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Diplomarbeit / Diploma Thesis DIPLOMARBEIT / DIPLOMA THESIS Titel der Diplomarbeit / Title of the Diploma Thesis “‘Yesterday’s another country’ – Losing the Farm in Mark Behr’s Kings of the Water and Marlene Van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women” verfasst von / submitted by Ulrike Gartlehner BEd angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Magistra der Philosophie (Mag. phil.) Wien, 2016 / Vienna, 2016 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 190 344 313 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Lehramtsstudium UF Englisch UF Geschichte, degree programme as it appears on Sozialkunde und Politische Bildung the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. DDr. Ewald Mengel Für Mama und Papa In Liebe und Dankbarkeit i Declaration of Authenticity I confirm to have conceived and written this paper in English all by myself. Quotations from other authors are all clearly marked and acknowledged in the bibliographical references within the text. Any ideas borrowed and/or passages paraphrased from the works of other authors are equally truthfully acknowledged and identified. .................................................................. Wien, März 2016 Ulrike Gartlehner iii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor, Prof. DDr. Ewald Mengel, whose guidance and support enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject. Thank you, also, for passing on your passion for South African Literature to me. Furthermore, I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents for their love, moral and financial support, and unwavering belief in me. But above all, I thank you, Mama and Papa, for the weeks you took loving care of my children, so I could eventually write my thesis. To Jürgen and Sandra, thank you for providing your office and plenty of coffee during the writing process, and, to Harald as well, thanks for your support throughout my life. A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles: So, I want to thank my friends Angie and Lisa for joining me on this adventure over the last few years. Last, but not least, I want to thank Stefan for his invaluable support and patience. Your unconditional love provided me with the strength to go on, and I am looking forward to share countless wonderful moments with you and our children Johannes, Lukas, and Theresa. I love you! v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 2. “Time. Chance. Coincidence”: The Making of South Africa ............. 3 2.1 Colonialism ............................................................................................................ 3 2.2 Apartheid ............................................................................................................... 7 2.3 Post-Apartheid and the Land Question ............................................................ 10 3. Afrikaner Identity Construction ......................................................... 12 4. The History of the Plaasroman ............................................................ 16 4.1 Origins and Development of the Genre ............................................................ 17 4.2 The Plaasroman in the Context of South African Literature ......................... 19 4.3 Early Patterns of the Plaasroman ..................................................................... 22 4.4 The Plaasroman Revisited .................................................................................. 25 4.5 Brief summary ..................................................................................................... 26 5. The Plaasroman of the New Millennium: Self , the Other and the Quest for Identity .................................................................................. 27 6. The Way of the Women ........................................................................ 29 6.1. Narrative Structure and Plot Overview ........................................................... 29 6.2 Mapping Identities .............................................................................................. 33 6.2.1 'Because the map I still must see' ................................................................... 34 6.2.2 'There is another story here': The map’s ‘blind spots’ ................................... 38 6.2.3 Metaphorical maps: Agaat's embroidery ....................................................... 42 6.3 Losing the Farm? — Shifting Powers on Grootmoedersdrift ........................ 47 6.3.1 ‘Mrs. Soil Expert’ and the ‘Soilmaster’: Milla’s struggle for power ............. 48 6.3.2 ‘Regent of the whole Tradouw’: Agaat’s empowering presence ................... 53 6.3.3 Paradise lost: Agaat’s coming to power ........................................................ 57 6.3.4 Paradise regained ........................................................................................... 62 vi 7. Kings of the Water ................................................................................ 66 7.1 Intertextuality and the all-pervasive Question of Identity .............................. 67 7.2 Michiel’s fall from ‘Paradys’ ............................................................................. 71 7.3 Homecoming and an Identity Restored ............................................................ 75 7.4 The Possibility of Losing the Farm in the Light of New Realities .................. 80 8. Conclusion ............................................................................................. 85 9. Bibliography .......................................................................................... 90 9.1 Primary Sources .................................................................................................. 90 9.2 Secondary Sources .............................................................................................. 90 9.3 Online Sources ..................................................................................................... 94 10. Index ..................................................................................................... 96 11. Appendix .............................................................................................. 99 11.1 Abstract .............................................................................................................. 99 11.2 Abstract (German) .......................................................................................... 101 11.3 Curriculum Vitae ............................................................................................ 103 1 1. Introduction Besides farming the land in a spirit of piety towards voorgeslagte and nageslagte (past and future generations), besides being a good steward, the farmer must also love the farm, love this one patch of earth above all others [...] (Coetzee (c) 86). In his groundbreaking work White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (1988), J.M Coetzee ((c) 99) explores the very soul of the Boer, the South African farmer and discloses how the Afrikaner’s sense of Self was closely associated with a “devotion of labour to the past and future of the farm […], signed above all with the scars of the plough“ for generations. Throughout his analysis Coetzee portrays the Plaas as the last sanctuary of Boer identity and reveals the predominant position land and landscape receive in South African literature in general, and in the Plaasroman in specific. In accordance with Coetzee’s notion, Ewald Mengel (157), too, draws special attention to the Plaas, as a manifestation of white authority and the “cornerstone of [Boer] identity“. Moreover, Mengel (158) comprehends the farm as a symbolic space, reflecting South Africa’s political, social, and economic realities. Thus, the Plaasroman not only emerges as an invaluable source for an exploration of Afrikaner identity, but, in the light of the topicality and explosiveness of the question of rightful landownership in the context of post-apartheid South Africa’s attempts to redistribute land unrightfully seized from the native population in the early 20th century, the farm novels of the new millennium are, undoubtedly, highly relevant contributions to the prominent discourses about identity and reconciliation in South Africa’s post- apartheid era. In this respect, this thesis sets out to investigate how the depiction of the farm, in two selected contemporary Plaasromane (i.e Marlene Van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women (2004) and Mark Behr’s Kings of the Water (2009)), determines and reflects the protagonists' conception of their Self. The analysis investigates, in particular, the correlation between conceptual power relations and the main characters’ relationship with the land, and furthermore explores the farm as an identity forming place. For this purpose, this thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach and establishes the analysis on three different levels: First of all, this research paper provides a historical analysis and outline of the socio- political events decisive for the South African’s present-day identity crisis in order to contextualize Van Niekerk’s and Behr’s novels, for those works display, as the majority of South African literature, an “obsessive preoccupation with the past” (Mengel 147). In 2 addition, a historical disquisition on South Africa’s colonial era, as well as on events such as the Great Trek, or the Anglo- Boer Wars, is inevitable in order
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