultural values, but economic necessity has driven her to do so. When asked, in court, whether it is possible "for a woman to resume her normal day's work thirty-six hours after confinement", the doctor replies: '''Were the woman in question a European, I should, of course, say this would be most unlikely. Most unlikely. But of a native woman, I should say, yes - yes it would be possible" (p. 46). Although the narrative that follows by implication questions the "reasonableness" and ''validity'' of this statement, it is ultimately silent on the economic reality that drives black women to fear the loss of their jobs so much that they do not even allow themselves the minimum time for recovery after confinement. It is not an inherent masochistic ability on Lena's part to bear pain that informs the doctor's observation, but economic necessity: a reality present only in Lena's silences and in the silences of the text. These household storiesall.portray the alienation of the various black characters ------_...----- .. - "-~ •.._-~_._._~-_.__ .~_._----,-_ •..- despite their intimate position in the respective households. Where the households are ------"------_.- "----- more sympathetic than overtly racist, this sympathy is seen to be theoretical rather than pr~ctic~i:Nthou-ghihestructuring of the four narratives clearly attempts an expose of the sophistriesofwhit~~,;~il~~eaning and otherwise, and is sYJl1P~thetic to the tentative b1~fck"-perspective-thest()ri~~-~ff~~~;~-authentic black voice is still absent. Sometimes the v'Ofcelessnes~--(jrfilackcliaractersfuI1ciions 'toenhance the reader's sympathy, as in "MoiidaylSBeffCitbaIlSunday";but on occasion their silence or insufficient detail about 42 them weaken the ability of the story to arouse a more informed sympathy on the part of the reader, as perhaps in "Happy Event." To end this chapter, I would like to examine a race story from this period which is not situated in the household context and which demonstrates the difficulties a narrative faces in dealing with race issues in South Africa. "The Catch", first published in the Virginia Quarterly Review in 1951 and later collected in The Soft Voice of the Serpent, focuses on a young, white couple who have left the tensions of city life behind them and are relaxing somewhere along the Durban coast. A kind of friendship is struck up between them and an Indian fisherman which lasts until the arrival of old friends from the city. In other words, outside their usual urban, segregated context the couple is able to enter into a relationship with the Indian that they enjoy. This 'spontaneous'

-_.._..-.~- _...~~_._.._~~ .... _",- -~--- r~~~trC3.~teciw:ith-theirJatertreCltment of him in the presence of their city friends. Thus the story wouJ(:L~_~~!JlJQ~llgg~st that our everyday contexts of segregation

---~- and superficial socialization prohibit meaningful contact between the races. Where these ------_.----_..--_. ---.-.-- .---.- - constraints are absent, spontaneous andjoyous friendships across race lines are possible. --Th~-iri;;d~hip between the fisherman and the city dwellers is, however, presented ambiguously. The complexity of the ambiguity becomes especially apparent in the multiple possibilities of the title. On the level of events, ''The Catch" could be seen simply to refer to an amount of fish caught, which is relevant to the Indian's leisure time occupation - fishing. On another level, "The Catch" can be seen to operate in the sense of a prize - a thing or person worth catching. On this level two possibilities exist simultaneously: the 'obvious' prize is the catching of the huge salmon, but in describing the curious onlookers' reaction to the salmon, another reading appears:

Interest spread like a net, drawing in the few, scattered queer fish of the tiny resort, who avoided one another in a gesture of jealous privacy. They came to stand and stare, prodding a tentative toe at the real fish, scooped out of his sea.9

The "real fish" is opposed to the "scattered queer fish", a phrase referring to the inhabitants of the resort, but it also enables a distinction between the catch as a real fish and the Indian as a catch for the couple on their holiday: "He was 'their Indian.' When

9 "The Catch," The Soft Voice of the Serpent, p. 16. 43 th~L~~Ilt homethey might remember:the h~li~~¥_~Y_hilll ~s_YQU _mightremember a particular holiday as the one when you used to play with a spaniel on the beach every ~------.._------day" (p. 12). ------Throughout the narrative a parallel seems to be developed between the Indian and the salmon he catches on the 'one hand and the couple and the Indian on the other: "After the pictures had been taken, the peak of interest had been touched; the spectators' attention, quick to rise to a phenomenon, tended to sink back to its level of ordinary, more dependable interests" (p. 18). T~~_~~.:u2J~.l._JQo,-_dQ._noLsustainJheir friendship with the Indian; after the arrival.of.their.friends from the-city, the old barriers ~-~+_~--_~_--"-"---."--"'--" .--_ .. -._.---_~ are redrawn and the woman.jna..ratherembarrassedmanner.itries to justify their giving ------_~------the Indian a lift_,:"_an_~~tionwhichshe thinksmustseem "crazy" to their friends. She refers ._~_.--~--_.~+- to him as "the poor old thing" (p. 22). -_~-,_.~,--_ .._,-_.. "~_ .. The parallel operates in an interesting manner in the story. The friendship between the Indian and the couple is established in the first of three sections. The catching of the salmon occupies most of the central section and thus operates as a parallel to the Indian as a catch only in hindsight. Once the parallel has been established, however, it prefigures the waning of the friendship in the last section. Reverting back to the usual South African race relations is not only prefigured by the waning of the spectators' interest in the salmon, but also in two explicit positings of the Indian as a racial 'other' in the middle section. When the Indian is unable or unwilling to be exact about where he would sell the fish, we are told that the girl was irritated at "this habit of other races of slipping out of one's questioning, giving vague but adamant assurances of sureties which were supposed to be hidden but that one knew perfectly well did not exist at all" (p, 19). And when her husband expresses concern about how the Indian will manage to carry the heavy fish a mile along the coast, she replies, "Oh, they're strong.

They're used to it... II (p. 19). Immediately following on this presentation, the final section opens with the unexpected arrival of their city friends and the resulting diminishing interest in the Indian. Yet another possibility for reading ''The Catch" is open - that of "The Catch" as a snag, a trap or an unexpected difficulty. Such a reading of the title opens up the unexpected difficulties the narrative experiences in its attempt to tell a story about the possibilities and constraints of a friendship across race lines. 44 The text sets up various oppositions, such as, for example, thatbetween urban,

,------,~-,-,-----'---".~----'" ' .. city, wor~ingJ!f~,_~~~_~~Clst(ll,holidayJeisure. In the race relations of the city, the whites --".. .-.• _ ... _ .•. __ •._~__•• _ •.... ~ ,_~_~~_. •. ~.~ ••.~ .".,,'__ J - occupy the privileged position of tl!~_~hi1e_-:bIClckopPQsition,whereas duringthe coastal ~_._-~'---.-----~'---.-.--..--.--- ..._.... _--..'-_._.., interlude the imagery seems to invert the opposition by affording the Indian the superior ,. - .•-~.-~-- -,"-----...- ~,.··.~·~ ·_····4'._·'·_· ,,_ .'_ .__ .._. ,_, _~ .•. ,- -, ..- position._The inversion of the white-black hierarchy comes about through the elevation ---~ of the Indian to the level of "diviner" (p. 13) or saint (p. 15) and the diminution of the couple to the level of children (p. 10 and p. 13). However, while this reversal seems to present an alternative to the usual South African race relations, it does not function at all unambiguously. Several elements appear and questions may be asked that undermine the very alternative the narrative tries to' establish. As in many other Gordimer_~tori~_~~~t,~~~!~d~~l(l~~?r Indian characters, animal and dehumanized imagery is frequently used to focus on certain features of the Indian

---_.~~---'~-_._~.--._------_._._._.-~ _,--_._._-_.--~-----"-_.~-.-._-_."-- - ..-.. --_ _ __ ,. __.. _.. . or his relationship with the white couple. He had "a wide muscular mouth smiling on stroiiguneven teetlrm-afprojecfed s11ghtlyiike the good useful teeth of an animal" (p. 9); "He was 'their Indian.' When they went home they might remember the holiday by him as you might remember a particular holiday as the one when you used to play with a spaniel on the beach everyday.... And as an animal becomes more human every day, so every day the quality of their talk with the Indian had to change... 11 (p. 12); IIAt last the Indian came round the paw of the bay, a tiny black stick-shape detected moving alive along the beached waterline of black drift-sticks... 11 (p. 15); "Exhausted as he was, he belonged to the fish... II (p. 16) and, of course, in the implicit equation of the Indian with the salmon in the parallel that is set up between him and "The Catch." One might attempt to see the use of such animal imagery as a deliberate strategy in the narrative to expose a facet of the white couple's response to the Indian. However, such a reading would then undermine the opposition set up between city and coast by implying that one is never able to escape the effects of a structured apartheid. Or, perhaps, the story '-'-~~- -_. -."--_.._--.- _.~" ---,- _. -_ .. ---. attempts exactly to demonstrate the insidious internalization of apartheid attitudes that

~~ ~__.•_. .._T__ ~ _~"""_ " <" __.__• survive despite the Edenicsetting. "--,------. _•..~--._----_ .. - ..- Both these readings, however, are problematized by the explicit presentation of the effects of the friendship on the white couple - the sense of release from confinement and relief from a burden: 45

The fact that he was an Indian troubled them hardly at all. They almost forgot he ~ an Indian. And this too, though they did not know it, produced a lightening of the heart, a desire to do conversational frolics with a free tongue the way one stretches and kicks up one's legs in the sun after confinement in a close dark room. (p, 10)

It seems therefore that, despite its attempt to posit different race relations in a new context, the narrative reverts, or is forced to revert, to the use of a dehumanizing, old world rhetoric. There are elements that manage to escape such an unconscious retrogression, that indeed seem to be consciously employed to suggest the Indian's superiority. However, these, too, contain within themselves the seeds of disruption. One might consider the ------implications of the necessity to situate an alternative to our artificial race relations in a new, removed context. Does this imply t~at in the world as it is, improved race relations are impossible - that the disappearance of racial barriers is only possible in an ideal, 'green' world? There are overtones of an idealized, pristine world, too, in the occasional, almost Rousseau-like or Lawrentian presentation of the Indian. During the picture-taking session, for example, we are told that

... the sight of them, so concerned for his picture, released him to smile what was inside him, a strong, wide smile ofpure achievement, that gathered up the unequal components of his face - his slim fine nose, his big ugly horse-teeth, his black crinkled-up eyes, cancelled out the warring inner contradictions that they stood for, and scribbled boldly a brave moment of whole man. - (p, 18)

Earlier, before they knew anything about him, the couple had thought that being a fisherman was the Indian's means of subsistence: "They looked at him with the curious respect which people feel for one who has put a little space between himself and the rest of the world. 'It's a good life,' said the young man, the words not quite hitting the nail of his respect" and "'He's got a nice open face,' said the young man. 'He wouldn't have a face like that if he worked as a waiter at the hotel'" (p. 9). But this seems to be more an expression of a need to believe in an alternative to twentieth-century industrial man than an accurate reading of the Indian, because they soon find out that he, like them, is in fact only on holiday. One critic, while reading the Rousseau-like ideal in the Indian, goes as far as -",-- - --._,-_. maintaining that the story exhibits two levels of existence: "The one level is the 'white', 46 sophisticated, urban-p~ced lifestyle" characterized by racial exclusivity and "The other ~ ._._---______-_.._ __ ..-- - -...... -.. level is a more natural, more whole existence, which is in touch with and takes its pace ------._------_._---_.- ....._---_._--.•. -.-_...•...... '. from nature. Obviously the Indian inhabits that phase" (King, p. 34, my underliningj.Buf'" ..:;,._ _. ._".._.~_~._,_<~_ ""_~ __ ~~._, __ ."-'_._.._..~.~_ .."._..._,... _' _., _"___ ~ ._~ .,._"'''.'''''''~' __.s_ ~_","_._._. such a reading of the story is a good example of the far too neat conclusions sought by earlier critical approaches to Gordimer's stories. Although the methodology adopted in this dissertation often disables such neat conclusions, it irrefutably enables - more so than any other approach - an exploration of Gordimer's developing historical consciousness in the short stories. In both the narrative of "The Catch" and in King's comment on it, there is an unmistakable romanticization of the racial 'other'; the question of misreading, of impaired or partial vision, now reveals itself as a subtext in the narrative and so must be included in any fuller reading of it. The couple usually only saw the Indian in the mornings; in the afternoons they sat "reading old hotel magazines on the porch whose windows were so bleared with salt air that looking through them was like seeing with the opaque eyes of an old man" (pp. 13 14). At the news of the Indian's big catch the couple go to the beach to watch out for him:

At last the Indian came round the paw of the bay, a tiny black stick-shape detected moving alive along the beached waterline of black drift-sticks, and as he drew nearer he took on a shape, and then, more distinctly, the shape divided, another shape detached itself from the first, and there he was - a man hurrying heavily with a huge fish slung from his shoulder to his heels. (p. 15)

Here there is movement from impaired to full vision, suggesting how seeing may be mis seeing. Further details stress seeing as a subtext in the narrative. Later there are also children amongst the crowd of curious spectators: ''The child came up and put his forefinger on [the fish's] eye. He wrinkled his nose, smiling and pulling a face, shoulders rising. 'It can't see!' he said joyously" (p. 16). Lack of seeing, blindness, is received joyfully. And, when the spectators finally lose interest and disperse, ''The sea glittered with broken mirrors of hurtful light" (p. 18), which suggests both a distorted vision and pain. The very opening sentence tells us that the Indian's "strong bony legs passed by at eye level every morning as they lay" (p. 8, my underlining). As he passes them and moves further down the beach so that eventually his whole physical person is visible to them, 47 this is presented negatively, as something lesser rather than something complete: "S0 the sound of his feet ... passing away up the beach and shrinking into the figure of an Indian fisherman, began to be something to be waited for" (p. 8, my underlining). Perhaps one way of reading these different references to seeing, and the contradictory emotions that accompany them, is suggested in yet another conundrum in the text which implies that wonder lies in the absence of knowledge: "The men tried to lift it [the salmon], making terse suggestions about its weight. A hundred, seventy, sixty five, they said with assurance. Nobody really knew. It was a wonderful fish" (p. 17)'1:!E_~ old ways of seeing, conventional knowledge, and rationalized facts restrict and bar. In oraer to enterlirto-ne;-ii;~-;~i;ti~ns, new ways of seeing are necessary.

------.------...• - -'--"- "_.-._"--"-'--'--'--"~'-"'-~'---_._--~-,.--_.__ .,-_._.---.- ·w.- "The Catch" is therefore a good, representative example of the treatment of race in these stories of 1949-1953. Although the overall narrative stance is essentially .~ ------~..~..._-"'._.., ----,._------_.'-_._- --... ~ _.,-_ .. ~"._,-" sympathetic to the plight of the black characters or critical of white hypocrisy, many of

______~ __.._._.,_._ •.. _ •.•• __~._ _ • •. __ ~_. . ." .. ~ •. < _•.., ••• ...• ~__._.w_~ __'__"'. _,__ . the narrative techniques or images used suggest a consistent problematic in their

~.._----~.- approach to race. -·---Thest~ri~~ do reveal, however, that there is no simple way in which gender or racial solidarity in South Africa can be averred. Within racial groupings, black or white, --~¥~_. _._,. __ ._--~,-,,-~ .."'-'._-_ .. _- - there are male-female polarities and within gender groupings, there are ~~c.~al polarities. Furthermore, class intersects with all of these to create even finer divisions. For the Gordimer reader in this phase of her development the full extent and implications of these divisions is only beginning to be felt. 48 Chapter 3

''WHITE FRIENDS AND BLACK FRIENDS": PROGRESS IN THE LATE FIFTIES

The period of the third group of stories to be examined, 1954-1960, differs markedly in tone and style from the earlier ones. Most significantl~_~_n~WI"esjsj:~l1cecQns~i9usness ,::- - ._~~------was becoming P~~_!):tl_~oJ:I1~_~reas_otS()~th African life. Obviously the publicity ~---~--_._----- .-.... - surrounding the notorious Treason Trial which started in 1956and continued until March, 1961, played its part in disseminating the new mood of defiance. Alongside the Treason Trial, however, anti-pass demonstrations expressed the dissatisfaction of people with the impact of Nationalism on their lives.The most representative expression of an alternative to Nationalist rule came with the Congress of the People in Kliptown where the Freedom Charter was adopted. It is towards the end of this period, in 1959, that Gordimer starts writing the 'journalistic' and travel pieces which, over the following years, become close to being companion pieces to her fiction. Despite the subject matter of these pieces, Gordimer is essentially a story teller in them, too. It is notable that these non-fictional pieces start appearing at precisely this moment of resistance. Two of the earliest pieces, 'Where do Whites Fit in?" and "Chief Luthuli", both published in 1959, indicate how closely Gordimer followed the events of this period and the extent to which it preoccupied her thoughts. Indeed, while on bail Chief Luthuli stayed for a short time in Gordimer's house. At the beginning of her career, Gordimer's stories were generally published in local magazines, but after the publication of The Soft Voice of the Serpent in 1952 her stories are more frequently published in magazines abroad. Likewise, both "Where do Whites Fit in?" and "Chief Luthuli" were originally published in overseas magazines and only many years later collected in The Essential Gesture. Neither does there seem to have been any strict demarcation between the magazines in which her short stories appeared and those which hosted her more journalistic pieces. In fact, the London Magazine and the Atlantic frequently publish both stories of hers and journalistic pieces. This information suggests that Gordimer, at this point in her career, was writing primarily 49 for an overseas audience and that by the late fifties she wanted that audience to respond to her stories not only with sensibility, but also by being politically informed. This is increasingly the case for Gordimer's more contextualised stories; it would be impossible to understand, for example, the last story that this dissertation will examine, "Teraloyna", without a knowledge of South African political life. Many of the stories written during the years 1954-1960 again contain passing references to blacks, mainly domestic servants, but these serve rather loosely as elements in a general South African background. Only five of the twenty-two stories of this period deal explicitly with the issue of race. The changes in black political strategies during this period serve as material in two of the stories, indicating more clearly than before not simply a developing interaction between Gordimer's craft and her environment, but a conscious exploration of this interaction in her short fiction. These two stories, "The Smell of Death and Flowers" (1954) and "Something for the Time Being" (1960), as it were, frame this period. In between them we have a story about an otherwise very controlled black man's anger at the racial insensitivity of an over-confident liberal young white woman, another.story that takes the domestic situation stories to a new level, and a story about a white roadworker's blindness to the harmony and companionship that he enjoys with the workers he oversees. "The Smell of Death and Flowers", originally published in the NewYorker in 1954 and later collected in Six Feet of the Country, draws on the Defiance Campaign of 1952 to tell the story of a young, untouched white girl's meeting with an older woman whom she has admired for some years. Even the younger woman's name, Joyce McCoy, suggests her inexperience. The older woman, Jessica Malherbe, has become quite a household name in South Africa for her trade-union activities and political imprisonment. On an impulse, Joyce decides to join the older woman on a defiance march into a nearby township. Despite some trepidation she sticks to her decision; the group is duly arrested, and they pay bail pending the trial. The title arises from a series of flashbacks. During the multiracial party at which she meets Jessica, Joyce learns that Jessica is married to an Indian. This occasions a flashback to the interior of an Indian fabric shop in Durban with its strong smell of incense. At the time, the smell of the incense had, in turn, reminded her of the interior of the church during her grandfather's funeral, a composite of death and the "scent of 50 her mother's garden."l The Indian shop incident itself is compounded of "attraction and repulsion" (p. 208) when, on leaving the shop, Joyce and her sister are followed by a man who makes an obscene advance to them. Later, at Jessica Malherbe's house, where the group had arranged to meet, these memories are implicitly present when the smell of incense again causes a wave of panic in Joyce. The title and everythingItjmplie..s_}!).s.!gIJ.i~_(;~!l!for the connections between ---_..-,----_.-._~._--_.._.-----._---_.- - patriarchy and racism that the story tentatively offers; it is also a yardstick against which ~_•....-.,_.---~~--_._~--~._-_..~--_ .. --_.._-.~. -'-'~-~-- ...•-... , .-._..--, ,".. .. ',--, .. ',- -~- .'- "'- .. ',- to measure the ~~l1L~Y-~I!1.~Il.tof J0'yce's eventualparticipation in the marcl1. Immediately ------_.------. preceding the narration of the two incidents which are superimposed on each other in the title is a passage relating Joyce's reaction to the news that Jessica is married to an Indian: "Married to an Indian! It was the final gesture. Magnificent. A world toppled with it - Jessica Malherbe's father's world. An Indian!" (pp. 207-8). The passage presents an -...... _-~"-_._-~-_.--- _._. _.....•-.,------_.__. explicit opposition between Jessica's non-racism and her father as patriarch of his world. ------.._ - ..•-.._ _.•...... _ - -_.._..~ -.-. ..-' Moreover,------it is not simplyan_._ ...._-.-opposition..-.. __..._->--_that... can exist in a mutual balancing act: Jessica's non-racism contains in it the death of patriarchy. Several details in the following passage co;t~j;ling th~·-~~··fl~shb·~;~--~~~ti~~~t·~~v~~h;~~-p~tria;chy:the voice of the Indian

._----~-~._, ~_ ,-~~_ ~- .~ ~~ "._~--' - ... _". __.__ ._.__ ._.__ •.,,_._.,,_.. .•.. .. ,...... --.-_.._---.. .-", '...', boy behind the counter is sai~JQJ;>~.~C!sJo~ and gentle" (p. 208) as Joyce's and in both --,------_.- --_._---_ .. ----,------.__._----- _.. _-'-'-"_.~' '.'--,-'~- situations the negative element of the paradox, "ugliness and beauty" or "attraction and ------~-_.~-,.. --' ,---- "------._----'-_.-.~'-,-,-_.__.,,'-,-- .,- repulsion" (p. 208), is associated with a male. It is the dead body of her grandfather as -----._- .' ---'"------~",~----,~.- --,--.'. opposed to the scent of her mother's garden that repels and it is the man who offers the obscene advance who mars the Indian shop incident as opposed to the young Indian boy who has approximated the feminine in his gentleness. Despite the association of an obscene sexual advance with the incense in Jessica's house, Joyce's inbred politeness - "It would be so terribly rude simply to run away out of the house, and go home, now" (p. 218) - helps her to overcome her panic and stick to her decision. The walk into Lagersdorp Location is uneventful. Initially Joyce experiences a "calm embarrassment" (p. 220). When Matt Shabalala next to her runs his finger round the inside of his collar, Joyce interprets it as similar embarrassment. The narrator, however, informs the reader that "she-did not know that he [Matt] was thinking what he

1 "The Smell of Death and Flowers," Six Feet of the Country, p, 208.

I ~/ /: -, 51 had promised himself he would not think about during this walk - that very likely the walk would cost him his job" (p. 220). Although this revelation of the greater cost involvedfor blacks in taking part in acts of defiance does undercut the apparent solidarity of the group, it does not necessarily deprive Joyce's participation of all value:

But as the policeman came to her, and she spelled out her name for him, she looked up and saw the faces of the African onlookers who stood nearest her.... And she felt, suddenly, not nothing but what they were feeling, at the sight of her, a white girl, taken incomprehensibly, as they themselves were used to being taken - under the force of white men's wills, which dispensed and withdrew life, which imprisoned and set free, fed or starved, like God himself. (p. 223, my underlining)

This, the last paragraph of the story, not only reveals the distance she has travelled from her initial naive innocence, but also reasserts the link between racism and patriarchy. Although the suggested link betwe;~-racis~ and p~tri;~hy--i~ themosts'lgnlftcant development in the treatment ofrace, there are other changes as well. For the first time, people of the different race groups meet as equals - professionals - within the urban environment. There is therefore a development in the general classpositionoftheblack ~'------'-~.~'--""-----'. -. ',' ". ','. -"'-"'-----'-'.,,--- characters from working class domestics and farm labourers to professional middle class people. In "The Catch" - the only story so far to present a meeting of equals - such a '==---=- meeting had to be displaced to a world beyond the everyday. In terms of a South African locale, "The Smell of Death and Flowers" is also much more contextualized than any of the earlier stories dealing with race. The greater contextualization also goes hand in hand with quite explicit commentary on South African race relations, including an understanding of the economic underpinning of this ideology: "There were very few shops, since every licence granted to a native shop in a location takes business away from the white stores in town... " (p. 220). The next story in this group to deal with race is another New Yorker story, published in 1955 and collected in Six Feet of the Country. In "Which New Era would that be?" the trend of presenting a more detailed South African locale is continued and once again patriarchy in one of its more common, less theoretical, manifestations - male - _._._-_.._.~~--~--~-, chauvinism - is placed in juxtaposition with racism. The relationship between the two, <.-__'..- ..•._,.. ~., .....__ - ..-,--,,,------, ,..~._ •. , ...~-._-r~_··~.,__ ~. ~ __ .~, ...... ',,, -~_k.• __ .__ ,- however, is more problematical than in ''The Smell of Death and Flowers." Here the sexismemanates from Jake, a wealthy, jovial black man who owns his own printing shop. 52 When he receives an unexpected visit from a white friend - a newspaper correspondent who had been in the country for only a short while - accompanied by a white woman, her over-confidant, '1 know what it is to be black'-attitude arouses Jake's antagonism. The problem in the narrative is that Jake's antagonism is not presented as restricted to Jennife(~ingJiberalism7-huUhatjt encompasses her whole being as a woman. ~.-._----,,---, ---""-'-.~ ------_..__.•.. ..• -,._._._-_._-----_.. _._---_.. --"''''. Moreover, whe!_~~!)J~Imif~IjS.ultimately.characterizedas..Qf.~~.~.~_nEj~s~I1sitive, despite her political theories and involvement in a Cape Flats slum, the narrative remains silent ~------~-'-~--""-~~' .".. -_.-.-----_.~--_._,-'"-_."'~...••., over Jake's sexism. Although Lazar comments that here Gordimer's "political condemnation of a .~ ----.... _ _..__ ...... •.- _._...... •.-•...... •..•.- ..-- _ - -...... '.. . -- ...... • woman via her physical appearance falls into sexist patterns of judgement" (p. 152), __ -- , ~,._ ... ~_' __ ._-r-- ~,_" .. _~~ __.,, ...__ .. '__ ,__ ~_"~_._ .._... _. __ .._...... __"_ Jennifer's "political condemnation" is appropriate in terms of her characterization. Much

.-_..-_.-._ ..__.---_._._.•..._~."._----_.- ..--_.-._-,..'.--.-"_ ..._-~ more, however, .isinvolvedthansimplyusing !Ier physical appearance as"'a vehiCle this '-~ ···_"·_··,·_>.'~·_·,_~~_4_·· _._~ for ______------..--..-.- ....- -, - .... - ...... -, ," ',-- ....'- •."' __ ._, __ ..._.. .' opprobrium. Her total being, her individuality as a woman, is portrayed as a deviance --'_.~ - ~ ~ -.._~'_. __ _. . - - .. from a universalized notion of womanhood:

He [Jake] felt suddenly, after all, the old gulf opening between himself and Alister: what did they see in such women - brist1!!tg, s.ha.J]>,all-seeing, knowing women, who talked Iike men, who wanted to_~J1.9_\yjlnJlle.t!Il1e that!.ap.a£t~ro.I!1.~e:x;:..ilieyY!eieeXattlYJ~~.saine as men? He looked at Jennifer and her clothes, and thought of the way a white woman coUl,fiOOk: one of those big, soft, European women with curly yellow hair, with very high heeled shoes that made them shake softly when they walked, with a strong scent, like hot flowers, coming up, it seemed, from their jutting breasts under the lace and pink and blue and all the other pretty things they wore - women with nothing resistant about them except, buried in white, boneless fingers, those red, pointed nails that scratched faintly at your palms.2

The perspective here is Jake's, not Gordimer's.

After having seen Alister and Jennifer off, III a sudden and uncharacteristic explosion of feeling, Jake kicks the chair that Jennifer had sat on, "hard, so that it went flying on to its side" (p. 96). Jennifer's political condemnation is thereforeexpressed by .__._--_._.-.... - '-."'--~ Jake in this final, emblematic action of the story. The problem is that the narrative, by ---_._._--_•. __..... *-'-..._- giving Jake the last word, could be seen to endorse his sexism. Although it is possible to read the story as an ironical juxtaposition of two people equally guilty of measuring the -~ -- -- ..__.... -'-"- _.' ,...-"--'-..,---.,._. . . other against a stereotype, the fact remains that Jennifer's political condemnation as

2 "Which New Era would that be?," Six Feet of the Country, p. 91. 53 expressed by Jake's emblematic action is present within the text, whereas the .~------_._.. _------_._---_.-._------_.._..-----_._-----_._._------.------_._----- condemnation o!JCl:~e'~sexisrneludes containment.within the text by leaving it to the:

'-_ .._...~_..._---~----- impact of irony. At best, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the narrative regards ------~.- Jake's sexism as of minor consequence in comparison to Jennifer's racial insensitivity. This again echoes Gordimer's stated perception of gender issues as of minor consequence to race issues in South Africa. ~_~_~l~rati~~~~...1:-!!~-~~~:r~ction ofthe structures of r~sl~~~J::.9111dJ:ta.y~J~v~aled the complexityof interpersonal relationships, even amongst thepolitica] left, as is laid bare in this story. A purely formalist analysis --,------_.-.,~_. __ .~~~------'_ ...-. would have been unable to explore the links between the story and the larger socio- historical context. Even a critic such as King, because he looks predominantly at the structure of race only, finally simply remarks that the story reveals the internalization of legally imposed separations within South African society (see his M. A dissertation, p. 73). "Horn of Plenty" - its only appearance is in Six Feet of the Country (1956) - is a development of Gordimer's earlier maid-madam stories. This time the madam is an American in South Africa and the maid is a very experienced worker, well-acquainted with the demands of a white household so that potentially there is no reason for conflict. There are two innovatory aspects to this story: the white woman's demands now are no longer simply in terms of household duties but are psychological in nature and, significantly, about four-and-a-half pages are devoted to a history of Rebecca's life as a domestic. This history is especially notable in that it is a summary of the economic range of white households in South Africa. In Rebecca's mind the different degrees of affluence are symbolised by the range of cutlery: the miner's house where she worked early in her life had "a minimum of dishes and knives and forks"; a middle class family had "a slightly larger variety of cutlery", and in one of the most affluent households Rebecca became quite familiar with

... the hors d'oeuvre knives and forks, the fish-eaters, the steak knives and forks, the butter-knives, the fruit-knives, the round compote spoons, the pointed grape-fruit spoons, the shovel-shaped ice-cream spoons, and even, with equal confidence, on great occasions, the special little forks for eating oysters....3

3 "Horn of Plenty: Six Feet of the Country, p. 121. >;/ 54 As in previous household stories Rebecca hardly ever speaks directly, but now she is certainly not voiceless. The bewilderment created in the mind of a person familiar only with poverty and survivingon bare essentials when confronted by the array of possessions - some with no use value, but with great importance attached to them - is starkly sketched. Equally sharply portrayed is the unquestioning composure- she develops in order to cope with demands and lifestyles "she didn't pretend to understand" (p, 119) and that varied from household to household. The economic divide between Rebecca and her employers, however, is what strikes the reader most in this brief history. It finds expression in the incongruity of seeing Rebecca folding "napkins into water-lilies" or shaving "off from a pound of cold butter perfect curls" (p. 121) when at home, as a child

... she had had to depend solely on what she was given - hand-me-downs from white families for whom her uncles worked, pennies begged, fruit discarded by Indian vendors, toys thrown away by other children. Money had no value for her because she never had been able to find out what relative sums ofit would buy, A five-shilling box of chocolates and a shining new motor-car were equally out of reach. (p. 122)

Despite the material improvement in her surroundings, Rebecca's private life carries on as before; her daughter has to be raised by the same grandmother who raised Rebecca. The title points to an. incident which typifies what Pat McCleary finds lacking in : .- Rebecca. In preparing for a cocktail "party and finger supper hosted by Pat

Rebecca worked hard and obediently, but she didn't saya word when she saw the splendid centre-piece Pat had created with a wicker cornucopia ordered by mail from a d~rator shop at home, and filled to the traditional spilling overflow with South African fruits. (p. 126)

Pat is irritated at Rebecca's lack of enthusiasm for her arrangement. Another time, when Pat dispels her habitual depression through careful preparation for ail evening out and donning a dress that "looked as good as anything you could get in Ne~ York" (p. 131), Rebecca's lack of reaction again deflates her excitement. Rebecca leaves her previous position for the McQearys as they offer her a third more money. In other areas they also present an improvement: instead of the usual iron bedstead and mattress she expects, Rebecca also finds sheets, and they insist that she calls them "Mr" and "Mrs" instead of "Master" and "Madam" (p. 124). Despite the 55 increased salary and other provisions supplied by the McClearys, Lazar states that "There are no limits to the black woman's exploitation... the hidden demands of the domestic servant's role include psychological support when the madam is unhappy. With her own needs unacknowledged, Rebecca's unresponsiveness is her only defence against her -----'-'.._-'. ""-'--'-"."~'--'~'--'---'-~----'"-~--""'.'-----'- "--, '--'-'_.-._..-~ ... _>--..._---_.. - . ". . " ._._~,- e~plo"'y~ vOI:.a,~ity" (p. 143). To view domestic service as inherently exploitative, as Lazar seems to do here, obscures the intricate dynamics of domestic relations generally, but also specifically in South Africa where these are compounded by a confJation of race and class. Rebecca's failure - her unresponsiveness to her employer's psychological needs is contrasted to the success of Pat's American daily, Mrs Wilks, on whose shoulder Pat could cry and who, unasked, was always ready with a cup of coffee when Pat wanted it most. It is undeniable that Pat is a vulnerable and insecure adult who needs a great deal of pampering. Mrs Wilks, however, was obviously prepared to be the psychological crutch that Pat needed. Although it is possible to see this as an exploitative relationship of sorts, it is certainly not exploitation in the sense that the word is used in the South African context. For this reason I do not read "Horn Df Plenty" as a domestic story that simply reveals yet another degree of exploitation. Its significance lies rather in wha~~~_.~~ggests about the damage an ideQillgy...Q!ajJartheid has done to the abilityofpeople to reach out -----_..__ .•._----...__.._-- "-""._. - .-.- tO~.Qtl1~!....?!J~~l~:Although an empJoyer-empl_()yee hierarchy exists between Pat ---~---_._--~------~-,.~.-_.-,..,'_-_"_-'- and Mrs Wilks,the common political, cultural and economic context of their lives ensures -----._-_ .. ------•• ---~-~,----~._--~._-_.-.- -.-_._,-' ',.. _ .. _-_._•. __._---_...•_-- . -- ...._-~.__._-~~--~ - .•.._...._~ ... _- _ .. _-'.-..,._..~ .."._-.. -- .<--~,~ ._'~- that it is simply_fl_hieraf(~1.Iy._~_thin a continuum familiar to both of the women. In South ------...... - ....-.._-_.... Africa, however, the employer-employee hierarchy is underpinned by totally discrete life experiences. Because the average South African woman would not even dream of also having a confidant in her domestic and vice versa, an American woman who automatically assumes this possibility is used to highlight the abyss across which South African people have to try to reach each other. In "The Bridegroom", published in the NewYorker in 1959 and later collected in Fridav's Footprim, almost the opposite situation occurs. A Roads Department overseer finds himself on the evening before a week's leave during which he will get married. As he awaits his supper and afterwards settles alongside the campfire, he looks at his faniilra~ ~~~r~~;~nt wit;;h~~;~~f-~~~--;hO .knows that thingsWi~h~-ewhen-he .-"~'::.-':------_.._~-.,...._"- ._------_._------_ .._---_._. --.---- .._.------"'._.._._--_ .. ~._.~_._~_."- --,-_._-----._._,-_...--~_._---- 56 returns with his bri~t~_The rea_

The long yelping of the jackals prowled the sky without, like the wind about a house; there was no house, but the sounds beyond the light his fire tremblingly inflated into the dark - that jumble of meaningless voices, crying babies, coughs and hawking - had built walls to enclose and a roof to shelter. He was exposed, turning naked to space on the sphere of the world as the speck that is a Oy plastered on the window of an aeroplane, but he was not aware of it. (p.88)

Later the nightlymusic of the workers seems not only to connect people with each

other but also to place people within a larger environment 0_

The lyre player picked up his flimsy piece ofwood again, and slowly what the young man was feeling inside himself seemed to find a voice; up into the night beyond the fire it went, uncoiling from his breast and bringing ease. As if it had been made audible out of infinity and could be returned to infinity at any point, the lonely voice of the lyre went on and on. Nobody spoke, the barriers of tongues fell with silence. The whole dirty tide ofworry and planning had gone out of the young man. The small, high moon, outshone by a spiky spread of cold stars, repeated the shape of the lyre. He sat for he was not aware how long, just as he had for so many other nights, with the stars at his head and the fire at his feel (p.9O)

The music brings to life a world the meaning of which encompasses and transcends the compartmentalized everyday existence of man. Because of man's limited consciousness, he has again and again to be reminded ofthis larger framework in which he has his being - knowledge of which brings ease and a sense of wholeness. The young man's blindness to the significance of this nightly experience becomes apparent when, on this last evening with them, he promises, "next week when I come back, I bring radio with me, plenty real

4 "The Bridegroom," Friday's Footprint, p. 86. 57 music" (p. 89). The reader is aware of the inappropriateness of this crude instrument in the given context, and also of the destruction it will wreak on the fragile experience. The offer of the radio comes towards the end of the story and presents the last, symbolic articulation of the change about to happen as diminishing and not increasing the scope and intensity of the young man's life. A sharing of human feelings had taken --- ._--._--~----. __.__ .,~~~-,._. __._----_.-. place, even though the young man's inability to conceptualize the black workers as _._-- ~__"< ~._' __~_' ~' __.""" '< __" __' __'"' ~ _ _ .. __.~_...__., •.• _.,, ..__, human beings prevents hiI!1_t!Ql;l:L.realizing this. "The Bridegroom" exposes both the ------~---~'---~.__..-•..." .., ...- . "'-'-"'-~'--"'-""'-"" .._-~---._.. __.__._-_.- poverty of existence tha~~~su_~_!~~m an internalization of the strictures of a racist =----_ . --_ "'-'._ ,,,_.,.._- .. _-_._~_ __ O-C' .. ideology anJi.-1beir bmJ.?J!t inam2rggriii.1eness. ~--- ~"~'-'--"-"" It is notable that "The Bridegroom" is the only one of the five stories dealing with race in this period to present the contradictions of the young man's relationship with the gang of road workers without an exterior narrative commentary to link the nature of the relationship to a wider ideology. One cannot help but see this difference as related to another singularity of the story, namely, the class and nationality of the protagonist. All the protagonists of the 'race' stories under discussion in this chapter are of English or American origin and belong to the midC.!c and upper-middle classes. The protagonist in "The Bridegroom", however, is a road worker and Afrikaner. If these differences of class and nationality are to be interpreted as indicative of concomitant differences in political orientation, they nevertheless do not function simplistically. While the internalised racism of the young man in "The Bridegroom" places him worlds apart from Joyce McCoy in "The Smell of Death and Flowers" in his inability to examine --_._-----~------" -~.--~-_..~~ consciously his racial ambivalence, the easy jocularity of his relationship with Piet suggests ._. ----~----.,-.---'"'-~-.--_.-..--'~._._--_ ··_r__ ~·_·" __··"·_~_· .,------... ~~. ." ..--- - -.'. a~~!imacythat _~~~_.~~~~:r!! from the liberal-humfll!ist._ll!!~t~x:~t..~Il~ingdof Jennifer Tetzel in "Which NewEra Would that be?",for example, or ofWiHiam Chadders in "Something for the Time Being."An almost Lawrentian problematic of a disconti_n~i_ty between head and heart seems to inform the response of the respective white to black <~-"~~.-.---"._------.--"---.--'.--- --_._------'~- --_._------, ."..., ..~..-._.~.._.._--. -~------characters in thesestories, The only exception is, significantly, a woman of Afrikaans ~'-'-----~-_.. <.; origin, Jessica Malherbe, who functions as a role model for the young English-speaking protagonist in "The Smell of Death and Flowers." The Y0l.!Il~man:s deniqLof lh~- hl.!!TI_£lnJJy_pf J!lE__~q!k..~r~ j_s.p'!.~alleled by his .'----_.~---- . .. ---_ ... -'-._.-.,,' ..__ ._--~-._ ..- attitude to his young wife-to-be. Not much is mentioned about her, but when the young --~-- ..------'---"-_ .. ;----~, ... _----~> ..--,.---- ...~._- man watches her portrait as he undresses in his tent, the narrative compares her smiling 58 face to "one of those faces cut out of a magazine" (p. 82). Although she is about to become his wife, this comparison functions to suggest her essential anonymity. Initially he has to overcome the resistance of her parents who worry about her isolation, "alone with him in a road camp, 'surrounded by a gang of kaffirs all day'" (p, 85). At this point the narrative informs us that

He himselfsimply did not think at all about what the girl would do while he was out on the road; and as for the girl, until it was over, nothing could exist for her but the wedding, with her two little sisters in pink walking behind her, and her dress that she didn't recognize herself in being made at the dressmaker's, and the cake that was going to have a tiny china bride and groom in evening dress on the top. (p.85)

Both the man and the girl are caught in gender stereotypesjfor.him.her.function lies in. ~~------_.._.._----_._------_.- ... _---.' .. '_._._~ .._..~---_.~-~.- her sex and for her the exc:i!~J:Ilent centres on the wedding. In "The Bridegroom", therefore, gender stereotyping by characters in the story co-exists with racial stereotyping. ..""----._-_.__ .,-_._._- - _ ..• -.__ ._ ..-.--_ ----_... ..- - The links between patriarchy and racism, as opposed to theirmereco-existence, .... __ ._---'------_.----~._._. __ .~._~ .. _----_._----_._-_.._-----, . _.~_. __.. a~!Q!~~ in "Something for the Time Being." Originally it appeared in the New Yorker in 1960 and is collected in Friday's Footprint: In this story the reader is given insight into two marriages: one white and one black. The story opens and closes with Daniel and Ella Mngoma. Daniel "had come out of prison nine days before after spending three months a.s an awaiting-trial prisoner in a political case that had just been quashed." Previously Iris employers had always given . . him his job back, but not this time. His wife had known about his political commitment when she married him and "under his influence" came to see herself "as belonging to the people" (p. 226). Yet, as she listens to him telling her about having lost the job, "All that she could understand was the one room, the child growing up far away in the mud house, and the fact that you couldn't keep a job ifyou kept being away from work for weeks at a time" (p. 226). Daniel goes to see Flora Donaldson, "a white woman who had set up an office to help political prisoners" (p. 226). She contacts William Chadders, husband of a friend of hers, who owns a factory and asks him to give Daniel ajob "for the time being" (p. 231). It was through his wife, Madge, that William had first met with blacks on other than

5 "Something for the TlIDe Being," Friday's Footprint, p. 225. 59 'master-servant' terms. Madge had marched in anti-pass demonstrations, taken part in protests at the 1959 Universities Extension Bill, and had put up a young African writer for three months. "She never measured the smallness of her personal protest against the establishment she opposed" (p. 228). She feels that her husband's views on

... the immorality and absurdity of the colour barwere sound; sounder, she often felt, than her own, for they were backed by the impersonal authority of a familiarity with the views of great thinkers, saints and philosophers, with history, political economy, sociology and anthropology. She knew only what she felt. (pp.227-228)

One hardly needs the work feminists have done on this 'great tradition' of 'impersonal' thinkers to see how clearly this passage situates William Chadders within patriarchy. His rational and reasoned stance is contrasted to Madge's impulsive and emotional response-- ~-_._.~_..... _.-_.~ •... __...•_,,_.._.- ..,--_.~ .-"'-' - on an interpersonal level. ---_..~-.._- - --,.~--_. __...__..-.~. Although Madge belittles her own response to racism in the passage quoted - revealing that she has internalized to an extent the 'criteria' of patriarchy - it is through her questioning of the reasoning behind refusing Daniel the freedom to wear his ANC button at work that William Chadders' liberalism is exposed as ultimately inadequate. This liberal failure. is not simply glossed over - four out of the eleven pages of this story are devoted to the argument - and it is at this point that one arrives when examining only the structure of race. Kingremarksthat the story "seems to be a fairly strong attack on liberal attitudes that compromise themselves by inadequate action" (p. 106). It is only by " _.._.--.----~~----"'~-~-'~._-- exploring gender and class issues as well as the race issue that the depth of socio- historical consciousness in the story can be fully appreciated. The story does not simply condemn a political failure, but it also exposes how political actions or lack of actions indicate a fault-line in the respective marriages of William andDanieLAfter the argument betweel1-PWillia~~~d Madge about Daniel's -.---.---.. --.----- .. dismissal, we read, "But when he came into the room with his wet hair combed and his stranger's face, and he said, 'You're angry,' it came from her lips, a black bird in the room, before she could understand what she had released - 'I'm not angry. I'm beginning to get to know you" (p. 234). In Daniel and Ella's case, their marriage is strained not by lack of commitment but precisely by the extent of Daniel's commitment. The final section of the story deals with Daniel's announcement that he is giving up the job that Flora found him because 60 he is not allowed to wear his ANC badge. At the news Ella "broke into trembling, like a sweat. She began to breathe hysterically. 'You couldn't put it in your pocket, for the day,' she said wildly, grimacing at the bitterness of malice toward him"(p. 236). When "The impulse to cruelty" has left Daniel, he turns to Ella and utters what are also the last sentences of the story, "Don't cry. Don't cry. You're just like any other woman'" (p. 236). In terms of the typical, binary oppositions of patriarchy, such as rationality- ~------~-~_._.._~_." ~-'-_ ,~- .. __.- _.. -.--,---".~ --' -,_.--,------' .. _._-, -.-,,- - -.- ~.~..~ _ __ .,.-.. emotionality, Ella is j~st like_~!:1y_()t!leE_~()!!1.Cl:~:_In saying so, D~!!i~I!1akes hims.elfguilty <;.....---- "'--'--'--'--~'", of the marginalizati0E-QL~y.QIIl~.Il!J:I!d~LP~J!iarchy;Ella's individual pain is effaced by the _.------_._~.,. - ... -----~.. '- gen~!(llizatiDn_that~b~js.justJikeotherwomen. Patriarchy effaces Ella's pain but racism, ~ .. __.._-----~ .._------_._, ..-.---,._ ..•_...-._. __ .-- .- .....--~ ... _.-- '-"-'-~ specifically its economic underpinnings, causes it. And here Ella is not "like any other w~~~-M~d;-;-Ch~dders-can condemn her husband for his specious politics because urging him to greater political commitment does not present economic hardship or a breakup of family life for her.6 Should Ella and Madge ever meet face to face, they would probably not differ much in political ideals, but for the one the road to the achievement of those ideals is strewn with hardship and heartache. Most of the race stories in the period 1954-1960 can be seen to explore in one way or another the links between patriarchy and racism. It is significant that "The Smell ------,..-.---_._ .. ---.. " , .,--_.•. "._---- .•..•... --- of Death and Flowers" - which introduces this change - was written in the year immediately following the first collection of Gordimer's short stories to be published abroad, The Soft Voice of the Serpent in 1953. Thus the necessity to fill in details otherwise unfamiliar to a foreign readership combined with a development in Gordimer's political consciousness to produce the race stories of this period. They show a greater awareness and newly open discussion of South African politics and how it penetrates and invades even the most intimate areas of the lives of individuals.

6 The narrative clearlycontrasts in setting and occupation Ella's poverty and Madge's affluence. For example, Ella sewsalmost through the night to make her daughter a dress whereas Madge, before spending an evening at the theatre with William and friends, glues together a "broken Chinese bowl... it was one of a set.. whose unity had illustrated certain philosophical concepts" (p. 229). On the other hand, these actions tend to link them on the level of gender. 61 Chapter 4

POLITICAL ACTIVISM AND ''WOMAN'S NONSENSE": THE SIXTIES

Of all the events of the years 1960-1967 two streams might be distinguished as of relevance for Gordimer's writing during this period. Intemally,the tug of war between forces opposedtoapartheidand hardlinereaction from theg()~~!'Jlment continues in ------~------various forms. The Positive Action Campaign of 1960 ends in the Sharpeville massacre '------(21 March) and is followed by a declaration of a State of Emergency (30 March), as well as the banning of the ANC and PAC (8 April). The following year two separate organizations, the National Committee for Liberation (later the African Resistance Movement) and Umkhonto we Sizwe begin campaigns of sabotage against state installations.In 1963the government's repressive policiesinvade also the cultural domain: the Publications and Entertainments ACt systematically organises censorship as never before. Two of Gordimer's essaysfrom this period, "Censored, Banned, Gagged" (1963), included in The Essential Gesture and "HowNot to Know the Mriean" (1967), published only in Contrast, give evidence of Gordimer as a long-standing campaigner against any form of censorship. But more is to follow; the General Law Amendment Act of 1964 provides for detention in solitary confinement for periods of up to ninety days for questioning of people possessing information about subversive activities. Gordimer considers this and other issues in two essays on Abram Fischer: "The Fischer Case", published in the London Magazine in March, 1966, and 'Why did Bram Fischer Choose Jail?" in the NewYork Times Magazine in August, 1966. Gordimer's non-flcttonal writing . - . . . . ~ . in these years documents remarkably some of these events and their consequences. - '. , .. '. . . Externally, but still on the African continent, there are continent-wide campaigns for and achievements of independence. Co~cqmitantly with political indep~~d~~ce, 'thei~ . ----._--,-~._.-.".-._--- '. is a growing perception of African history as something other than that of Europeans in ~§i:'"fn-G~~d~~~;s ~ting, too, Africa and its people seem to come into their own, Firmly established in its anti-racism and exposure of racial hypocrisy, ambiguities and -- -~_._-~"----.._--~--~-- -.- -.~-~---,._._-_..,..------.-.. ----.-~ --.,---~., ... - ..__ ·__ v.____ . -~--+.- -..- contradictions as her writing is, Gordimer seems to have arrived at a moment where her consciousness affords her a new perception of a familiar issue. In a travel piece of this ~~ ,------period, ''The Congo River", she reveals not only a clear grasp of the historical forces - the 62 slave trade, COlonization, independence, post-independence political turbulence, etc. - that have shaped the African continent, but also presents an indigenous civilization beyond the borderland of black-white relations that she normally writes about-. A passage such as the following reveals this new insight into Africa on Gordimer's part:

I had not been many days on the river when I stopped thinking of the people around me as primitive, in terms of skills and aesthetics. Their pirogues and all the weapons and tools of their livelihood were efficient and had the beauty that is the unsought result of perfect function.... Any paddle or bailing scoop - common articles of everyday use among riparian people - could have gone straight into an art collection....1

Later in this piece she comments (with a sense of loss?) on the new African, which seemingly replaces the earlier, culturally autonomous, one: "They are all evolue - for good - from the old African, who sold his land and, as it turned out, his way of life to the white man for a few bottles of gin and some bolts of cloth" (p. 136). Two features demarcate this fourth phase in the development of Gordimer's short stories: her recognition of an indigenous African heritage and of a positive contribution by the 'other' to the continent and its problems - as opposed to Eurocentric views of Africa. Of the nineteen stories comprising the period 1960-1967, seven deal quite explicitly either with race relations .or present an entirely black perspective. All the stories to be examined here were collected ~-~_.-.--_._- . .. , in Not for Publication, first published in the middle of this period in 1965. Later stories . ' of the period are consistent with the ones selected. It is notable that the first of all Gordimer's short stories to be set entirely within a black context should occur contemporaneously with a historical moment of emerging political and psychological independence on the wider African continent. "A Chip of Glass Ruby" - originally published in Contrast in 1960 - deals with a woman, Mrs Bamjee, who is arrested for running off leaflets promoting the anti-pass campaigns. In every respect Mrs Bamjee is a surprise as a political figure because not only does the narrative situate her firmly in a household context, presenting her in her roles as wife and mother, but it also portrays her as a conventional, "old-style" Muslim woman.' She has nine children, five from a previous marriage, and her current husband is a fruit and

"The Congo River," The Essential Gesture, p. 140.

2 "A Chip of Glass Ruby," Not for Publication, p. 105. 63 vegetable hawker. All her political activities take place among and are almost indistinguishable from tasks such as cooking and mending clothes. Her last words before she is taken away are a reminder to her husband to take the family to an engagement party on the coming Sunday. After her arrest, Mr Bamjee reflects,

When he had married her and moved in with her and her five children... he had not recognised the humble, harmless, and apparently useless routine tasks - the minutes of meetings being written up on the dining-room table at night, the government blue books that were read while the latest baby was suckled, the employment of the fingers of the older children in the fashioning of crinkle-paper Congress rosettes - as activity intended to move mountains. For years and years he had not noticed it, and now it was gone. (p.109)

Mr Bamjee never visits or even enquires about his wife after her imprisonment. It is the children, especially the oldest daughter who is married, who, with the help of a lawyer, trace the mother's removal from one prison to another and eventually acquire a permit to visit her. Mr Bamjee is uninterested in politics and greatly puzzled by his wife's involvement in a matter that, as he sees it, concerns natives and not Indians. Her arrest stops his throat with a "lump of resentment and wrongedness" (p. 110). Wher the prisoners go on a hunger strike and his children "burst into tears at table and could not eat" (p. 111), Bamjee's rage and bafflement reach a peak. The proximity of Mrs Bamjee's political activities and her conventional gender roles is ultimately the whole point of the story and in it lies also the answer to the mystery that Mrs Bamjee is for her husband. One morning, in the middle of the hunger strike, the oldest daughter arrives at the house very early. On being asked whether something was the matter, she gives her father fa kiss and congratulates him on his birthday. Mrs Bamjee had reminded her of the event during a prison visit the previous day. When he asks "What importance is my birthday, while she's sitting there in a prison? I don't understand how she can do the things she does when her mind is always full of woman's nonsense at the same time" (p. 113), his daughter replies, "It's because she doesn't want anybody to be left out. It's because she always remembers; remembers everything - people without somewhere to live, hungry kids, boys who can't get educated remembers all the time. That's how Ma is" (p. 113). In its portrayal of political commitment as the obverse of domestic commitment, as essentially being an act of nurturing, "A Chip of Glass Ruby" brings race and gender 64 together in the most positive version yet of such an alliance. It is essential to point out, though, that the alliance rests on conventionally acceptable notions of femininity rather than on a feminist .appraisal of these roles. As regards gender issues, Mrs Bamjee's inherent submissiveness.. within the Muslim tradition is a regression on the tentative relations established in the previous period between anti-racism and anti-patriarchy. The greater part of ''The African Magician", first published in the New Yorker in 1961, covers typical white racism and its petty paranoia in a context where it is so overwhelmingly out of place that it is almost comical. The story essentially draws on the experience documented by Gordimer in "The Congo River" and focuses on a group of passengers boating up the Congo River. The passengers on the main boat were all white, "not because of a colour bar, but because even those few blacks who could afford the first class thought it a waste of money'" and consequently rather travelled third class on a separate boat pushed, along with two barges, by the main boat. The barges carried cars, jeeps and industrial equipment to be "set down in a country that has not been industrialised" (p. 120). The white passengers are more a mishmash of economic functions necessary to maintain the colonial powers than individually sketched characters: "There were sanitary officers, a police officer, a motor mechanic, agricultural officers and research workers, returning with their wives and children from home leave in Belgium" (p. 115). From the deck of the main boat, the teeming life on the third class barge could be observed as well as the message scribbled on its side, hailing "the coming of the country's independence of white man's .rule, that was only two months away" (p. 116). What in the perspective of this dissertation may be termed the central incident comes fairly late in the story. At one of the many stopping-places, a magician who is to present the white passengers on the main boat with an evening's entertainment comes aboard. To the disappointment of the few spectators, his performance lasts only thirty minutes and consists of the familiar, commercialised magician's repertoire. When the audience vent their objection at the fee charged for such meagre fare, a steward conveys this to the magician and tries to persuade him to extend his act. At first the magician refuses adamantly and then, suddenly, gives in. He hypnotises his black assistant who dances and sings. The audience then requests him to hypnotise

3 "The African Magician,W Not for Publication, p. 116. 65 someone from their ranks. Transcending the barriers of language and without any visible gesture, the African magician then compels the mind and body of a young Belgian girl to approach him. She was recently married and was returning with her husband to his inland administrative post. She walks up to the magician and, again without any gesture from him, "put up her long arms, and standing just their length from him brought her hands to rest on his shoulders. Her cropped head dropped before him to her chest" (p. 126). The white, female narrator describes the moment:

It was the most extraordinary gesture. None of us could see her face; there was nothing but the gesture.... I don't think I have ever seen such a gesture, but I knew - they knew we all knew what it meant. It was nothing to do with what exists between men and women. She had never made such a gesture to her husband, or any man. She had never stood like that before her father - none of us has. How can I explain? One of the disciples might have corne before Christ like that. There was the peace of absolute trust in it. (p. 127)

Afterwards, the only person at ease in the room is the girl herself. The suggestion of the magician's moral superiority - implicit in the girl's gesture of worship - is what makes the audience nervous. Because the presumption of superiority is t~~ kingpin of the white's man presence in Africa, the narrator realizes the danger in perceiving the beauty of the girl's gesture:

It stirred a needle of fear in me - more than that. for a moment I was horribly afraid; and how can I explain that, either? For it was beautiful, and I have lived in Africa all my life and Jknow them, us, the white people. To see it was beautiful would make us dangerous. (p, 127)

The narrator understands that once the beauty of the gesture is perceived and understood, the white man, bent on maintaining his notion of superiority, would have to destroy that which threatens to usurp it. In the narrative this gesture, and what it implies, comes after comments from other passengers such as "'They are mad, truly. They think they can run a country.... They are just like monkeys, you know. We've taught them a few tricks. Really, they are monkeys out from there -' And she gestured at the forest that we were passing before night and day, while we looked and while we slept" (p. 116). The use of the preposition "before" gives a significant construction to the last sentence, prefiguring, as it were, the 66 same word used in the description ofthe girl's obeisance before the magician. When one reads ''before'' in the sense of being in the presence of something greater than oneself, it~_UJlew_perspe_ctiye,jIL1~!:D.ls of Eurocentric history-writing on Africa, on the ______~. __._,.__.• .d. • ',', •.- •...• _,. _.. _._ .'. __ ,_••.. _"" •.• ,,-, ," __ • _' _._ relationship_between Europeans .. and Africa. Africa its_e.lf is a majestic and solemn presence before ~l1i~h-hl.l.IIl~Do~P~SS-,}t is in this sense that the stories of 1960-1967 reveal a development in Gordimer's treatment of race. The black man is not merely shown as a partner in embattled black-white relations but is seen in a more comprehensive black context with his own established culture as well as a significant contribution to make to the post-colonial context. "The Pet" (1962), another New Yorker story, is a return to the domestic situation. Unlike the expose of racial hypocrisy and sophistry found in most of the earlier domestic situation stories, in this one the Morgans are liberals and to all intents and purposes treat Gradwell, the Nyasa male servant, very decently. Nevertheless, the developing comparison between Gradwell's alienation and the dejection of the ineffectual bulldog ------•. _----~------._--_ .•_- -<--. .- . • ineffectual both as a watchdog and in fathering offspring - highlights what Gordimer ---_.------•... _--,-----'-----' ~-,.- --,. - - .. ..- .__ ',-,' -"-----._- elsewhere has called,

... the inevitable discrepancy between, for want ofa betterword, what one calls 'the liberal attitude; and the decencies imRli¢ in .asortof.liberal.way of life, with an accent on decent p~~()riar relations-and, -I would say, the almost impossibility of making a go of it in-ii-soCiety that is opposed to this sort of thing... it doesn't work in a society where, in the geiieral framework, peop~e a~e judged by the color oftheir skin,"

Gradwell's alienation stems from the larger framework in which the Morgan household is situated. He is an illegal immigrant from Nyasaland who, four years earlier, married a Nyasa woman during his one and only vacation home. Both the cost of the journey and the risk of not being able to return deter Gradwell from another visit. Instead, he spends his days either working or, when off duty, in the few 'safe' rooms of friends in the similar position of illegal immigrants:

As he had no papers, it was risky for him to hang about the streets; he was safer at home, in Dauchope Road, in the anonymous apron of domestic service. He had long ago

4 Gordimer in an interview with Studs Terkel in Perspective on Ideas and the Arts, p. 45. The comment actually applies to the novel, Occasion for Loving, published a year after "lbe Pet,"

::1<- 67

stopped going out even to the suburban post office or the shops - he always asked Mrs Morgan to buy the stamps and envelopes that he needed.... On his days off, he went to sit in the rooms of other exiles like himself; men from his own village who worked in the suburbs, foreigners who kept a wordless familiarity beneath their conformity of Stetson or starched uniform/'

This passage demonstrates brilliantly how Gordimer's socio-historical consciousness has developed since the earlier domestic stories. Along with the surface description of Gradwell's restricted mobility, Gordimer succeeds in conveying his alienation and ~------~~-~-"~-..._----~-_.._. -_.._. _...----.. subdued spirit, indica~~~&.!!9~~ht?5_~_I1S.~~I1t])'_p':l_shes against the limitations placed on her own consciousness _~~!ace~_~~~~_~~_~ __c!~~~_~~ructures. A letter announces the birth of a son and two years later another letter informs Gradwell of the child's death. Thus the laws controlling migrant labour and the economic discrepancies between urban and rural areas effectively combine to deny Gradwell the fulfilment of his legitimate place within his own family. When the new pet arrives, Gradwell and the other servants immediately hate him, "the bulldog - symbol ofall the white man's glee in turning the black man from his door" (p. 81). When he feeds the dog, Gradwell does it "with repugnance" (p. 82). Yet so severe is Gradwell's estrangement from all the structures - familial, social, and political - in which humans find their meaning that he finally reaches out to the dejected bulldog:

The man sat there eating bread in the dry Transvaal winter sun that has as much bite as the morning frost, a man who had no child, who loved no woman, who scarcely ever went outside the gate of Erica Morgan's yard. At last, something moved, there at his breast bone; but dully, a depression. He broke off a piece of bread and threw it, saying in his own language to the dog, "Here!" And startled, changing swiftly from the expectation of a blow, the dog snapped the morsel into its great mouth. (p.82)

Two factors combine to cause Gradwell's permanent alienation: the use of blacks as

: I _ ~ cheap labour In South Africa and the impact of industrialization on predominantly

--- --~------~._--~------~_.. __. agrarian black .societies. Because of the last, Gradwell is drawn to an urban area to earn ---~----- .-.-_._..... money, but a variety of factors, specifically his race, ensure that his entry into the labour

5 "The Pet," Not for Publication, p. 79. 68 market, his class position, does not even afford him a living wage. ---_._--"------_. .' - ..-._..~~- -.. -~--'-..---_..-._, _.-.,-_.-_.- Although the interaction of gender with race and class has so far been examined mainly in the lives of female characters, "The Pet" shows how even male gender roles are affected by this interaction. In black society the birth of a child is the most important event, after initiation, to mark a person's entry into adulthood. When the firstborn is a boy, moreover, this carries a special status. The final image of the story, Gradwell reaching out to the dog, thus suggests that the interlocking of race and class in Gradwell's life serves to undermine his traditional role. Not only was he unable to share in the joy of his son's birth, assuming the status afforded him by his society, but the death of his son, like the bulldog's inability to father offspring, effectively emasculates Gradwell. In their wretchedness, at last, a bond is established between them. "GoodClimate, Friendly Inhabitants" (1964), first published in Harper's Magazine, can be read as a continuation of the subject matter already explored in "The Bridegroom." Again the mind-setproduced byanInternalisation of the ideology of ~-----_._---_. __ . apartheid pre"~.!!l~_th~_whit~Jema]~Jlarr'!torfrom realising the contradictions between ~-'--' - her arrogation of white superiority and her relationship with Mpeaza Makiwane (Jack). --~_.._------_._~._- '_.-_.-._, .. ~ ..,.'--" _.------.. -'" .._,-,' - ~.. - The later story, however, develops the issues of the earlier one by presenting the relationship between white and black as more individualised and intimate. Thus the contradictions are made all the more glaring. The nameless forty-nine-year-old narrator ts one of the many nameless and faceless people who inhabit the more squalid buildings of urban complexes and partake vicariously in the bustling life of the city. With her only daughter far away and only an elderly couple whom she sees once a week as friends, she is easy prey for the young mercenary who terrorises her for a while and virtually makes her a prisoner in her own flat. From the beginning Jack is witness to what takes place and it is clear that he is not taken in by the young man's stories about where he has come from, his age, etc. When the young man absconds without paying from the hotel where he was recommended by the narrator, she feels compelled to pay hi') bill but never tells him this, even though he then installs himself in her flat. She does, however, tell Jack. As she puts 69 it, ''That's the funny thing about it. I told Jack..... t6 Burdened by her increasing fear of the young man and the ever-present threat of violence, she feels the need to confide in someone. As she could not possiblyseveal the full extent of her predicament to any of the white people she knew, she talks.. to Jack about it in half-truths and lies. In the case of her white acquaintances the abusive nature of the relationship is too embarrassing to admit, and with Jack his blackness prevents her from admitting the truth. One afternoon when she is feeling particularly depressed, she evasively asks Jack what a '59 Chrysler is worth.

He took his time, he was cleaning his hands on some cotton waste. He said, "With those tyres, nobody will pay much." Just to show him that he mustn't get too free with a white person, I asked him to send up to Mr Levine for a headache powder for me. I joked, I'm getting a bit like old Madala there, I feel so tired today. D'you knowwhat that boy said to me then? They've got more feeling than whites sometimes, that's the truth. He said,."When my children grow up they must work for me. Why don't you live there in Rhodesia with your daughter? The child must look after the mother. Why must you stay alone in this town?" (p. 156)

The passage reveals Jack's grasp of the .real situation she tries to hide as well as the contradictions between her appraisal of Jack as a black, a 'boy' who has to be relegated to his role as ideological 'other', and hen per~eption of him as a human being able to offer compassion to another. It is to Jack that she gives her address, saying that they should come and look for her if she ever fails to tum up at work. And it is Jack who tells the man that the narra~tor no longer works there when he turns up one afternoon in her absence. Yet the final paragraph, presenting an interior monologue by the narrator, totally effaces Jack, both as a black man who shatters her stereotype of a native and as a person in whom one could confide:

That fellow's never bothered me again. I never breathed a word to anybody about it - is I say, that's the trouble when you work alone in an office like I do, there's no one you can speak to. It just shows you, a woman on her own has always got to look out; it's not only that it's not safe to walk about alone at night because of the natives, this whole town is full of people you can't trust. (p.158)

e "Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants," Not for Publication, p. 153. 70

Despite the relationship of confessant and protector which transcends their race and gender constraints, the narrator reaffirms a solipsistic white world in which her daily encounters with black. people are simply discounted as communication with human beings. In Jack's humanity and understanding of the white woman's predicament, despite the warped human relations in South Africa, Gordimer captures a human instance of her perception in this period of an autonomous and authentic Africa. "Not for Publication" (1965), first published in the Atlantic, again reveals the failure of good white intentions. Miss Adelaide Graham-Grigg is a British woman who has made a village in a British Protectorate her home and who believes that the Africans should develop their own tribal democracy "instead of taking over the Western pattern."? While on a visit to Johannesburg she searches for a sixpence to give to a blind man and overhears him speaking to a young boy in the language of her village. Arrangements are then made to return the boy, Praise Basetse, to the Protectorate and to put him in school. At the secular school, set up with funds from London, Praise excels. As the local school only provides up to Standard Five, Praise soon has to be sent back to Johannesburg to finish his education at a school started by an Anglican priest. The limitations of good intentions are revealed when the departure to Johannesburg deprives Praise of the "initiation school that he was about to begin with the other boys of his age-group" (p. 12). Praise hopes at first that some of the tribal women or even the Chief, with whom Miss Griggs was on a good footing, would inform her of the initiation about to take place,. but they do not. As time goes by at his new school he realises that the boys he left behind would probably have returned from the bush by then. At school, however, Praise's exceptional ability raises hopes that he might sit for his matriculation at sixteen, followed by a Cambridge entrance test for which Miss Graham-Grigg would set up a scholarship. During this time Praise is not only given intensive personal coaching in his school subjects, but time is also made for physical exercise to help Praise fill out He is also taught to play chess as well as the flute by Father Audry in the evenings. The irony is that after this Westernized education Miss Graham-Grigg would like to see Praise running a tribal democracy. The expectations and

7 RNotfor PublicatiOn,R Not for Publication, p. 14. 71 intensity surrounding his schooling also, once again, alienate Praise from his peer group:

Brother George often asked him if he were tired. But he was not tired. He only wanted to be left with his books. The boys in the hostel seemed to know this; they never asked him to play cards any more, and even when they shared smokes together in the lavatory, they passed him his drag in silence. (p. 18)

Despite the balanced education, the motivation behind all the pressure placed on Praise is not entirely devoid of self-interest:

... there was a specially strong reason why everyone wanted him to do it [matriculate at sixteen] since Father Audry had established that he would be eligible for an open scholarship that no black boy had ever won before - what a triumph that would be, for the boy, for the school, for all the African boys who were considered fit only for the inferior standard of 'Bantu education'! (p. 17)

One Saturday afternoon, shortly before the final examinations, FatherAudry finds Praise strugglingwith geometry problems that he suddenly has got all wrong. An incident occurs that reveals the pressure Praise finds himself under.. While explaining something, Father Audry puts out "his fine hand, in question or compassion", but Praise leaps up as if "dodging a blow" (p. 19). Soon after the incident Praise disappears, taking with him only the new fountain pen given him by Father Audry and with which he was to write the matriculation exam. Years later Praise does become Prime Minister in the Protectorate, thus fulfilling the expectations people had of him, but the road that takes him there is of his own making and not via the Matriculation Board and Cambridge. Lazar aptly comments, "The undescribed segment of time can be said to be 'not for publication' because it implies various processes which could be construed as 'subversive'.... It also suggests... stern censorship... " (p. 69) on the part of the new government. "Not for Publication" is therefore a good illustration of this new moment in Gordimer's consciousness as manifested in the stories of this period. It shows a black character as a Prime Minister in a position of power which he has attained not through orthodox white channels but through participation in a struggle for liberation. The subversive activities implied in the title, "Not for Publication", form the subject matter of the last story in this period to be examined. "Some Monday for Sure" 72 subsequent experience of exile in a foreign African country, Josias works for a company that manufactures dynamite for the mines. He also regularly attends political meetings until everything goes underground. From time to time some of his friends resurface and, after one such visit from them, he confides to his wife, Emma, that arrangements are being made to hijack a quantity of dynamite. Josias' information about the daily routine of the truck would be vital to the success of the plan. Because of the necessity of Josias' presence on the truck, the hijack would be on a Monday, "next Monday or the one after, some Monday for sure, because Monday was the day that we knew Josias went with the truck to the Free State Mines." Emma reacts with near-hysteria to the news and the narrator, her young brother, comments on her response:

Emma went up and down and around till I thought she would push the walls down - they wouldn't have needed much pushing, in that house in Tembile Location - and I was scared of her. I don't mean for what she would do to me if I got in her way, or to Josias, but for what might happen to her: something like taking a fit or screaming that none of us would be able to forget. (p. 195)

The hijack does not go quite according to plan and, although both Josias and his brother in-law escape unharmed, they have to leave the country. A long journey on foot through the then Bechuanaland and Northern Rhodesia follows, In Tanganyika they reach the refugee camp for South African exiles in Dar es Salaam. After five months, Emma is able to join them. The final section of the story, dealing with their life in exile, mainly reveals Emma's alienation and loneliness in a country where she cannot make herself feel at home. Josias has been sent away on training and Emma's brother enthusiastically awaits his turn to be called. "Some Monday for Sure" is a good example of Gordimer's developing treatment of race and the issues surrounding it in South Africa. As in "Not for Publication", but unlike in the early domestic stories which initiated Gordimer's exploration ofblack-white relations, the larger socio-economic context no longer exists only outside the text. Riven white-black relations, poor and overcrowded housing, whites-only beaches, whites-only hotels - all these are present in the fabric of the story and even Verwoerd is mentioned by name.

8 "Some Monday for Sure," Not for Publication, p. 197. 73 hotels - all these are present in the fabric of the story and even Verwoerd is mentioned by name. Yet the liberation struggle is not romanticised. The hijacking of the dynamite truck, which permanently disrupts the lives of the narrator's family, constitutes for those in power in the republic simply yet another manifestation of a "master plot" (p. 204) intensifying, as always, their determination to guard the laager. The narrator is characterised as a youngster, who has himself not quite got accustomed to the idea that he is no longer a child but one of "them", the adults. His perception of the hijack is dramatised along the lines of "hold-ups in Westerns" (p. 198). Both these aspects of his characterisation serve to reinforce the hardship of the reality rather than romanticise it. The attention given to Emma's dislocation in the concluding pages of the story especially forestalls any euphoric notions of liberation. Emma's function here recalls Ella's crisis in "Something for the Time Being." In both these stories, Gordimer seems to use the female as an indicator of the conflicts and --._-_._~--_ ...._--,- ..-_.. ---~------_._--"- ..... '--'_', ... -.-" ,.-' - --'~-'-'._._. __ ._~---'-'>.'-- contradictLQILS-thaLaccomp~gy the political struggle in South Africa. In fighting for ------'~-~" , __..-.. - ....•. - ~~ ..'-'-'- ~-_ .._._._-~ _._.., , _'-•..•... ,-- political rights, better education, a fair economy so as ultimately to enable 'normal' black ,- family life, the immediate family members of such activists are often the greatest victims of the ensuing disruption, economic instability and inevitable neglect. Although the impact of activism on gender within the black community is felt within the stories of this period, Gordimer still abstains from a feminist critique of black women's lives. This is in stark contrast to the more feminist foci generally in the 'white' stories of this period. "A Third Presence" and "An Intruder", for example, reveal a new depth and subtlety in Gordimer's treatment of gender. Her focus shifts here from the domestic politics of gender, that is, wifehood and motherhood as a denial of the female self, and examines the pervasiveness of the stereotypes that constitute a socially acceptable femininity. Moreover, in the stories showing an intrinsic offering by the 'other' across race barriers, such as ''The African Magician" and "Not for Publication", it is still men, albeit black men, who are in the dominant position. Therefore, although Gordimer develops a more sharply defined feminist focus in some of the 'white-world' stories of this period, when it comes to the area of black-white relations her narratives fail to sustain a feminist critique. As has been mentioned, this is presumably in keeping with Gordimer's stated perception of the political priorities in South Africa. Nevertheless, it is significant 74 that gender issues so consistently present themselves as subtexts in Gordimer's writing, even in these stories. As regards race, all the stories discussed here, with the exception of "The Pet", no longer show the black characters as mere victims of the system, but reveal them either as resisting the ruling political ideology by taking part in subversive activities or as making a contribution in their own right, whether on a political or more personal level. From these stories onwards more of the commentary by critics comes to recognize the presence of a socio-historical consciousness. This, however, only happens once Gordimer's development in this regard has sharpened to the extent that her historical consciousness more or less explicitly structures much of her short story writing. However, the race of the black characters is still seen to determine their class positions~ With the exception of liThe African Magician", allthe black char~~_~e..~s belon~__ to the working class. In situations where they work with white workers, they have even ._~-_.~_.-._---_ --- ..__ .. ,-_._-....- ..._.-.-_...--. __ ._-_..-,---_._-".-.' --....--. less status than the whites. Only Praise Basetse eventually moves beyond his working class --'~---'--"-- ._".• ~---~--'~'--~._---- background. In the stories of the early seventies black middle class characters gradually start appearing. 75 Chapter Five

THE ACCOMMODATION OF "POLITICS AND THE PSYCHE": THE EARLY SEVENTIES

While the short stories of the previous period could be classified in terms of an authentic and 'fresh' African perspective, the stories of the period 1967-1974 return to a white perspective. The most interesting development in these stories is that the earlier thematic concern with the intrusion of the public or political domain into the private becomes transformed into a structural device comprising a dual focus in many of the stories. The most consistentlydeveloped example of this technique is found in the novella, "Something Out There", published in 1984. In her non-fiction of this period, 1967-1974, Gordimer continues her life-long campaign against censorship, analysing its damaging consequences for a growing South African literature in all the local languages, as well as how it deprives local readers of that world of ideas in which any culture has its roots.l Censorship, though, is just one aspect of the particular entanglement of literature and politics in the larger South African context. The turbulence of the early sixties, caused both by the government's ruthless elimination of all political opposition, and by the acts of sabotage this hardline attitude virtually invited, gives way, by comparison, in the late sixties and early seventies to a dazed calm. However, in literature as well as in politics, the advent of Black ------~_._.__.__. ---'--~------'._."- ~ Consciousness dominates the seventies. In an address to students of the University of ______~_.~-_••~__ n _ -' .• -. - ~_.>-.., Natal in 1971, Gordimer said, "I think that, whatever one's feelings of regret that things have perfectly predictably fallen out like this, the turning of their backs on the white man's back door is necessary for the younger generation of blacks.,tl The return to a white perspective in her fiction should possibly be seen in the light of Gordimer's reluctant acceptance of the exclusions of the Black Consciousness movement. Perhaps the most comprehensive presentation of Gordimer's ideas on the interaction of literature and politics in South Mica, covering the literature from its beginnings, is a public

1 See "South Africa: Towards a Desk Drawer Literature" (1968), "Apartheid and 'The Primary Homeland" (1972) and "Literature and Politics in South Africa" (1974). _ 2 Gordimer, ftSpeak Out: The Necessity for Protest- in The Essential Gesture, pp. 73-85. 76 address made during the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1974: "Literature and Politics in South Africa", first published in the Southern Review. The interaction of literature and - ._._.... ._H' ._._..•" .. •• _ • politics, an~_~~£!Kically tEe effect of politics on the human psyche, clearly preoccupy ----- _...... ---.-"--_.~_.-_~~--_._------..-._-.--- ',.---"'- ..-..__._.. , --~. --.--_ ..,'-"._-'._ .. " -' .. ,',- - Gordimer i~_!~is period. ------. ------, Many of the stories of this period juxtapose two strands from the complex existence of individuals in South Africa. When these individuals affirm bonds or forge ~----~-'-'--'--'-- - links in on~21j:l}~_higl11ighted areas,thisinvariably implies a concomitant.betrayal in the other foregrounded ..'i.~~~~All the stories discussed are collected in Livingstone's ~-~----_...- - Companions. In "A Satisfactory Settlement" (1968), first published in the Atlantic, a little boy tries to become familiar with his new environment. Because his mother is preoccupied with her divorce proceedings and the unpacking of their belongings in the new house, the boy tours the neighbourhood streets on his bicycle and soon the old man selling a collection of junk, the young man with the straw hat and radio, the nanny pushing a white child and the garden boy who lets him mow once or twice with the petrol-mower inhabit the lonely boy's world as previously his mother, father and peer group did. One morning, after having forgotten the bicycle outside all night, he finds it gone. In his guilt he plays quietly in his room, waiting for his mother to wake up. Unexpectedly he hears her voice intermingled with that of other grown-ups, exchanging greetings; the nocturnal rowdiness of a black woman the previous night has precipitated a meeting between his mother and the neighbours. When he appears, his mother acknowledges his presence, "cupping her hand lightly round the back of his neck.'.] In the midst of this sudden recognition and inclusion by his mother, he blurts out the news of the disappearance of his bicycle. The announcement draws exclamations from all the adults and his mother invites them in for coffee. For the first time since the move, he and his mother present a unit again as they serve the coffee:

He ran in and out helping, and taking part in the grown-up conversation. Since they had only just got to know him and his mother, these people did not interrupt him all the time, as the friends who came to the other house alwayshad."And I bet I know who took it, too," he said. "There's an old native boy who just talks to anybody in the street. He's often seen me riding my bike down by the house where the white dog is." (p.218)

3 ·A Satisfactory Settlement," Livingstone's Companions, p. 217. 77 With some links established again between the boy and his mother and between them .._------~------_._-~-_._---~~-_._-"--._~--_._-- an~I!~ghbg~!~,-t~~-~f!il!iry-~~tClblished b~~~~l)lh~__!?9Y!lI)cl_ the local blacks can now be sacrificed. Although the narrative ends with this betrayal and thus highlights it, this is not the only betrayal. The black woman's nightly serenade is the result of her betrayal by a man and as the boy's mother listens, night after night, to this "muddled, drunken burden", the narrative reveals the commonality of the two women:

The summons was out of the dark as if the voice came out of her own sleep like those words spoken aloud with which one wakes oneself with a start.... Or the horrible jabber when a tape recorder is run backwards. Is that my voice? Shrill, ugly; merely back-to-front? L-I-A-R-S. The voice that had slipped the hold of control, good sense, self-respect, proper provision, the future to think of. My darling I'm love for that.... Laughing and snivelling; no answer: nobody there. No one. (p.214)

The narrative shows the white woman in an almost frenzied sorting out of boxes and suitcases or practising typing in preparation for getting a job, the practicality of "simply going ahead to provide a reasonable, decent life for herself and her child" (p. 212). Thus the black woman's nightlyemotional outpourings can be seen as a medium through which the white woman could come to terms with her own represssed feelings of anger and betrayal. However, when one night the singing takes place right under her window, she calls out to the woman to stop. Ordering the woman to keep quiet represents a refusal to come to terms with her own emotions, which in turn prevents her from responding with understanding to the similar plight of another woman. Her white voice rouses the neighbours, thus leading to their meeting the following morning. Both mother and son forge tenuous links with a white world only by denying actual links with blacks. The structuring of the narrative clearly suggests a gender affinity between the two women across their race barriers. However, given the white hegemony of South African society and the white woman's class position - she is after all a home-owner as opposed to the destitute woman who wanders the pavements - she has the power to order the woman to keep quiet. Ironically, it is this power which, from a psychoanalytic perspective, allows her then to settle for repression of her emotions rather than recognition and healing. 78 In "Inkalamu's Place", published in Contrast in ]968, there are again two sets of interaction that simultaneously unfold before the reader. The narrator, on a visit to an unnamed African country for its independence celebrations, revisits the house of Inkalamu Williamson, an incongruous construction that had impressed him while a child growing up in the area. His joy at the shedding of the country's colonial yoke and the revolution this implies, in his mind, in schooling and socialising - especially in terms of meeting Inkalamu's children on the equal footing that was impossible in their childhood form the thread of the story most immediate in time. In more remote time, the story about Inkalamu Williamson himself unfolds. A white man who had made Africa his own by building a mud house - three stories tall, complete with a mile-and-a-half-long jacaranda avenue, after the style of an English family estate - and marrying two African women with whom he has fathered several children. Through the narrator, however, the reader learns that Williamson's apparent Africanization has concealed a most intimate betrayal:

I was glad that Inkalamu's children were free of it, that none of them was left here in this house of that 'character' of the territory, the old Africa hand whose pioneer'; 19 spirit had kept their mothers down in the compound and allowed the children into the house like pets.4

Not only were his wives and children. banished from actually sharing his house, but despite Williamson's personal little library and one-time status as a big landowner, they are denied a proper education as well as any semblance of financial security after his death. The fate of his children is expressed by Nonny, the youngest and only Williamson child the narrator does meet again. Young, uneducated and unmarried with a child, she runs an African store situated on an empty road. Her only apparent goal for the future is to try to obtain a licence for selling brandy. As in earlier stories, the mutuality of patriarchy and colonialism is again depicted; the narrator's joy at Inkalamu's death and his pleasure in the independence of the country merge at different moments throughout the narrative: "I was glad that the WiIIiamsons were rid of their white father, and could live" (p. 99).

4 "Inkalamu's Place: Uvingstone's Companions, p. 98. 79 Despite the narrator's joy at the overthrow of both the father and the colonial regime, his personal vision of life after independence is exposed as inadequate to meet the reality of a colonial inheritance as presented in the figure of Nanny. The last section of the story comprises a series of cumulative revelations about Nanny that each undercuts more and more the narrator's optimism for a better, more viable life after independence. Firstly, his hopes of a wealthy inheritance which Inkalamu's children could "enjoy now that they were citizens of their mothers' country" (p. 100) are shown to be without any foundation - everything was either sold or mortgaged. Then the revelation of Nanny's lack of education is juxtaposed with the momentary awareness by the narrator of his "university-modulated voice" (p. 102). This is followed by the narrator's suggestion that the shop might become feasible, whereupon Nanny can only respond by mentioning the difficulty of obtaining a brandy licence. Lastly, the story ends with a 'gentlemanly' gesture comprising both anti-chauvinism and anti-colonialism that equally gently collapses:

I suddenly remembered - "What's your name now, by the way?"; the times were gone when nobody ever bothered to know the married names of women who weren't white. And I didn't want to refer to her as Inkalamu's daughter. Thank God she was free of him, and the place he and his kind had made for her. All that was dead, Inkalamu wasdead. She stood twiddling her earrings, bridling, smiling, her face not embarrassed but warmly bashful with open culpability. "Oh, just Miss Williamson. Tell him Normy," I turned carefully on to the tar, I didn't want to leave with my dust in their faces. (p. 105)

The limited consciousness of the narrator is revealed in his obstinate belief that independence has come to improve everything irrevocably. Despite the series of revelations that point to the contrary, he persists till the very end in seeing the occasion of independence as finally freeing Inkalamu's children. But Inkalamu's children are not free; what they did inherit was the burden of colonialism. Similarly, readings which limit the presence of a socio-historical consciousness in the short stories by only examining Gordimer's treatment of race are forced to be satisfied with an interpretation of Inkalamu's house as a spatial metaphor for the country's colonial past. Although grand from the outside, the house inside is mouldering and uninhabitable. Its gradual decay therefore symbolizes the ending of the exploitation and imposition of alien cultures and life patterns onto Africa (see King, pp. 191-192).An examination of Gordimer's socia-historical consciousness in terms of the multiple structures of race, gender and class, however, enables a reading of the story that moves 80 beyond the moment of colonial demise to explore the story's subtle rendering of a changing but continuing post-colonial problematic. The two strands of the narrative come together in the presentation of both Inkalamu and the narrator as incapable of coming to terms with Africa, Whereas Inkalamu's involvement in colonial and patriarchal attitudes marks him as an outsider, ----_._------~-.------..,,--_.__ .._"-' .'- the case of the narrator who is neith~~.!?~!st nor sexist seems to suggest that in a post- "- -,,--._------'- --,-_. --,._-~._._.__.,._.-.. _--~~._...... -_.--~-_._-- . colonial society race, class and gender issues will have to be placed within a broader ~.--~..~._-.,.._-~;,--~_..~,._-.~..- .. _-~ '..----...'-'-"" - '.-',.- '. educational and economic context. The story as a whole, therefore, implies that the ernarcatIo~-~i-~~cism and sexism in tl:;~~~l~~;~;~' i~~~ffi~ient to create a material --_._---..... improvement in the lives of people. _.-r-.~."__"'-~_'_~_,_.r_.'.- -,'.--' '- The dual focus of the stories of this period is not as developed in "Open House", published in Encounter in 1969, as in the previous two stories. It does exist, however, in the disjunction between the black people Robert Ceretti eventually socializes with at Frances Taver's house and the real black people he should have met as in the person of Frances' anonymous ANC friend ''who had gone 'underground', [but] came to see her at long intervals, in the afternoons when he could be sun": the house would be empty.'S Bec8:~_2L~~~_r:~p.l:l~::ltion as one of "the right white people" to put visitors to South MDfa inJQll.ch 'Yi~h Africans, Frances continues to be contactedby those in search --- .._--_ .._-_.-..__.•._.... ~-._ ..~._---. of "the real thing" {po 140). The bannings and repressive laws of the early 60s have, '--..,----._~._----- . however, silenced those whom the visitors are eager to meet: "People don't want to talk any more. If they're doing anything, it's not something that can be talked about. Those that are left. Black and white. The ones you ought to see are shut away" (p. 142). The sad result is that the people who are still available, and for whom it is safe to appear at Frances' invitation, are those who have been co-opted by the system. One of the men she invites is described as "just the kind of man the white establishment would find if they should happen to decide they ought to make a token gesture of being in touch with the African masses" (p. 146). This same man is a wealthy businessman who has just ''broken the white monopoly of the hair-straightener and blood-purifier business" (p. 147). His hair-straightening enterprise situates him not only in a Eurocentric value system but characterises him as capitalist producer. The extent of the disjunction between those stilI

5 "Open House," Uvingstone's Companions, p. 141. 81 in circulation and the anonymous ANC friend becomes clear when the latter appears during the afternoon of Ceretti's introduction to the black businessman, a black lawyer and a black journalist. All of these men are known to the anonymous visitor, yet he chooses not to make his presence known to the group and simply leaves Frances a note. ... This action by the unseen visitor clearly indicates that the integrity of the three black men is in doubt. Frances Taver follows on a long line of female characters depicted either as active ~.------~------_."-- _.~_.__._,_._-_.- in------_.resistanc~.politics_QLas_.showing ..up their male counterparts by exercising the humaneness.2.f11l~Liny.

The black man - he told his name but who could catch their names - was something in the Ministry of Local Government, and he was very interested in what Manie Swemmer could tell him of the old days; he listened with those continual nods of the chin that showed he was following carefully; a proper respect - if not for a white man, then for a man as old as his father might be. (pp.77-78)

Thus the ungratefulness, misuse and neglect of the white father by his white sons is juxtaposed with the courteous regard of the young black man. His deferential behaviour is notable on two counts: firstly, on the stranger's departure, the bartender informs Manie that he was the brother of a high-ranking Under Minister, and secondly, on account of the class and educational difference between them. Manie and his sons are working-class Afrikaners and Manie, especially, is firmly situated in the narrative within Afrikaner ideology, whereas Thompson Gwebo is a university graduate from a well known family. When unruly youngsters later try to provoke Manie - helplessly recognizable for what he is - "another native - one in a decent shirt and tie" (p. 79) calls in two black policemen who remove them. Despite the bolstering of these two encounters, Manie is unable to review his prejudices. That night, when he is locked out of his room by the Indian with whom he was forced to share a room, the hotel management can only offer him shared accommodation with an African party. Manie had accepted sharing a room with the Indian only because he was a ''businessman'', "a real gentleman", and "not one of your locals", but the Indian obviously felt that Manie offered no similar credentials. Manie's response to the management's new offer is, "'The coolie, all right, I didn't say anything. But don't put me in with an African, now, man! I mean, I've just got here, give me a bit of time. You can't expect to put me in with a native, right away, first thing'" (p. 81). Still, Manie is capable of a degree of interracial socialization, whereas his son's attitude to living in an independent African country is simply not to "take any notice" (p. 78). As a father figure, Manie's courteous treatment by the young black man in a country with a colonial history is contrasted with his sons' shabby treatment of him,

6 ft Abroad," Livingstone's Companions, p. 77. 83 despite his support of and faith in them through the years. From the depiction of race as a means of political control and class exploitation, Gordimer arrives in "Abroad" at a moment where it is possible to show the irrelevance of racial criteria for morally acceptable behaviour. Indeed, any notions of white superiority are mocked by the blatant callousness of Manie's sons. Like Thompson Gwebo, the black people whom Robert Ceretti meets in "Open House" are all successful and reasonably affluent. But, it seems, their affluence has been gained at a price: a breach with their indigenous heritage. Having depicted the deprivations and struggle that constitute black life in South Africa, as well as characters who have overcome these to become Prime Ministers, businessmen and lawyers, Gordimer is now 'free' to depict - as she had done already for the white consciousness - what she has called the "dark and tangled motivations where politics and the psyche struggle to accommodate one another in the South African personality" ("Literature and Politics in South Africa," Southern Review, p. 211). Even more so than in "Open House", the "dark and tangled motivations" that govern relationships in South Africa are poignantly depicted in "Africa Emergent", first published in the London Magazine in 1971. The story focuses primarily on the doubt ridden friendship of the white male narrator with a black man. This short-lived friendship really springs from the death of a common friend, Elias Nkomo, a budding black sculptor. The story of Elias' development in the 'protective' privacy of the narrator's garage up until his discovery and first exhibition, the offer of a scholarship to study in America, the subsequent refusal of a passport, and finally the departure on an exit permit, highlight the inexplicable and repressive manipulation of the lives of individuals by those in power in South Africa. Simultaneously, Elias' anonymous friend is given a passport to study acting in New York. When Elias later commits suicide, the friend returns on the unused portion of Elias' ticket. It is this fact, together with the memory of his easy acquisition of a passport, that sparks the rumours that he is a police agent. Whereas South African politics invades Elias' life bluntly and overtly, its contortion of the relationship between the narrator and the anonymous black man is frighteningly insidious.From his position of relative intimacy the narrator angrilydefends his and Elias' friend. Later, more rumours mention "a police raid on the house of the familywith whom he had been living" and, apart from himself, every single person is arrested on the charge 84 of attending a meeting of a banned political organization? The narrator, "in spite of [these rumours] - because of, perhaps" (p. 245), gives his friend the money he asks for during this time. The loan of the money causes a waning in the friendship; "he was afraid I'd ask him to begin paying the money back and so he stopped corning to my 'place'" (p. 246). Only the news of his detention, several years later, proves his credentials: "And so we white friends can purge ourselves of the shame of rumours. We can be pure again. We are satisfied at last. He's in prison. He's proved himself, hasn't he?" (p, 248). The contortions of South African society place constraints on a person's ability to respond purely humanly to another in need when that person's political credentials are questionable. Even as perfectly ordinary an aspiration as owning a house in a "solid, bourgeois suburb" (p. 247) could potentially earmark one as selling out on the struggle. "Mrica Emergent" is another of Gordimer's ironic titles. The first sculpture of Elias' that the narrator sees is that of a goat and he remarks, "What was there was nothing like the clumps of diorite or sandstone you have seen in galleries in New York, London, or Johannesburg marked 'Africa Emergent,' 'Spirit of the Ancestors'" (p. 236). The title is bestowed by the owners of commercial art galleries to the works of numerous "interpreter[s] of the African soul" (p. 238) whom the owners discover and then forget so that artistically Africa is perpetually 'emerging' and never develops from its emergence. Elias' goat sculpture evokes an ambiguous response in the narrator:

What was there was a goat, or a goat-like creature, in the way that a centaur is a horse like, man-like creature, carved out of streaky knotted wood. It was delightful (I wanted to put out my hand to touch it), it was moving in its somehow concretized diachrony, beast-man, coarse wood-fine workmanship, and there was also something exposed about it (one would withdraw the hand, after all). (p.236)

The sculpture's ambivalence lies in the contradiction of its confident assertion of delight yet simultaneous aura of vulnerabili~. It is precisely in the ambivalence of the goat-like creature that the irony of the title can be located. To speak of Africa, a continent steeped in history, as 'emerging' is surely as anachronistic as paternalistic. To argue that the 'emergence' points to the articulation in a western context of a quintessential Africanness is to point also to the moment of its demise. Elias'

7 nMrica Emergent: livingstone's Companions, p. 245. 85 vulnerability, which eventually culminates in his suicide, arises from a conflict between his needs as an artist and aware human being to grow spiritually .and the political pressures placed on him as an exiled South African artist in a foreign country. Elias emerges out of Africa in order to answer certain questions: "What do I know about life? What do I know about how it all works? How do I know how I do the work I do? Why we live and die?" (p. 239). But he ends up "not so much as a sculptor as a genuine, real live African Negro who was sophisticated enough to be asked to comment on this and that: the beauty of American women, life in Harlem or Watts, Black Power as seen through the eyes, etc." (p. 241). His significance in the end is as the 'other' made flesh, speaking from within his position of 'otherness.' Despite, however, taking part in anti apartheid rallies and appearing on a platform with Stokely Carmichael, Elias commits suicide. Having responded to the demands of politics, the penalty is his psyche. Elias' story interrupts that of his anonymous friend. The narrator really only becomes acquainted with this anonymous character through his friendship with Elias. In his presentation of the two characters, Elias stands out as the more talented, reflecting individual. Despite his greater talent, Elias bows to the 'moral obligation' to take up the issue of racism, and dies. His friend, on the other hand, concentrates during his scholarship on the work in hand, Method acting, and returns to South Africa to busk along as best he can. Having ignored the demands of politics, it nevertheless finally calls him to attention and he ends up in solitary confinement. No matter how the individual jugglesthe balancing of the psyche and politics, in the complexity of life in South Africa neither seems to win in the end. Having isolated and reflected on the anomalies of race, gender and class issues in previous stories, in this period Gordimer moves a step further to show, not only that it is difficult to live a whole life in South Africa, but that a self-appointed obligation to

• _., _ _ ,__ '_"·~d~. __·__.·.~ .. • denounce the aberrations of South African life entails its own kind of sacrifice. Elias ------publicly speaks out against racism and for an authentic Africanness, but sacrifices in the process his art and, finally, himself. In "Open House" Frances Tavers' anonymous ANC friend has also taken up the struggle and the price he pays is that of living a shadow life; he only appears when it is safe to do so. Even black people known to him are not necessarily considered safe. Thus he also sacrifices, on an interpersonal level, a sense of community with his own people. 86 Chapter Six

"THE DYING WHITE ORDER": THE MID-SEVENTIES ONWARDS

By 1982 we find Gordimer giving an address in which she comments on a change which has occurred in her writing:

The white writer [in the eighties] has to make the decision whether to remain responsible to the dying white order - and even as dissident, if he goes no further than that position, he remains negatively within the white order - or to declare himself positively as answerable to the order struggling to be born.... I have entered into this commitment with trust and a sense of discovering reality, coming alive in a new way - I believe the novels and stories I have written in the last seven or eight years reflect this - because a South Africa in which white middle-class values and mores contradict realities has long become the unreality, to me. ("Living in the Interregnum," The Essential Gesture, p. 233, my underlinings)

The change Gordimer professes in her writing marks off the previous period from the present one, the mid-seventies onwards. It is a vast period compared to the preceding ones, because it includes the present and, therefore, is still ongoing. On the homefront Gordimer describes the eruption of the Soweto revolt by schoolchildren on 16 June, 1976, as lithe first popular uprising since the early sixties."] The fearlessness of the children and the underpinning of the revolt by Black Consciousness ideology effectivelymarginalise any white role within the struggle. Despite the reign of Black Consciousness early in this period and her understanding of its psychological necessity, Gordimer strives throughout this period to articulate a place for the white writer in the struggle. This place is to be found through the writer's "essential gesture as a social being" - his and her writing. Unflinching honesty in a writer's work, not adhering to "any kind of orthodoxy - a critics' orthodoxy, a political orthodoxy, a regime's orthodoxy, even the orthodoxy of friendship and loyaltyimposed upon him/her by family and friends'.2 - is the only way towards remaking white culture so as to be part of an

1 "Letter from Johannesburg, 1976," The Essential Gesture, p. 100. 2 Interview with Diana Cooper-Clark, p. 58. 87 indigenous, non-racial, post-apartheid culture. Gordimer's commitment to "the order struggling to be born" is affirmed again and again in the years comprising this last period. Four years after the formation of the United Democratic Front, a progressive alliance, in 1983, Gordimer states that she is "close" to the UDF.3 And when the government responds to the periodic manifestations of violence in the Vaal triangle and Eastern Cape with the declaration of a national State of Emergency on 21 July, 1985- the second since 1960 - Gordimer once again responds to her exploding environment with a "Letter from Johannesburg", dated 1985, in which she expounds on the "states of mind" and "conditions of life" of the people of South Africa:

Ail of us [whites] go home to quiet streets, outings to the theatre and cinema, good meals and secure shelter for the night, while in the black townships thousands of children no longer go to school, fathers and sons disappear into police vans or lie shot in the dark streets, social gatherings are around coffins and social intercourse is confined to mouming.f

Both as regards the "states of mind" and the "conditions of life", the situation is vastly different for whites and blacks. In this period there are stories that continue the individualized presentation of race relations within a clearly delineated political milieu. Three out of the twenty-eight stories are written entirely within a black perspective, while in another two the white perspective is either ineffectual or marginal. Other stories deal with the issue in a more abstract, allegorical manner, such as "A Lion on the Freeway" (1975) and "Teraloyna" (1988). These divergent modes of short story writing need to be separated from each other for each to be examined adequately. This chapter will, therefore, break from the previous chronological examination of the narratives. Because social realism is a familiar Gordimer narrative mode, the stories that continue in this vein will be discussed first. As those stories written in a more allegorical mode perhaps constitute a break in Gordimer's traditional narrative style, and possibly point to a new phase in her writing, they will be dealt with last.

3 See interview with Alex Tetteh-Lartey, p. 4. 4 "Letter from Johannesburg, 1895," The Essential Gesture. p. 257. 88 (a) The social realist stories

Both the "Town and Country Lovers" stories essentially repeat what has become Gordimer's metier: how the public and private become enmeshed in the South African context. In this sense they do not represent a development in her treatment of race; they are, however, the first stories explicitly to focus on the implications of an intimate relationship across South African race barriers under the Immorality Act. In only three other stories do such relationships exist and then only off-stage: in "Inkalamu's Place" Inkalamu is married to two black women; in "Livingstone's Companions" the journalist does not find the African women specificallybeautiful, although he offers one money and is refused, because "the women of Vietnam had spoilt him for all other women" (p. 6); and in "The Smell of Death and Flowers" Jessica Malherbe is married to an Indian. The two stories were originally published almost a year apart: "Town and Country Lovers One" in the NewYorker in October, 1975, and "Town and Country Lovers Two" in the London Magazine in August-September, 1976, under these titles. In the collection where they are eventually taken up, A Soldier's Embrace, in 1980, "Two" follows on "One" and the title appears only before "One." Although "Town and Country Lovers One" was originally entitled "City Lovers" • indicating that essentially "One" represents the ''Town'' of the title and ''Two'' the "Country" of the title - the (later) decision to publish both under a combined title and to differentiate between the two in terms of "One" and ''Two'' suggests that the duality of the title potentially applies to each individual story. In both stories, the duality of 'town' and 'country' can be seen as an overlay on

-~~--'- ~--'- --- ~ the dichotomies of race and class. Unlike the use of the town/country dichotomy in much ._.:.:...-__ .. ._..~,.__ .-'-- _,. --._.0 , ~._.~ __._.,_._._ .. ,...._ writing of the Romantic period, where the country is clearly privileged over the town, the ... -_._~--_. opposite holds true in the South African context. From a black perspective the exodus -'-'-"-""---'--~-'" ~.... - -","-'-- - - of migrant and other labour from rural to urban areas in search of a livingwage, and the concentration of capital in urban industry (despite government attempts to repopulate

---~,.-~-'_._.- the country), do not afford a nostalgic pastoral focus on the country - the town is privileged, at least, initially. "----_.- -_.-~ _., .. _ •.•.. --' ~~-- ,-' ',--< - .•. _.--.~-_.••._., -- ._""''''' Furthermore, each ofthe two relationships in the respective stories entails parallel binary oppositions: both the women are 'other' in terms of South Africa's ideology of race. Byvirtue of their race their class positions are automatically inferior to those of the 89 men. 0~eve.L9tgeDd~,~JC?C?'!~~Y~~0C:~llJ~), the more submissiveposition in these relationshiPJi~Th.e.~\\,omen neither set theipace.cnoccdeterrnine. the.nature of the .~--- r~lationshjp~,J1ut.areessentiallywomen-in-waiting. The privileged terms of each of the ?-- ·.--_·· ..._ .._0•. ..• _.~ .' ..•__ • L .•...• .. _.. • _ binary------oppositions _!~~_t.. .fl.!I1~tioJ:l in .the storyare linked to white .. men. Even more significantly, one of the men is a European immigrant, so that South African patriarchy is here linked with its European heritage. As Lazar comments, "A white man who breaks through the barriers of racial interdicts may nonetheless not be aware of nor willing to change the structures of gender domination" (p. 194). Once again Gordimer seems to highlight the plight of the black woman in the multiple oppressions of South Africa. In "A Soldier's Embrace" (1976) ,and "Blinder" (1983) the reader is again invited to observe white people - here characterized as progressive - and their interaction with the black people with whom they share their lives. In itA Soldier's Embrace", published in Harper's Magazine and collected in A Soldier's Embrace, the position of the white lawyer and his wife within the political spectrum is clearly established. Several of their black friends are prominent members of the black community and one even becomes a senior official in the new government. At the same time their servant, who "had come to them many years ago, from service in the house of her father, a colonial official in the Treasurylt,5 is afraid to leave the house and he does not join the cease-fire celebrations. When they finally leave the country, he is supplied with a cart and a hawker's licence, but the woman is aware that the shortage of the goods that he could sell from his cart "would soon put him out of business" (p. 22). His absorption within the white household has disrupted any meaningful bond with his own people and the independence celebrations ironically highlight his dependence within the sheltered world of the employ of the lawyer's wife. On the one hand, therefore, the white couple have all the right credentials, but on the other the fact that, despite their long association, they leave their servant behind in the knowledge that he will probably not be able to survive somewhat undermines their credibility. Other fissures also appear. Amongst the black people who were united in their opposition to the colonial powers - some more vociferously than others - the shifting power relations bring about internal political battles. There are also those "who perhaps

5 "ASoldier's Embrace; A Soldier's Embrace, p. 10. 90 had made some deal with the colonial power to place its interests first, no matter what sort of government might emerge" (pp. 11-12). Chipande, their old friend "who used to sprawl on the couch arguing half the night before dossing down in the lawyer's pyjamas" (p. 16), is restless when he finally looks them up again. The reunion of "the three old friends", rather than being a warm celebration, signals an inability to recapture the ease of their one-time friendship. The relationship is furthered hampered by the enveloping aura of Chipande's status as confidential secretary to the future President: "Chipande put an arm round each of his friends as for the brief official moment of a photograph, left them... " (p. 16). It is in this context of a changing world where one's own place within it is no longer clear that the lawyer and his wife decide to accept the offer of joining a lawyers' firm in a neighbouring country "still ruled by a white minority" (p. 20). To read their action only as a betrayal of their "liberal principles" seems too simplistic.P Gordimer takes trouble to sketch both the couple's support for the pre-independence struggle and a sense of their being made to feel obsolete in the new order. The story can be read as an example of Gordimer's tough honesty and her engagement with a new social order. It demonstrates how everything changes after a war fought for independence, how all the old certainties disappear and how everything has to be established anew. In Gordimer's commitment to "commonly-understood, commonly-created cultural entities corresponding to a common reality - an indigenous CUlture",? she insists on her writer's freedom to present the ''warts and all'.B of whatever subject she deals with. In "A Soldier's Embrace" she not only honestly depicts progressive whites in limbo, but also incipient corruption and the splintering of black unity; indeed, this is writing about "warts and alL" In this context the title cannot unilaterally be read as a metaphor for hope and unity; the affection of an embrace by a functionary of war carries the same ambiguity as a kiss of the spiderwoman.

6 See Lazar's argument that the white couple betray the symbolism of the embrace (p, 99); see also Michael King: "their leaving constitutes a betrayal of their initial stance, and of their liberal principles, which have to take second place to convenience, standard of living, and the husband's privileged access to job opportunities in the white governed country to the south" (p. 233); and see Clingman, who sees the story as dealing with "the ironies, and betrayal of a white liberal commitment when liberation comes at last" (History from the Inside, p. 195). 7 "Relevance and Commitment," The R..sential Gesture, p. 116. 8 "'n Onderhoud met Nadine Gordimer," Die Vaderland, p. 39. 91 "Blinder" first appeared in the Boston Globe in 1983 and is collected in Something Out There. While the treatment of the progressive couple in "ASoldier's Embrace" warns against the simplistic condemnation or heroization of their role, the white family in "Blinder" more clearly invites criticism. The story illustrates the disjunction between an intellectual accommodation with the South African situation and the ability to respond appropriately as humans. Rose is a domestic in a household where "at least two newspapers a day are read,,9 and where the children - now university students but whose nappies Rose once washed - are in possession of the vocabulary ofboth social and political science to explain Rose's situation. In comparison with the early domestic stories, therefore, the socio-historical consciousness of "Blinder" manifests itself at a markedly sophisticated level. The title most obviously points to Rose's occasional drinking bouts -Iimited to one every two months or so after the "lady of the house" had enrolled her in a "non-racial Alcoholics Anonymous" (p. 81). The story focuses on what appears to be yet another blinder but, in fact, turns out to be the news of the death of Rose's long-standing lover, Ephraim. The white madam automatically assumes that this is simply yet another blinder. Throughout Rose's relationship with Ephraim, the family as a whole views Ephraim's loyalty to his wife and children in the homeland village where he came from as "deluded." They take for granted the correctness of their valuation of his 'town' relationship with Rose as the more permanent one and that both Rose and Ephraim are deluded in not seeing this. Finally, the lady of the house observes that Rose "appears to get over Ephraim's death very quickly, as these people do... " (p. 85). All these facets of the white family's interaction with Rose and Ephraim suggest ~. __._.._- _._-.._---~-- that, despite their progressive politics, the white lady of the house and her family still th~k-~bo~t black ~e~ple in terms of stereotyped generalizations and still unconsciously assume the superiority of white thinking about black realities. They are still blind to, and ------...~_~.----~--.------~.-~---"r-"------."-'--"-.--.-..- ,__ _ unable to respond to, the individual tragedy of Rose's situation. Michael King also points to the story's satirical allusions to the weaknesses of academic language to portray the human dimensions of the South African situation (see his dissertation, p. 286). This is indeed so. The children understand "the break-up of

9 WBlinder,· Something Out There, p. 84. 92 families as a result of the migratory labour system" and that this system "ensures that blacks function as units of labour instead of living as men, with the right to bring their families to live in town with them" (p. 84). Yet this understanding remains separated from the pathos of Rose's sequence of blinders. It is not simply that academic language is inadequate to portray specific examples of humanity. One may interpret the story as suggesting that when one becomes steeped in ,------~._--~._._-~------_.~_._---_.~.__ .. ------intellectual articulations of the problems of South Africa there is a danger that being in cornma~d~fthe terminol~~_~ithe~~ articulations could p;oduce in peo~l-e a se~~~- ~f ___ • .~__v· " __.____ '. . ' ..,.' . _ 'having arrived.' People may feel that at last they possess the jnstI1lments with which to ._----~~---~... ~._,---~---.- .--_._-~~_.~.,.- ' dissect the South African corpse, but they lose sight of the fact that these are merely .... _.-. .~.". n ,-._,--_. d. -- --'-"--'-'-"".- - .. - •.__• __...... __ ~_·_._4~_..,····__···~·~_·· . ' ..-" '...... _..•.__..__•.__ ._,.....~._,~ ..._ .._.._'w",_,, • descriptive, ~!!i:llyticaLterms_which in no way constitute a solution. The only point of arrival------is at the beginning of reconstructing a new disp~nsation.-The use of such 0.------explanations by the children of the household is therefore a blind to hide their lack of ------.-----..,.-_.,.. an adequate response to Rose. .._....,.,..._.. _'---.,." The three stories set entirely within black perspectives all deal in different ways with betrayal. "Oral History" first appeared in Playbo~ in 1977 and is collected in A Soldier's Embrace. The village of a traditional chief is destroyed by the defence force of the colonisers in their attempt to keep the young men who had crossed "the border to learn how to fight" from returning.J° From time to time an army patrol would arrive at the village of Dilolo, the chiefs village, to search the huts and warn the villagers about the people who corne from across the river, who would kill them (p. 138), burn their huts (p. 138) and cut their ears and lips off (p. 142). With these appalling threats the army tries to discourage the villagers from extending their hospitality to strangers. But according to local tradition "everyone is welcome at a beer-drink. No traveller or passer by... is a presence to be questioned" (p. 135). One night, when the chief notices again the strange faces around his fire, faces that he had seen about "lately in the audacity of day, as well" (p. 140), he bicycles to the army post in an attempt to protect his village from the dire consequences, as predicted by the army officers, of the presence of these strangers. When he returns the next morning - there was a curfew at night - the village has been bombed. The chief hangs himself. As Clingman perceptively remarks, ''The

10 ·Oral History; A Soldier's Embrace. p. 135. 93 time-honoured process of passing down wisdom byword of mouth is parodied by another verbal process: the falsification of history. The chief hears and believes in a falsified 'oral history' when he puts his trust in the white man's version of the war" (History from the Inside, p. 102). Gordimer quite clearly no longer writes from a traditional white perspective.

Most______obviously,''c cc ..cCeece.___ the army officer betrays the chiefs... trust and the chief unwittingly betrays his people.e!!()weyef.'ethe text also infuses the betrayal with a more generalised, ---~----_._-----_.--_.,~---'~. ~--, ~.,-~",--.'-'_.- ---'- ... . - ... - _.- .., .. _...., historical resonance. In a village of mud huts the chief has a house like a white man's; ----_.----~--~.~-~.~.~... _'~-~.-.-_ .."._ ..• , ... _..,.". . he also has the usual government. stipend, and "his name is the same as that of the chief ~ ••_. •• e c" • "~"' •• e who waved his warriors to down assegais and took the first bible from a Scottish Mission

---=-~~------_._-~.~.,_ -',.,~-~ <~'-'.."""_.-'.'.--_._-,-"- Board white man" (p. 134). The chiefs ''white man's house", his government stipend and the-l1isfbrf6Fhls name all serve to characterize him as a moderate black, willing to

~~.-----_._--_. accommodate himself to the white man. The text thus seemingly offers a view of a ~~.._.e....e_e_e_e_e. __ ....._. c ... • moderate black position - in early history those people who worked with the missionaries -~--"~'-~-'.'--'--'-"---'--~-- "._'- ,.--...•. "-,,..._-... aIid Iaterjhose who cooperated.with the powers of the day - as potentially a dual - . --~------betr~al=-9J. otheLPl~fk.p.eopleand alsoby white people. In "A City of the Dead, A City of the Living" a young woman betrays a freedom fighter after having offered him shelter for a week. It was published in the New Yorker in 1982 and collected in Something Out There. Number 1907 Block C, in one of the townships bordering Johannesburg, belongs to Samson Moreke, the young woman's husband, and it is he who initially offers the man shelter against her will.Throughout the text the young woman, Nanike, features only in terms of the functions she fulfils: obedient wife, dutiful mother and housekeeper. It is only through eight brief, italicized, interior monologues that the existence of her independent inner life is revealed as she thinks about the fugitive she harbours in her house. The main body of the text powerfully depicts the poor facilities, lack of electricity, non-exis~~~t'roads, overcrowding and rowdiness--ihat'ch~~acterise life in a township. '------,.'~ .<------_._ ..-, These are the material consequences of the interlocking of race and class in South Africa under apartheid ideology King is certainly correct when he states that the title reflects ------".__._-_.~_.--_._..>-,.- --~ ".__.-~..~._- the denial of certain aspects of life in a typical South African township as compared to the relative affluence and comfort ofits neighbouring white suburbs (see his dissertation, p.280). 94 But the title points to more than material inequalities. The story is also a description of the psychologicaleffect the freedom fighter's presence has on Nanike. Her very first monologue suggests that she feels imprisoned: "You only count the days if you are waiting to have a baby or you are in prison. I've had my child but I'm counting the days since he's been in this house."n Also, on the Friday evening of the weekend when Shisonka, the freedom fighter, decrees that for security reasons no one may visit them, and they have to pretend no one was home, the text reads: "Like prisoners who get their last mealie-pap of the day before being locked up for the night, Moreke's wife gave them their meal before dark" (p. 21). During this weekend of enforced incarceration Nanike for the first time consciously realises the nature of township life: "I never knew, until this house was so quiet, how much noise people make at the weekend, I didn't hear the laughing, the talking in the street, Radebe's music going, the terrible screams of people fighting" (p. 23). Partly to re-establish her place within this life, the only one she has, in her mind, she goes to the police station the following day. As the days of their joint imprisonment proceed, an intimacy of sorts develops between Nanike and Shisonka. She washes his clothes and notices the foreign labels on them, she is the only person in the household to whom he reveals his gun and he feeds the bottle to the baby, Nanike's fifth living child. He helps her wash the dishes and she is conscious of his fingers bumping hers in the soapy water. In the fifth and sixth monologues the pronouns "we" and "us" are indicative of Nanike's growing identification with Shisonka. The sixth monologue ends, "He picks up the baby as if it belongs to him. To him as well, while we are in the kitchen together" (p. 21). These two monologues are followed by the one revealing her sudden conscious awareness of township life, which in tum leads to her betrayal of Shisonka. In other words, Nanike decides to betray Shisonka despite the intimacy that has developed between them and specifically after realising, in the heightened awareness of their weekend isolation, both the nature of township life and the value of possessing a house. Although Nanike avers in her final monologue that she did not know why she betrayed Shisonka, I would argue that the never-ending exigencies of being black in South Africa ------contribute to a fierce determination to hold on to what one has, never mind the sacrifice.

11 nA City of the Dead, A City of the Living: Something Out There. p. 10. 95 Thus Nanike has to betray Shisonka because he presents a threat to her security on two fronts: her relationship with Samson and the security of owning a house. On the level of gender, Samson and Shisonka are diametrically opposed in their approach to Nanike. As has already been stated, Nanike, in her relationship with Samson, is predominantly a series of functions - a wife, mother and housekeeper. Contrastingly, Shisonka helps Nanike with her daily housekeeping chores. Moreover, the restrained intimacy that develops between them makes Nanike feel like a young girl again (brings her 'to life' again) and this could, if she gives in to it, disrupt her relationship with Samson. On a material level, however, Samson owns a house which represents security and stability "Lucky to have this house; many, many people are jealous of that" (p. 23) - whereas people like Shisonka, freedom fighters, always "have to run away to those far places" (p. 23). Also, if she and Samson are found to be harbouring a freedom fighter it would mean the end of the life she knows. Nanike therefore declines the promise of freedom and a life offered by Shisonka and chooses the 'death' that is the only life she knows. "A City of the Dead, A City of the Living" cautions against easy moralising and reminds us that the ground we stand on is shifting and tenuous. Within the South African situation it is inappropriate simply to condemn Nanike's action as a betrayal; class, race and gender all interact in South Africa and interlock in Nanike's life to determine her actions. The story, in other words, warns against the seduction of its own illusory binary form. The last of the narratives presenting a black perspective, "At the Rendezvous of Victory", appeared in Mother Jones in 1983 and is collected in Something Out There. As in "Oral History", the betrayal of 'General Giant' Zwedu by his friend and future Prime Minister is as a result of an agreement between the future Prime Minister and the white government during the cease-fire talks. Because of General Zwedu's effective leadership, without which the war would not have been won, the white government insists that he be relieved of all military authority in the new dispensation. The narrative carefully establishes General Zwedu's military prowess as the almost logical outcome of his singleminded dedication to the war and his rootedness on the African continent:

When the consultation in the foreign capital was over, General Giant did not fidget long in the putter of official cocktail parties. After a night in a bar and a bed with girls... he would take a plane hack to Africa.... He went back imperatively as birds migrate to Africa to mate and assure the survival of their kind, journeying thousands of miles, just as he 96

flew and drove deeper and deeper into where he belonged until he reached again his headquarters - that the white commandos often claimed to have destroyed but could not be destroyed because his headquarters were the bush itself.12

In an attempt to cash in on the General's popularity, the government gives him the portfolio of Sport and Recreation, thus retaining him as a socially serviceable image, but at the same time demobilising him. Given the symbiotic relationship between his personality and his profession, it is inevitable that when General Zwedu is given this portfolio a decline in his personality would occur. Initially he embarrasses the new government by remaining true to the ideals they fought for in the war; he lacks the subtlety to converse in the language of the newly found "rational alliances and national unity" (p. 35). Eventually, however, he is depicted as "fat, aimless and promiscuous, a living icon of political degeneration and unfulfilled promises" (Lazar, p. 104). General Zwedu is betrayed by a comrade, but also betrays himself. The story's political context - fighting for independence followed by various post independence compromises - still situates it in a detailed and specific Africa, but its human psychology is no longer bound to the framework of a racial ideology. Thus Gordimer seems to have reached a point in the short stories where the race of a character is more "a sport of nature" than a narrative determinant, and the human psychology rings equally true for a white or black character.

(b) The allegorical stones

With its allegorical mode "A Lion on the Freeway" presents an unmistakable development on earlier stories dealing with race. Itwas first published in 1975 in Harper's before being collected in A Soldiers Embrace. Although Gordimer says that she does not write about apartheid but about "people who happen to live under that system",13 the modernist texture of this story does represent a move away from the social realist depiction of interpersonal relations. Another story in this period, "For Dear Life",also displays similar

12 "At the Rendezvouz of Victory: Something Out There. p. 30. 13 Robert Boyers. Clark Blaise, Terence Diggory and Jordan Elgrably (interviewers), •A Conversation With Nadine GonJimer," Salmagundi, p. 27. 97 formal complexity, ellipses and multiple points of view. It seems significant that "A Lion on the Freeway" was first published only a year after The Conservationist, to date Gordimer's most modernist novel. "ALion on the Freeway"is pervaded with a sense of apocalypse deriving from the co-existence of sexual and political violence, death and the restlessness ofthe lion's roar. In the last paragraph of the story the metaphor unfolds and the lion can be read as a "symbol of black resistance and eventual victory" (Lazar, p. 101). The apocalyptic tenor of the story becomes almost prophetic in the light of the political torrents that erupt in Soweto the following year. A discussion of this period would be incomplete without an examination of "Teraloyna", first published in the Cosaw Journal in 1988 and collected in Jump.J4 The story is significant as another example of a break from Gordimer's usual social realist style to a more abstract, allegorical depiction of her subject matter. While "A Lion on the Freeway" is also presented as an allegory, its level of abstraction does not equal that of "Teraloyna." The title's evocative linguistic and phonetic allusions open up multiple reading possibilities for the alluring yet elusive narrative. Its own explication of the title attempts to authenticate the textual enterprise through presenting the Teraloynas as the focus of ethnological research, even if only "an obscure curiosity in the footnotes,,:15

The surname [Teraloyna1survives here and there; the people who bear it are commonly thought, without any evidence but a vague matching of vowel sounds, to be of Spanish or Portuguese origin. Linguists interested in the distortion of proper names in multilingual, colonised countries have suggested the name probably derives from a pidgin contraction of two words the shipwrecked, presumably French-speaking, used to describe where they found themselves. 'Terre' - earth, 'loin' - far: the far earth. (p.30)

This self-referentiality of the text should, however, rather be seen as a tease for the reader than as authoritative documentation, for the narrative as a whole loses much of its impact if read in a social realist framework.

14 This is Gordimer's ninth original short story collection. It appeared in mid-November 1991, unfortunately too late to be dealt with as a collection in this dissertation. Seven out of the sixteen stories collected here, however, have been considered for the purpose of this dissertation and are included in the bibliography as they have been published previously in various magazines. 15 "Teraloyna," Cosaw Journal, p. 30. 98

As the narrative progresses it becomes clear why the Teraloynas' island of origin is named by a word meaning the 'far earth.' For the Teraloynas themselves it becomes the far earth when they are recruited as labourers to "the mainland of the world" (p. 28) and with the passing of time and intermarriage even the memory of their past and their language fades away. One reason why the Teraloynas allow themselves to be recruited to strange countries is that their island has become uninhabitable for humans; it is fit only for the goats:

Ours were strong, large goats, they had a great many young. They had many more young than we had; in the end they ate up the island - the grass, the trees, at night in our houses we could hear those long front teeth of theirs, paring it away. When the rains came our soil had nothing to hold it, although we made terraces of stone. It washed away and disappeared into the shining sea. (p.28)

Thus the 'far earth' resonates also with contemporary environmental concerns, especially the potential destruction of the planet as we know it. The goats eventually contribute to their own downfall - they starve to death as a result of the erosion caused by their ferocious grazing. The exodus of the Teraloynas from their island is, however, only the beginning of their chronicles. They emigrate to the great open lands of America, Australia and Africa. The island "is not near anywhere. But as it is nearest to Africa... some went there" (p. 29). At this point the narrative offers, in a nutshell paragraph, the economic and racial history of South Africa. The diamond and gold mines at the tum of the century, the fishing fleets "manned by people of mixed white, Malay, Indian and Khoikhoi blood" (p. 29), and the insertion of the Teraloynas, the 'other', within this economy at the lowest class level. Unlike the persistent confluence of race and class that characterises black life in South Africa, the Teraloynas soon lose their national and racial identity:

Exogamous marriage made their descendants' hair frizzier or straighter, their skin darker or lighter, depending on whether they attached themselves in this way to black people, white people, or those already singled out and named as partly both.... The islanders who were absorbed into darker-skinned communities became the Khans and Abramses and Kuzwayos, those who threaded away among the generations of whites became the Bezuidenhouts, Cloetes, Labuschagnes and even the Churches, Taylors and Smiths. (pp.29-30) 99 The dual assimilation of the Teraloynas within opposing groups has anomalous consequences:

When a certain black carpenter draws a splinter from under his nail, the bubble of blood that comes after it is Teraloyna. And when a certain young white man, drafted into military service straight from school, throws a canister of teargas into a schoolyard full of black children and is hit on the cheek by a cast stone. the broken capillaries ooze Teraloyna lifeblood. (p.30)

In the mean time the island has recuperated: "Vegetation and wild life, altered forever by erosion, crept back: blade by blade, footprint by footprint. Seabirds screamed instead of human infants" (p. 29). Despite its uninhabitable wilderness, the island is one of the pawns that periodically get reshuffled after wars of conquest and defeat. The country to which Teraloyna is bequeathed finds it useless "for defence of any sea-route" but "ideal for a weather station" (p. 29). The year-long stays of successive teams of meteorologists comprise the next cycle of habitation of the island. The development from ships to aeroplanes that, over the decades, make their long journey to the island more convenient, is parallelled on the human level by an implied comparison between the original inhabitants of the island and the meteorologists:

Of course, these are educated people, scientists, and there is a reasonable library and taped music; even whole plays recorded, someone in one of the teams left behind cassettes of Gielgud's Lear and Olivier's Othello.... (p.29)

Another member leaves behind two kittens,

Supposedly to eat the mice. but maybe (by default of the softness of a woman?) to have something warm to stroke while the winter gales try to drown the weather station in the sea that cuts it adrift from humankind.... (p.29)

By the time the Teraloynas are totally absorbed within both sides of the racial divide in the south of the African continent, there are an estimated six hundred cats on the island:

Their mating howls sound terrifyingly over the night sea. Othello would tum about in horror from an island of demons. Survivors from a wreck would rather go under than make for that other death. (p.31) 100 The devouring by the cats of all the eggs of seabirds, the eggs of the giant turtles, the hares and even the milky-bodied caterpillars about to emerge as butterflies amounts to the near-destruction of the ecology on the island - a veritable emergency. The meteorologists try poisoned meat and even infection with cat flu, but to no avail. A new solution is then to be tried, one that involves "an element of sportmanship" - the cats are to be shot. Because "another sort of State of Emergency" exists on the continent, the army cannot be used. But there are sufficient numbers of young men who have done their initial period of military service and who are on permanent standby for the army, so to speak. Thus a party of healthy young white university students is "invited on a holiday that will also serve a useful purpose" (p. 32). One of these is the 'young fellow who could have lost a blue eye by means of a stone thrown by a black, but was merely grazed to ooze a little of his Teraloyna blood line" (p. 32). With the return ofa person, perhaps several others, of the Teraloyna blood line to the island, the narrative has come full circle. Except that it is a broken circle; the young man has no consciousness of his links with the island. The narrative presents his return in a passage redolent with the imagery of birth, or rather re-birth, in the specific context:

He is going, soon, to see through the oval of the aircraft window (pushing and shoving among his pals) - Look! Look down there. The island we left for the mainland, all wrinkled and pleated in erosion, just topping out of the sea mists.... (p. 32, my underlinings)

The [mal paragraph reveals, however, that the birth is a perverted birth; rather than a passage into existence and the nurturing of life, it is an initiation into death and the denial of life:

He is looking forward to the jQl he and his mates will have, singing and stamping their army boots in the aircraft, the camp they will set up, the beer they will drink, and the prey they will pursue - this time grey, striped, ginger, piebald, tabby, black, white - all colours, abundant targets, doesn't matter which, kill, kill them all. (p.32) 101 An essential feature of the narrative is the difficulties the reader experiences in attempting to pin it down to a definitive interpretation. From one appearance to the next, the signs it offers either shift ground or become ambiguous. A bunch of young white university students sponsored for a useful holiday three paragraphs later appears as a coterie of army buddies. There are references to a State of Emergency in the mainland country, pre-emptive raids, the presence of the army in the townships, and the list of cat varieties to be shot ends with "black, white." Thus the shooting party, in addition to its science fiction timbre, may be read as a kind of allegory not only for the racial violence that permeates South African society but also for South Africa's relations with its neighbouring states. Such a reading, however, comes to terms with only a section of the narrative. Throughout the text there is an unresolved tension between socio-realist references in the style of a travelogue or tourist brochure and a loose, reminiscing narrative which, in its presentation of a genealogy of the Teraloynas, borders on the mythic. On the mythic level another reading of the title becomes possible. In explaining the word 'Teraloyna' the narrative itself 'inadvertently' suggests how another reading could be arrived at, "without any evidence" but simply based on "a vague matching of vowel sounds" (p. 30). In this reading 'loyn' does not derive from the French word,'loin', meaning distant, but points to its English phonetic counterpart, loin. Teraloyna then means the offspring of the earth and the text can be read as a creation story, a story about origins, complete with a Garden of Eden and a Fall, but lacking any redemption. In this context the text's pointers to colonization, world wars, technological development, cultural sophistication, the process of history, economic history and ecology (all within five pages) dazzlingly reverberate a global history; the history of mankind, "we have one family name only - Teraloyna" (p. 28). In the commonality of Teraloyna life-blood, juxtaposed with the text's murderous ending, the narrative presents that history as a history of fratricide, in stark contrast to the "fierce fecundity" (p. 31) of the goats and the cats on the island. 'Teraloyna" is thus a hitherto uncharacteristic 'meta' commentary by Gordimer on the destructive dealings of humans, one with another. Although there are stories in this period that continue to confirm the interaction of race, gender and classin Gordimer's short fiction, it is notable that with the emergence 102 of more abstract allegorical stories, at a time when Gordimer has committed herself to "the order struggling to be born", the political specificity of her analyses as regards the three determinants has seemed to dissipate. 103 CONCLUSION

From the discussion of a selection of Gordimer's short stories in this dissertation it has emerged that the structures of race, gender and class are pivotal to her rendering of the South African reality. Even when the larger socio-political environment is present only in the unconscious of the text, as is the case in the early stories, these structures are consistentlypart of Gordimer's perception of the forces that shape the lives of individuals c------.~.-, ..-- -~~-,.- ~ -,-,_ _.~ .. '.'." '-".~- ..- ~. -".. _. -, -. in the country of her birth. e:--:r;;~~cessive periods, from the texts of the early fifties onwards, these structures evolve from being unconsciously present to assuming a tangible actuality. The full extent of the divisions among people brought about by these structures, as well as their interaction, is only revealed in the third and fourth periods - the late fifties and sixties. Many of the narratives here consistently explore the varied interaction between racism -- ---~_.-->._,.. _._-._~--~ _,-----._,_._ ,-,._~ . / > and patriarchy. Stories that particularly bear this out are 'The Smell of Death and ----:--:--_.. - Flowers" (1954), ''Which New Era would that Be?" (1955), "Something for the Time Being" (1960) and "A Chip of Glass Ruby" (1960). The mOIr.;ltum towards a 'pure' feminist critique, as opposed to an analysis of the interaction of racism and patriarchy, --,.----_..._-_ ..._-- -- is true only of stories depicting a white world; a feminist critique is markedly absent from G:~~~~~_(s depiction of black wom~n. In narratives that focus on political resistance in one form or another, this is offered either by white women of varying ages and

~-_.._._._--- _._---~ .._,~"''''- ._.' -,--' back~ou!!~.!_s.uchas Jessica Malherbe, Joyce McCoy and Madge Chadders, or by black male characters. The only exception is Mrs Bamjee in "A Chip of Glass Ruby." While the early stories focus on domestic workers at the bottom of the economic scale and expose white racism,_Gordimer gradually moves closer and closer to a black ~ ------_.. ".' ._-~ - perspective until, in "Horn of Plenty", we are presented with the history and a sense of the consciousness of a black woman, though politically this consciousness is still dormant. After "Horn of Plenty" overt white racism is replaced by various degrees of liberal humanism in stories such as "Something for the Time Being" and 'The Pet." With what to Gordimerbecomes the failure ofJiberaI humanism,the stories start depictinga more politicized blackconsciousness, such as in "A Chip of Glass Ruby" and "Some Monday ------.~ - for Sure." Concomitant with this - and with Gordimer's travels to various African countries - there is a sense of an indigenous African heritage re-emerging. 104 This point in the spiral of Gordimer's evolvingsocio-political consciousness is also the point of entry for the fifth period. Having expanded her focus from her immediate environment outwards - in ever enlarging circles, so that eventually she embraces Africa she now refocuses on South Africa. In this period the reader is introduced not only to domestics or political activists among blacks, but also to professional people and artists, as in "Open House" and "Africa Emergent." The lives of these people are still not free of the manipulation of race as a criterion in South African society. Consistently in these stories Gordimer's narratives affirm the conflation of class and race. Even when the professional status of black characters clearly inserts them in the upper-middle classes, this does not advance a solidarity with a white middle-class. Instead, notions of class as a social category, rather than an economic one, then begin to operate. Only on the bohemian and artistic fringe does a semblance of unity appear - always haunted, though, by the ambiguities of cross-racial relationships in South Africa. It is notable that in these narratives, where Gordimer most fully renders a wide-ranging, black, urban perspective, the class aspect of these characters is the closest to her own. This is in contrast to, for example, that of the earlier domestic stories where even the generally common gender does not afford her as intimate a perspective as does this proximity of class. What Gordimer's narratives are able to offer in terms of analyses of the interrelatedness of race, gender and class generally does not simply issue from her use --,~-----_._.. -.._..._-'---~ .._.-._---_._-~ ..• _-. of a socio-realist mode. Even where she uses a more modernist approach, Gordimer is '",,- -,_.-" ----- ..~-_._,._----~.- ~-,.. still able to incorporate socio-realist details which enable an examination of the ~------_ ... --_ ..'"._.- interaction of race, gender and class; the novel, The Conservationist, is an example. • _'_.____------" .• ----.,. , , J •. ~.-- .. .-.">'. ',- -. ~'" However, in a more recent story such as 'Teraloyna", where a mythical approach is deployed, the material specificity of Gordimer's race, gender and class analyses seems to diminish. It remains to be seen whether or not this will be a new direction for her short fiction and, if so, whether or not it necessarily implies the end of her perceptive analyses of the interaction of race, gender and class in South African life. What this summary makes clear is that the imputed greater aesthetic manipulation of the short stories over the novels by no means debars them from registering a historical consciousness. Indeed, it is debatable if the short story genre is in fact open to more aesthetic manipulation than the novel. In theory, at least, it is possible for a writer to plan and manipulate equally, to the finest detail, all facets of his or her fiction. Alternatively 105 it could be asked to what extent total aesthetic manipulation, irrespective of genre, is ever possible. Ifit is granted that this is unlikely, then there is obviously always scope for an unconscious to register itself in any narrative. In an interview of 1986, for example, Gordimer remarks,

When I was reading the proofs of Something Out There, the latest collection, I was absolutely stunned by this sense of betrayal. I realized that there is an obsession with betrayal in the stories. Even the one about the couple in Europe, "Sinsofthe1bird Age", is all about different forms of betrayal - political, sexual, every fonn. I seem to have been obsessed by this, and I asked myself, "Why?" In the last fewyears, it's been so much in the air at home; you just never know, really, to whom you're talking. You're among friends, and then you may discover later that there was somebody there who was indeed not a friend.'

Despite the aesthetic manipulation and specific focus of each individual story, only in reading retrospectively and collectivelydoes Gordimer come to recognize a dimension in the stories of which, at the time of writing, she was unaware. The existence across the years of this socio-political dimension in Gordimer's short stories is precisely to what this dissertation has drawn attention. Finally, the previous points assume that 'aesthetic manipulation' automatically excludes an unconscious ideological content in a text. But it can be argued that the manner of the aesthetic manipulation itself could be shown to reveal ideological biases. Thus, aesthetic manipulation as a criterion is irrelevant to the existence or not of an ideological unconscious, or even an explicit socio-historical consciousness. If greater aesthetic manipulation is indeed an inherent facet of the short story genre, it has certainly never prevented short stories by African and black South African writers from registering a historical consciousness. Over the years two collections consistingof previously collected stories by Gordimer, Some Monday for Sure (1976) and Crimes of Conscience (1991),2 have been put out by Heinemann i~ their ~can Writers Series - a publishing decision which is undoubtedly informed by, and is also an affirmation of, the socio-political dimension of Gordimer's short stones.

Peter Marchant, Judith Kitchen, and Stan Sanvel RUbin, "A Voice from a Troubled Land: A Conversation with Nadine Gordimer" in Conversations with Nadine Gordimer, p. 257. 2 Crimes ofConscienceconsists offivestories previously collected in A Soldier's Embrace, five from Something Out There and only one previously uncollected story, "'TheUltimate Safari." The last story was first published in Granta (1989). 106 In the interview quoted above, the novel and the short story are also compared as different genres:

Rubin: You write both novels and short stories. What are your varying commitments to those two forms? What are the kinds of truth that each can get-at? Gordimer: I don't think there are different kinds of truth that each can get at. But now I tend to write fewer stories. I recognize with some sadness that I have been neglecting the short story. The themes that interest me are becoming more and more complex, perhaps because life is becoming more and more complex - the life around me from which I draw my sustenance and my subject matter. Rubin: So you can't deal with terribly complex themes in the short story because of its limited development and the number of characters you can handle? Gordimer: No, no, it's a matter of thematic layers. Even in my stories, I am not satisfied with one layer. It's really like peeling an onion: once you begin to invent an alternative life for others, once you begin to find out why they are as they are, you just go deeper and deeper and deeper, and sometimes it seems the story doesn't give enough space to do that. (p.258)

This dissertation has demonstrated that the short story genre need not entail restrictions on complexity. Gordimer herself affirms that even in the short story she is not satisfied with "one layer" only. Certainly not one of the stories discussed in this dissertation can be seen to function in a purely linear manner. On this issue, it is without doubt the methodology ?f this dissertation which has opened up these narratives to their successive layers of meaning. In the light of the riches that can be mined from Gordimer's stories, given the right methodology, it. is extremely disappointing to note that once again, as a category, they are ignored in what is probably the most prestigious recognition of Goidimer's literary achievement to date. In awarding Gordimer the Nobel Priz~ for Literature on 3 October, 1991, the Royal Swedish Academy also referred to her as a person 'who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity.'? Although the comment that she ''writes with intense immediacy about the extremely complicated personal and social relationships in her environment" applies equally well to the novels and the short stories, the phrase "magnificent epic writing", suggesting as it does an almost encyclopaedic scope, certainly seems to exclude the shorter works. Also, the works singled out by the Academy for special mention are all novels. Only one out of a seven-paragraph press release refers to

3 Swedish Academy Press Release. 107 the short stories:

The powerful novels should not make us forget the shorter works. Compact and dense, they are extremely telling and show Gordimer at the height of her creative powers. -Selected Stories- (1975) provides a survey. The fundamental themes are reworked successfully, as the title story in the collection wASoldier's Embrace- (1980). Gordimer's specifically feminine experiences, her compassion and her outstanding literary style characterise her short stories as well. (Swedish Academy Press Release)

The 'shortness' of the stories clearly limits them from aspiring to greater heights. One hopes that in the coming year - when the Nobel Award will undoubtedly spark an increased interest in Gordimer's work - her short stories will at last receive their rightful recognition and that this dissertation will be seen to be one of the first steps taken in that direction. 108 PRIMARY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Short Stories

This is as complete a listing of Gordimer's short stories to date as my searches have revealed. The bibliographies of Racilia J. Nell, John Cooke and Robert Green formed the core, to which other titles were added as they occurred. As far as this could be corroborated, the places and dates of publication in this listing indicate those of the first publications. Some stories were apparently never published before being taken up in a collection; in these cases the collection title is given as the source of first publication.

"Come Again Tomorrow," Forum, Vol. 2, No. 34 (18 November 1939), p. 14.

"No Place Like Home," P. S., Vol. 2, No.5 (7-8 December 1943), pp. 7-8.

"The Shoes," The South African Opinion (May 1944), pp. 21-22.

"No Luck Tonight," The South African Opinion, Vol. 1, No.6 (August 1944), pp. 18-20 and p. 31.

''The Peace of Respectability," The South African Opinion (February 1945), pp. 10-11 and p. 31.

''The Menace of the Years," The South African Opinion (June 1945), pp. 18-20.

''The Kindest Thing to Do," The South African Opinion, Vol. 2, No.9 (November 1945), pp.7-9.

''The Train from Rhodesia," Trek, Vol. 11, No. 21 (September 1947), pp. 18-19.

''The Two of Us," Trek, Vol. 12, No.1 (January 1948), pp. 22-23. Included under the title of "The Soft Voice of the Serpent" in Face to Face and The Soft Voice of the Serpent.

''The Umbilical Cord," Trek, Vol. 12, No. 11 (November 1948), pp. 14-15 and 22.

''The Amateurs," Common Sense, Vol. 9, No. 12 (December 1948), pp. 540-544.

''The Defeated," The South African Saturday Book, Eric Rosenthal (ed.) (London and Cape Town: Hutchinson, 1948), pp. 169-182.

"A Present for a Good Girl," Criteria, Vol. 1 (March 1949), pp. 55-63.

"Poet and Peasant," Hashalom, Vol. 28, No.1 (September 1949), pp. 26-31 and p. 47.

"Sweet Dreams Selection," Common Sense (November 1949), pp. 501-505.

"Ah, Woe is Me," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949). 109 "The Battlefield at No. 29," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

"In the Beginning," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

"A Commonplace Story," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

"La Vie Boheme," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

"Is there Nowhere Else where We can Meet?," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

'The Last of the Old-fashioned Girls," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

'The Talisman," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

"Monday is Better than Sunday," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949).

'Treasures of the Sea," Trek, Vol. 14, No.6 (June 1950), pp. 8-11.

'The Hour and the Years," The Yale Review, Vol. 40 (December 1950), pp. 261-272. Altered version of 'The Peace of Respectability."

'The Catch," Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 27, No.3 (Summer 1951), pp. 386-400.

"A Watcher of the Dead," New Yorker, Vol. 27 (9 June 1951), pp. 88-95.

"A Sunday Outing," Trek, Vol. 15, No. 10 (October 1951), pp. 8-9.

"A Bit of Young Life," New Yorker, Vol. 28 (29 November 1952), pp. 37-42.

'The Prisoner," The Soft Voice of the Serpent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952).

"Another Part of the Sky," The Soft Voice of the Serpent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952).

'The End of the Tunnel," The Soft Voice of the Serpent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952).

"Six Feet of the Country," Forum, Vol. 1, No. 11 (February 1953), pp. 25-29.

"Clowns in Clover," New Yorker, Vol. 29 (10 October 1953), pp. 119-125.

"Happy Event," Forum, Vol. 2, No. 8 (November 1953), pp. 34-40. Subsequently appeared under title of "A Matter of Adjustment."

'The Scar," Harper's Magazine, Vol. 208 (March 1954), pp. 35-39. Included under the title 'The Cicatrice" in Six Feet of the Country. 110 "Out of Season," New Yorker, Vol. 30 (20 March 1954), pp. 31-34.

"The Smell of Death and Flowers," New Yorker, Vol. 30 (15 May 1954), pp. 34-42

"A Wand'ring Minstrel, I," Harper's Magazine, Vol. 209 (August 1954), pp. 60-65.

"Which New Era Would That Be?," New Yorker, Vol. 31 (9 July 1955), pp. 25-30.

"Charmed Lives," Harper's Bazaar, No. 2931 (February 1956), p. 110. (This is a different publication than Harper's Magazine.)

"The Pretender," New Yorker, Vol. 32 (24 March 1956), pp. 33-38. Included under the title "My First Two Women" in Six Feet of the Country.

"A Sense of Survival," New Yorker, Vol. 32 (19 May 1956), pp. 31-36. Included under the title "Enemies" in Six Feet of the Country.

"Face from Atlantis," Paris Review, Vol. 13 (Summer 1956), pp. 101-121.

"Horn of Plenty," Six Feet of the Country (London: Gollancz, 1956).

"The White Goddess and the Mealie Question," Six J:eet of the Country (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956).

"The Last Kiss," London Magazine, Vol. 4, No.2 (February 1957), pp. 14-21.

"Little Willie," New Yorker, Vol. 33 (30 March 1957), pp. 28-31.

"Check Yes or No," Mademoiselle, Vol. 45 (June 1957), pp. 82-83 and pp. 122-126.

"Our Bovary," New Yorker, Vol. 33 (28 September 1957), pp. 41-46.

"The Path ofthe Moon's Dark Fortnight," South African P.E.N. Yearbook (1956-57), pp. 67-82.

''The Lady's Past," Cosmopolitan, No. 145 (December 1958), pp. 88-93. Included under the title "A Style of Her Own" in Friday's Footprint.

"A View of the River," New Yorker, Vol. 35 (11 April 1959), pp. 40-50. Included as "Friday's Footprint" in the collection of the same name.

liThe Bridegroom," New Yorker, Vol. 35 (23 May 1959), pp. 36-39.

"An Image of Success," Cosmopolitan, No. 147 (August 1959), pp. 72-83.

"A Thing of the Past," Encounter, Vol. 13, No.3 (September 1959), pp. 3-10.

''The Gentle Art," Mademoiselle, Vol. 50 (November 1959),pp. 106-107and pp. 135-143. 111 "Something for the Time Being," New Yorker, Vol. 35 (9 January 1960), pp. 26-31.

"Something Unexpected," Cosmopolitan, Vol. 148, No.6 (June 1960), pp. 89-93.

"A Company of Laughing Faces," Mademoiselle, Vol. 51 (July 1960), pp. 57-63.

"Neighbours and Friends," Cosmopolitan, Vol. 149, No.2 (August 1960), pp. 76-83.

"A Chip of Glass Ruby," Contrast, Vol. 1, No.1 (Summer 1960), pp. 13-22.

''The Night the Favourite Carne Horne," Friday's Footprint (London: Gollancz, 1960).

"Harry's Presence," Friday's Footprint (London: Gollancz, 1960).

''The African Magician," New Yorker, Vol. 37 (15 July 1961), pp. 27-34.

''Through Time and Distance," Atlantic, Vol. 209 (January 1962), pp. 46-50.

"The Pet," New Yorker, Vol. 38 (24 March 1962), pp. 34-36.

"Message in a Bottle," Kenyon Review, Vol. 24, No.2 (Spring 1962), pp. 227-232.

"Tenants of the Last Tree House," New Yorker, Vol. 38 (15 December 1962), pp. 39-46.

"One Whole Year, and Even More," Kenyon Review, Vol. 26, No.1 (Winter 1964), pp. 93-115.

"Stranger in Town," Harper's Magazine, Vol. 229 (November 1964), pp. 108-110. Included under the title "Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants" in Not for Publication.

''The Worst Thing of AIl," London Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 11 (February 1965), pp. 3-21.

"Proof of Love," Ladies Home Journal, Vol. 82 (February 1965), pp. 80-81. Collected in Not for Publication under the title "Native Country."

"Son-in-Law," Reporter, Vol. 32 (11 March 1965), pp. 37-40.

"Praise; excerpt from Not for Publication," Atlantic, Vol. 215 (April 1965), pp. 99-105. Collected in Not for Publication as "Not for Publication."

"Vital Statistics," Kenyon Review, Vol. 27, no. 1 (Winter 1965), pp. 27-48.

"Some Monday for Sure," Not for Publication (London: Gollancz, 1965).

"Say Something African," New Yorker, Vol. 42 (20 August 1966), pp. 39-40. Collected in Livingstone's Companions under the title "A Meeting in Space."

"A Third Presence," London Magazine, Vol. 6, No.6 (September 1966), pp. 75-84. 112 "Out of the Walls," New Yorker, Vol. 42 (11 February 1967), pp. 34-37. Collected in Livingstone's Companions under the title "An Intruder."

'The Bride of Christ," Atlantic, Vol. 220 (August 1967), pp. 58-67.

"A Satisfactory Settlement," Atlantic, Vol. 221 (January 1968), pp. 54-58.

"Inkalamu's Place," Contrast, Vol. 5, No.2 (July 1968), pp. 13-23.

'The Life of the Imagination," New Yorker, Vol. 44 (9 November 1968), pp. 61-67.

"Open House," Encounter (February 1969).

"Livingstone's Companions," Kenyon Review, Vol. 31, No.2 (1969), pp. 181-214.

"Abroad," Contrast, Vol. 6, No.4 (October 1970), pp. 9-28.

"Why Haven't You Written?," New Yorker, Vol. 47 (27 February i971), pp. 37-42.

"Africa Emergent," London Magazine, Vol. 11, No.3 (August-September 1971), pp. 19 32.

'The Credibility Gap," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972).

"Rain-Queen," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972).

"Otherwise Birds Fly In," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972).

"No Place Like," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972). ~

"You Name It," London Magazine, Vol. 14, No.2 (June-July 1974), 'pp, 5-11.

"A Lion on the Freeway," Harper's Magazine, Vol. 250 (March 1975), pp. 77-78.

"Siblings," Encounter, Vol. 45, No.1 (July 1975), pp. 3-10.

'Town and Country Lovers One," New Yorker, Vol. 51 (13 October 1975), pp. 40-46. Also entitled "City Lovers."

"A Soldier's Embrace," Harper's Magazine, Vol. 252 (January 1976), p. 44.

'Town and Country Lovers Two," London Magazine, Vol. 16, No.3 (August-September 1976), pp. 39-46. Also entitled "Country Lovers."

'The Termitary," London Magazine (August-September 1976). (The contents page ofthis issue does not show such a story.]

"A Hunting Accident," Encounter, Vol. 48, No.3 (March 1977), pp. 3-8. 113 "Oral History," Playboy (May 1977).

'Time Did," London Magazine. Vol. 17, No.5 (November 1977), pp. 11-17.

''The Meeting," Staffrider, Vol. 2, No.2 (April-May 1979), p. 34.

'Rags and Bones, " Harper's, Vol. 259 (October 1979), pp. 88-90. (At the end of 1976 Harper's Magazine was shortened to Harper's.)

"For Dear Life," A Soldier's Embrace (New York: Viking, 1980).

"A Mad One," A Soldier's Embrace (New York: Viking, 1980).

''The Need for Something Sweet," A Soldier's Embrace (New York: Viking, 1980).

"A Correspondence Course," New Yorker, Vol. 56 (16 February 1981), pp. 42-48.

"Crimes of Conscience," Index (December 1981).

"A City of the Dead, A City of the Living," New Yorker, Vol. 58 (5 April 1982), pp. 44 52.

"Sins of the Third Age," Cosmopolitan (August 1982), pp. 137-141, 146.

"At the Rendezvous of Victory," Mother Jones (February-March 1983).

'Terminal," The Fiction Magazine, Vol. 2, No.1 (Spring 1983), pp. 14-15.

'Tourism," London Magazine, Vol. 23, No.3 (June 1983), pp. 5-11.

"Blinder," Boston Globe (24 July 1983). • "Letter from his Father," London Review of Books, Vol. 5 (20 October 1983).

"Something Out There," Salmagundi (January 1984).

''What were you Dreaming?," Granta, No. 15 (Spring 1985), pp. 155-164.

"Spoils," Granta, No. 22 (Autumn 1987), pp. 197-208.

"Teraloyna," Cosaw Journal, No.1 (November 1988), pp. 28-32.

"Once Upon a Time," Weekly Mail (23 December 1988), p. 31.

''The Ultimate Safari," Granta, No. 28 (Autumn 1989), pp. 59-69.

"Comrades," Weekly Mail (11 October 1991), p. 30. 114

B. Stories Selected for Discussion

"A Chip of Glass Ruby," Not for Publication (London: Gollancz, 1965), pp. 104-113.

"A City of the Dead, A City of the Living," Something Out There (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1984), pp. 10-26.

"A Lion on the Freeway," A Soldier's Embrace (London: Penguin, 1982), pp. 24-27.

"A Present for a Good Girl," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949), pp. 82-93.

"A Satisfactory Settlement," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972), pp. 207 218.

"A Soldier's Embrace," A Soldier's Embrace (London: Penguin, 1982), pp. 8-22.

"Abroad," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972), pp. 61-82.

"Africa Emergent," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972), pp. 233-248.

"Ab, Woe is Me," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949), pp. 16-25.

"At the Rendezvous of Victory,"Something Out There (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1984), pp. 28-38.

"Blinder," Something Out There (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1984), pp. 80-88.

"For Dear Life," A Soldier's Embrace (London: Penguin, 1982), pp. 68-72.

"Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants," Not For Publication (London: Gollancz, 1965), pp. 146-158.

"Happy Event," Six Feet of the Country (London: Gollancz, 1956), pp. 32-46.

"Hom of Plenty," Six Feet of the Country (London: Gollancz, 1956), pp. 116-133.

"Inkalamu's Place," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972), pp. 93-105.

"Monday is Better than Sunday," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949), pp. 156-164.

"No Luck Tonight," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949), pp. 133-143.

"Not For Publication," Not For Publication (London: Gollancz, 1965), pp. 7-21. 115 "Open House," Livingstone's Companions (London: Cape, 1972), pp. 139-151.

"Oral History," A Soldier's Embrace (London: Penguin, 1982), pp. 134-144.

"Poet and Peasant," Hasholom Rosh Hashonah Annual (September 1949), pp. 26-31 and p.47.

"Six Feet of the Country," Six Feet of the Country (London: Gollancz, 1956), pp. 8-20.

"Some Monday for Sure," Not For Publication (London: Gollancz, 1965), pp. 193-208.

"Something for the Time Being," Fridav's Footprint (London: Gollancz, 1960), pp. 225 236.

"Something Out There," Something Out There (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1984), pp. 118 203.

"Sweet Dreams Selection," Common Sense (November 1949), pp. 501-505.

"Teraloyna," Cosaw Journal, No.1 (November 1988), pp. 28-32.

"The African Magician," Not For Publication (London: GolIancz, 1965), pp. 114-128.

"The Amateurs," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949), pp. 72-81.

"The Bridegroom," Friday's Footprint (London: GolIancz, 1960), pp, 82-91.

''The Catch," The Soft Voice of the Serpent (New York: Viking, 1952), pp. 8-25.

"The Defeated," The Soft Voice of the Serpent (New York: Viking, 1952), pp. 194-212.

''The Kindest Thing to Do," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949), pp. 120-127.

''The Menace of the Years," The South African Opinion (June 1945), pp. 18-20.

''The Peace of Respectability," The South African Opinion (February 1945), pp. 10-11 and p. 31.

''The Pet," Not for Publication (London: Gollancz, 1965), pp. 78-82.

''The Shoes," The South African Opinion (May 1944), pp. 21-22.

''The Smell of Death and Flowers," Six Feet of the Country (London: Gollancz, 1956), pp. 200-223.

''The Train from Rhodesia," Face to Face (Johannesburg: Silver Leaf Books, 1949), pp. 94-100. 116 'Town and Country Lovers One,1I A Soldier's Embrace (London: Penguin, 1982), pp. 74 84.

'Town and COUITtry Lovers Tho,1I A Soldier's Embrace (London: Penguin, 1982), pp. 86 93.

"Which New Era would that be?," Six Feet of the Country (London: Gol1ancz, 1956), pp. 82-97.

c. Other writing by Gorclimer

IIA Bolter and the Invincible Summer," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 15-22.

"Afterword: 'The Prison-House of Colonialism,'" Olive Schreiner, Cherry Clayton (ed.) (Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1983).

"Apartheid and 'The primary homeland," Index, Vol. 1, Nos. 3-4 (Autumn-Winter 1972), pp.25-29.

"Censored, Banned, Gagged," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg:.Taurus, 1988), pp. 49-56.

"Chief Luthuli," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 31-41.

IIHow Not to Know the African," Contrast, Vol. 14, No.3 (March 1967), pp. 45-49.

''Letter from Johannesburg, 1976,11, The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 99-110.

''Letter from Johannesburg, 1985,11 The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 251-258.

"Literature and Politics in South Africa," Southern Review, Vol. 7, No.3 (1974), pp. 205 227.

'''Living in the Interregnum,'" The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 219-237.

"Relevance and Commitment," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 111-119.

"SouthAfrica:Towards a Desk Drawer Literature," The Oassic, Vol. 2, No.4 (1968), pp. 64-74. 117 "South Africa: Towards a Desk Drawer Literature," The Classic, Vol. 2, No.4 (1968), pp. 64-74.

"Speak Out: The Necessity for Protest," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (J.ohannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 73-85.

"The Congo River," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 133-155.

The Conservationist (London: Penguin, 1978).

"The Fischer Case," London Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 12 (March 1966), pp. 21-30.

"Where do Whites Fit in?," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 25-30.

"Why did Bram Fischer Choose Jail?," The Essential Gesture, Stephen Clingman (ed.) (Johannesburg: Taurus, 1988), pp. 57-65.

D. Interviews with Gordimer

Bazin, Nancy T. and Seymour, Marilyn D. (eds.), Conversations with Nadine Gordimer (Jackson and London: Mississippi University Press, 1990).

Boyers, Robert; Blaise, Clark; Diggory, Terence, and Elgrably, Jordan, "A Conversation with Nadine Gordimer," Salmagundi, No. 62 (Winter 1984), pp. 3-31.

Cooper-Clark, Diana, ''The Clash," London Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 11 (February 1983), pp.45-59.

Olivier, Gerrit, '''n Onderhoud met Nadine Gordimer," Die Vaderland (24 September 1981), pp. 36-39.

Terkel, Studs, "Nadine Gordimer," Perspective on Ideas and the Arts, Vol. 12, No.3 (May 1963), pp. 42-49.

Tetteh-Lartey, Alex, Arts and Africa, BBC, London. (First broadcast: 1004.87.) Transcript of five pages. 118

SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Books

Clingman, Stephen R., The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986).

Clingman, Stephen R. (ed.), Nadine Gordimer: The Essential Gesture (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Taurus and David Philip, 1988).

Cooke, John, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: Private LivesfPublic Landscapes (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985).

Haugh, Robert F., Nadine Gordimer (New York: Twayne, 1974).

Heywood, Christopher, Nadine Gordimer (Windsor, Berks.: Profile, 1983).

Newman, Judie, Nadine Gordimer, Contemporary Writers Series (London: Routledge, 1988).

Wade, Michael, Nadine Gordimer (London: Evans, 1978).

B. Articles

Abrahams, L., "Nadine Gordimer: The Transparent Ego," English Studies in Africa, Vol. 3, No.2 (September, 1960), pp. 146-51.

Anonymous, "South African Short Story Writer," Trek, Vol. 12, No. 10 (October 1948), pp.24-25.

Delius, Anthony, "Danger from the Digit," Standpunte, Vol. 7, No.3 (April 1953), pp. 80 92. Looks at The Soft Voice of the Serpent.

Driver, Dorothy, "Nadine Gordimer: The Politicisation of Women," English in Africa, Grahamstown, Vol. 10, No.2 (October 1983), pp. 29-54. Looks at some short stories.

Eckstein, Barbara, "Pleasure and Joy: Activism in Nadine Gordimer's Short Stories," World Literature Today, Vol. 59, No.3 (1985), pp. 343-346.

Gardner, W. H., ''Moral Somnambulism: A Study in Racial Contrasts," The Month. London, Vol. 18 (September 1957), pp. 16L -169. 119 Githii, E. W., "Nadine Gordimer's Selected Stories," Critique: Studies in Modem Fiction. Atlanta, Georgia, Vol. 22, No.3 (1981), pp. 45-54.

Gullason, Thomas H., 'The Short StorysAn Underrated Art," Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 2, No.1 (Fall 1964), pp. 13-31. See especially 'The Train from Rhodesia."

Holland, Roy, 'The Critical Writing of Nadine Gordimer," Communique, Vol. 7, No.2 (September 1982), pp. 7-37.

Jacobs, J. U., "Living Space and Narrative Space in Nadine Gordimer's Something out . There," English in Africa, Vol. 14, No.2 (October, 1987), pp. 31-43.

. Kanfer, Stefan, "Restless White Conscience," Time (26 June 1989), pp. 48-50.

King, Michael, "Race and History in the Stories ofNadine Gordimer," Africa Insight, Vol. 13, No.3 (1983), pp. 222-226.

Lazar, Karen, "Feminism as 'Piffling'?: Ambiguities in Nadine Gordimer's Short Stories," Unpublished paper delivered at History Workshop: Structure and Experience in the Making of Apartheid, University of the Witwatersrand (6-10 February 1990).

Link, Viktor, ''The African Magician and his Western Audience: Norms in Nadine Gordimer's 'The African Magician,'" Commonwealth: Essays and Studies, Dijon, Vol. 11, No.2 (Spring 1989), pp. 104-109.

Maclennan, Don, "The South African Short Story," English Studies in Africa, Vol. 13, No. 1 (March 1970), pp. 105-123. Comments on "Clowns in Clover" and "Happy Event."

Maclennan, Don, ''The Vacuum Pump: The Fiction of Nadine Gordimer," Upstream, Vol. t, No. 1 (Summer 1989), pp. 30-33.

Magarey, Kevin, "Cutting the Jewel: Facets of Art in Nadine Gordimer's Short Stories," Southern Review, Adelaide, Vol. 7 (1974), pp.-3-28.

McGuinness, Frank, 'The Novels of Nadine Gordimer," London Magazine (June 1965), pp. 97-102. Also looks at some short stories.

Nowak, Helena, "Soviet Literary Critics on Nadine Gordimer," Contrast, Vol. 16, No.2 (December 1986), pp. 65-68. ..

Roberts, Sheila, "Nadine Gordimer's 'Family of Women,'" Theoria, No. 60 (May 1983), pp.45-57.

Ross, Alan, itAWriter in South Africa: Nadine Gordimer," London Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1965), pp. 21-28. Includes "The Worst Thing of All,"

Sachs, Joseph, ''The Short Stories ofGordimer, Lessing and Bosman," Trek, Vol. 15, No. 11 (November 1951), pp. 15-16. 120 Schroth, Evelyn, "Nadine Gordimer's 'A Chip of Glass Ruby': A Commentary on Apartheid Society," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 17, No, 1 (December 1986), pp, 85-90,

Smith, Rowland, "Leisure,Law and Loathing: Matrons, Mistresses, Mothers in the Fiction of Nadine Gordimer and Jillian Becker," World Literature Written in English, Vol. 28, No, 1 (Spring 1988), pp. 41-58.

Smith, Rowland, "Inside and Outside: Nadine Gordimer and the Critics," Ariel, Calgary, Vol. 19, No.4 (October 1988), pp. 3-42. A Nadine Gordimer number.

Smyer, R. I., "Africa in the Fiction of Nadine Gordimer," Ariel, Vol. 16, No.2 (April 1985), pp. 15-29. Novels and short stories are looked at.

Trump, Martin, "The Short Fiction of Nadine Gordimer," Research in African Literatures, Vol. 17, No.3 (Fall, 1986), pp. 341-369.

Woodward, Anthony, "Nadine Gordimer," Theoria, Vol. 16 (1961), pp. 1-12.

C. Theses

Cooke, John Wharton, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer, Ph. D. (Northwestern University, 1976).

David, R, South African Prose Fiction of the Past Two Decades, M. A (University of Liverpool, 1966-7). Chapter 3,.section 2, partly examines short stories and Appendix III discusses Not for Publication..

De Koker, Benjamin, The. Short Stories and Novels of Nadine Gordimer: A Critical Study. M. A (University of Potchefstroom, 1962). Pp. 1-127 are devoted to the short stories and pp. 127-163 to the novels.

King, Michael, A Study of the Development of the Structures and Themes in the Short Stories of Nadine Gordimer, M. A (University of Cape Town, 1983). .

Lazar, Karen R., The Personal and the Political in Some Short Stories by Nadine Gordimer. M. A (University of the Witwatersrand, 1989).

Ledbetter, Dorothy E., The Theme of Isolation in the Short Stories of Nadine Gordimer, M. A (San Diego State College, May 1969).

Miller, C. J., The Contemporary South African Short Story in English, M. A (University of Cape Town, 1962).

Roloff, B.J., Gordimer: South African Novelist and Short Story Writer, M. A (University of Texas, Austin, 1962). See Chapters II - Criticism of the Short Story and IV Treatment of Blacks and Whites in the Short Story. 121 Roloff, B. J., Gordirner: South African Novelist and Short Story Writer, M. A (University of Texas, Austin, 1962). See Chapters II - Criticism of the Short Story and N Treatment of Blacks and Whites in the Short Story.

Rossouw, Daniel G., The Poetic Image: A Critical Study of its Functions, Varieties and Values in the Work of Representative Contemporary South African Writers in English, M. A (University of the Orange Free State, 1960). Part III, Chapter II, pp. 212-250 looks at Gordimer.

Wessels, Johannes Hermanus, From Olive Schreiner to Nadine Gordimer: A Study ofthe Development of the South African Short Story in English, M. A (University of the Orange Free State, 1974). He evaluates Gordimer's stories and her contribution; concludes that she occasionally 'overwrites.'

D. Bibliographies

Cooke, John, "Nadine Gordimer: A Bibliography," Bulletin of Bibliography, Westwood, Vol. 36, No.2, (1979), pp. 81-84.

Green, Robert, "Nadine Gordimer: A Bibliography of Works and Criticism," Bulletin of Bibliography, Vol. 42, No.1 (March 1985), pp. 5-11.

Nell, Racilia Jilian (comp.), Nadine Gordimer: Novelist and Short Story Writer: A Bibliography of her Works and Selected Literary Criticism (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand, 1964).

E. Reviews

Face to Face

Rabkin, Lily, "South African Writer," Vol. 12, No. 24, The Forum (17 September 1949), p.28.

Sachs, Joseph, "Review of Face to Face," Trek, Vol. 13, No. 10 (October 1949), p. 26.

The Soft Voice of the Serpent

Anon., "Awkward Moments," Times Literary Supplement (27 February 1953), p. 133.

Barkham, John, "Africa Smiles," Saturday Review, Vol. 35 (24 May 1952), p. 22.

Hayes, Richard, "The Moment of Illumination," ~ommonweal, No. 56 (30 May 1952), p. 204. 122 Peden, William, "Stories from Africa," New York Times Book Review (15 June 1952), p.17.

Stallings, Sylvia, "New Talent Out of Africa," New York Times Book Review (25 May 1952), p. 7. See especially "The Train from Rhodesia."

Tracy, Honor, "Review of The Soft Voice of the Serpent," New Statesman, No. 45 (11 April 1953), pp. 433-434.

Six Feet of the Country

Allan, Walter, "New Short Stories," New Statesman (18 August 1956), p. 191.

Anon., "Six Feet of the Country," Times Literary Supplement (13 July 1956), p. 421.

Green, Molly, Review of Six Feet of the Country, The Cape Times (21 September 1982).

Slack, D., Review of Six Feet of the Country, The Star (27 July 1983).

Stallings, Sylvia, "Stories ofLove and Irony," New York Herald Tribune Book Review (21 October 1956), p. 3.

Wyndham, Francis, Review of SixFeet of the Country, London Magazine, Vol. 3 (August 1956), pp. 67-69.

Friday's Footprint

Anon., "Accept with Pleasure," The Atlantic Monthly, No. 205 (January 1960), p. 65. Review of "The Bridegroom."

Anon., ''The Past Catching Up," Times Literary Supplement (12 February 1960), p. 93.

Chase, Mary Ellen, "Miss Gordimer's Fine, True Art in Another Brilliant Collection," New York Herald Tribune Book Review (10 January 1960), p. 54.

Hendricks, David, Review of Friday's Footprint, The Purple Renoster, Vol. 4 (Summer 1960), pp. 85-87.

Lewis, Naomi, "Short Stories," New Statesman, No. 59 (20 February 1960), p. 263.

Wakeman, John, "Below the Surface of Life," New York Times Book Review (18 January 1960), p. 39.

Weeks, E., Review of Friday's Footprint, Atlantic, Vol. 205 (January 1960), pp. 547-548.

Not for Publication 123 Holzhauer, Jean, "Not for Publication," Commonweal, No. 82 (9 July 1965), p. 511.

Nkosi, Lewis, "Les Grandes Dames," New African, Vol. 4, No.7 (September 1965), p. 163.

Potter, Nancy A J., "Not for Publication," Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 3 (Fall, 1965), pp.86-87.

Tracy, Honor, "A Bouquet from Nadine Gordimer," The New Republic, No. 152 (8 May 1965), pp. 25-26. See especially "African Magician."

Livingstone's Companions

Feinstein, Elaine, "Ghostly Gardens," London Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 3 (August September 1972), pp. 159-160.

Gray, Stephen, "Gordimer's Territory," Supplement to The Star (1 July 1972), p. 5.

Gullason, Thomas, "Review of Livingstone's Companions," Saturday Review, New York (4 December 1971), p. 52.

Marquard, Jean, "Sy Tik ons Hard op die Vingers," Rapport (27 August 1972), p. 6.

Marquard, Jean, "Cryptic Realism," Contrast, Vol. B, No.2 (April 1973), p. 84.

Selected Stories

Case, Frederick Ivor, "Nadine Gordimer, Selected Stones," World Literature Written in English, Vol. 17, No.1 (April 1975), pp. 54-55. .•

Cunningham, Valentine, "Native Daughter," New Statesman (28 November 1975), p. 686.

Jones, D. A N., "Limited by the Law," Times Literary Supplement (9 January 1976), p. 25.

Kermode, Frank, "Coming Up for Air," New York Review of Books, Vol. 23, No. 12 (15 July 1976), pp. 42-44.

Mortimer, Penelope, "Review of Nadine Gordimer, Selected Stories," New York Times Book Review (18 April 1976), p. 7.

Nye, Robert, "Something True about Humans in any Environment," The Christian Science Monitor (5 July 1976), p. 24.

Pogrund, Anne, "Fruits of a Restless Mind," Rand Daily Mail (3 May 1976), p. 9.

Stem, James, "Collective Guilt," London Magazine (April-May 1976), pp. 109-112. 124 A Soldier's Embrace

Anon., "A Soldier's Embrace," Transvaler (15 March 1982).

Anon., Review of A Soldier's Embrace, The Listener (24 April 1980), pp. 547-548.

Anon., Review of A Soldier's Embrace, Illustrated London News (July 1980), p. 69.

Auchincloss, Eve, "Out of Africa," Time (11 August 1980).

Beard, L. S., "Review of A Soldier's Embrace," Ba Shiru, Vol. 12, No.2 (1985), pp. 97-98.

Birkby, Carel, "Gordimer - Deep Wells of Lonely Sadness," To the Point, Vol. 3 (October 1980), p. 54.

Breslin, J. B., "Review of A Soldier's Embrace," America, Vol. 143 (11 October 1980), p.214.

Clayton, Cherry, "Gordimer's New Collection Shows up Her Strengths," Rand Daily Mail (8 December 1980), p. 10.

Daymond, Margaret, "Disintegration, Isolation, Compassion," The Bloody Horse, Vol. 1, No.4 (1981), pp. 91-94.

Gray, Paul, "Something of a Jamesian Quality," The Star (24 September 1980).'Copy of review of A Soldier's Embrace in the Sunday Times, London.

La Salle, Peter, "More Moving Fiction from Nadine Gordimer," Africa Today (April-June 1984), pp. 69-70. ;

~e, Hermione, "Bending the Bars," New Statesman (16 May 1980), p. 751.

Motjabai, A G., "Review of A Soldier's Embrace," New York Times Book Review (24 August 1980), p. 7.

Thompson, John, "Perilous Relations," New York Review, Vol. 27, No. 16 (22 October 1980), p. 46.

Tuohy, Frank, "Breaths ofChange," Times Literary Supplement (25 April 1980), p. 462.

Something Out There

Anon., ''Nadine Stel Stelsel Self aan die Woord," Kalender, supplement to the Beeld (10 September 1984).

Anon., "Review of Something Out There," Frontline, Vol. 5 (2 December 1984), p. 59. 125 Bowers, Frances, "Familiar Themes of Nadine Gordimer," The Cape Times (4 July 1984), p. 6.

Clayton, Cherry, "Review ofSomething Out There," Leadership South Africa, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April-June 1984), p. 141.

Clingman, Stephen, "Writing Out There," English Academy Review, Vol. 3 (1985), pp. 191-201.

Du Plessis, Menan, "Literary Realism at its Furthest Limits," Contrast, Vol. 15, No.3 (July 1985), pp. 84-92.

Enright, D. J., "Which New Era?," Times Literary Supplement (30 March 1984), p. 328.

Gibson, P., "Novella Highlights Society's Dilemmas," The Daily News (29 May 1986), p. 27.

Gray, Paul, "Tales of Privacy and Politics," Time (23 July 1984).

Marquard, J., Review of Something Out There, Frontline, Vol. 5, No.2 (December 1984).

Mellors, John, "Review of Something Out There," London Magazine, Vol. 24, No.3 (June 1984), p. 101.

Minervini, Rina, "Society made them...," Rand Daily Mail (4 June 1984).

Rushdie, Salman, "No One is Ever Safe," The New York Times Book Review (29 July 1984), pp. 7-8.

Symons, Julian, ''The Conscience of South Africa," The Sunday Times, London (March 1984).

F. South African History

Saunders, Christopher, The Making of the South African Past (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988).

Wilson, Monica and Thompson, Leonard, The Oxford History of South Africa, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). 126 G. General Theory and Criticism

A., H. B., "Towards a Critique of Women in Struggle," Africa Perspective (July 1979), pp. 72-88.

Africa Perspective, No. 15 (Autumn 1980), Editorial Comment.

Barrett, Michele, Women's Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis (London: Verso, 1980).

Bassnett, Susan, Feminist Experiences (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986).

Bell, Jocelyn A., "Women's Role in the Economy as Consumers, Producers, Investors and Entrepreneurs," Paper presented to the Convention on Women, Leadership and Development, held in Pretoria (15-17 January 1988).

Brown, A, "The Colony of the Colonised: Notes on Race, Class and Sex," Race Today, Vol. 5 (1973), pp. 169-170.

Cock, Jacklyn, "Domesticity and Domestication: A Note on the Articulation of Sexual Ideology and the Initial Incorporation of Black Women into Wage Labour," Africa Perspective, No. 13 (Spring 1979), pp. 16-26.

Cock, Jackie, "Domestic Servants in the Political Economy of South Africa," Africa Perspective, No. 15 (Autumn 1980), pp. 42-53.

Cock, Jacklyn, and Emdon, Erica, "'Let Me Make History Please': The Story of Johanna Masilela, Childminder," in Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives, Belinda Bozzoli (ed.) (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987).

Critical Inquiry, "Race,' Writing, and Difference," Vol. 12, No.1 (Autumn 1985).

Davis, Angela, Women, Race and Class (London: The Women's Press, 1982).

Degenaar, J. J., 'Die Verhouding tussen Letterkunde en Samelewing," Verslag van die Simposium oar Die Sestigers, J. Polley (ed.) (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 1973), pp. 152-160.

Degenaar, J. J., '''n Marxistiese Perspektief op Suid-Afrika," Standpunte, Vol. 35, No.1 (February 1982), pp. 50-56.

Delphy, Christine and Leger, Daniele, "Debate on Capitalism, Patriarchy, and the Women's Struggle," Feminist Issues, No.1 (1980), pp. 41-50.

Duncan, Sheena, "General Questions on the Position of Black Women in South Africa: An Interview with Sheena Duncan " Africa Perspective, No. 15 (Autumn 1980), pp. 56-69. 127 Eagleton, Terry, Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).

Evans, Mary, "In Praise of Theory: The Case for Women's Studies," Theories of Women's Studies, Gloria Bowles and Renate DueIli Klein (eds.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 219-228.

Gamarnikow, Eva, Morgan, David, Purvies, June and Taylorson, Daphne (eds.), Gender, Class and Work (London: Heinemann, 1983).

Green, R. J., "The Politics of Race," World Literature Written in English, Arlington, Vol. 16 (1977), pp. 256-262.

Hassim, Shireen, Metelerkamp, Jo and Todes, Alison, " 'A Bit on the Side'?: Gender Struggles in the Politics of Transformation in South Africa," Transformation, Vol. 5 (1987), pp. 3-32.

Kaplan, Ann, "Feminist Criticism: A Survey with Analysis of Methodological Problems," Papers on Women's Studies, No.1 (1974), pp. 150-176.

Kelly-Gadol, Joan, ''The Social Relation of the Sexes: Methodological Implications of Women's History," ~ Vol. 1 (Summer 1976), pp. 809-823. fI

Kuhn, Annette, and Wolpe, AnnMarie (eds.), Feminism and Materialism: Women and Modes of Production (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).

Magarey, Kevin, ''The South African Novel and Race," Southern Review, Adelaide, Vol. 1 (1963), pp. 27-45.

Malan, Charles (ed.), Race and Literature (Durban: Owen Burgess, 1987).

Newton, Judith and Rosenfelt, Deborah, Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class and Race in Literature and Culture (New York: Methuen, 1985).

Pillay, Pundy, "Women in Employment in South Africa: Some Important Trends and Issues," Social Dynamics, Vol. 11, No.2 (1985), pp. 20-37.

Posel, Deborah, "Language, Legitimation and Control: The South African State after 1978," Social Dynamics, Vol. 10, No.1 (June 1984), pp. 1-16.

Robinson, Lillian, Sex, Oass and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).

Ounta, Christine N. (ed.), Women in Southern Africa (Johannesburg: Skotaville, 1987).

Saunders, Christopher, ''Towards Understanding South Africa's Past: Reflections on Recent Developments in History Writing in English," South Africa International, Vol. 19, No.2 (October 1988), pp. 65-73. 128 Smart, Carol and Smart, Barry (eds.), Women, Sexuality and Social Control (London: Routledge and Paul, 1978).

Stimpson, Catharine R., IIAd/d Feminam: Women, Literature, and Society" in Said, Edward (ed.), Literature and Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).

Vogel, Lise, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1983).

Women in Society (Lectures delivered at vcr Summer School, February 1973).

Yawitch, Joanne, "Sexism and the Sexual Division of Labour in South Africa," Africa Perspective, No. 13 (Spring 1979), pp. 27-33.