The Representation of the Farm in Three South African Novels: Olive

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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 [Unpublished]: University of Johannesburg.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). Lf. 10 "]""ouB

THE REPRESENTATION OF THE FARM IN THREE SOUTH AFRICAN NOVELS:

OLIVE SCHREINER'S THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM; PAULINE

SMITH'S THE BEADLE; AND J.M. COETZEE'S IN THE HEART OF THE

COUNTRY.

MARTHA MARGARETHA JOUBERT

SUBMITTED TO SATISFY THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS.

RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 1988.

SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR CA CLAYTON ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. C A. Clayton, for her guidance, inspiration, and unfailing support. I would also like to thank each individual person who has contributed towards the finalizing of this dissertation. CONTENTS

PAGE

Chapter 1 1

Chapter 2 20

Chapter 3 46

Chapter 4 67

Chapter 5 88

Conclusion 111

Bibliography 113 CHAPTER 1

In the following dissertation, the literary representation of the farm in

Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (18%3), Smith's The Beadle (1926), and

Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1976) will be examined under two main

categories. The first is the treatment of the farm landscape, or the specifically '* South African version of the pastoral myth. The second, and interrelated category, is the stereotypic vision that originated around the inhabitants of the South

African farm. In both categories the focus will fallon the stereotypes1 of both

land and inhabitants that existed at the time that Schreiner and Smith wrote, and

the ways in which these stereotypes were used, modified, or expanded by these two

authors. In the final chapter I shall examine Coetzee's ironic use of these

stereotypes, especially those that were created around the farm landscape during

the nineteenth century.

Because the woman is so important in all three of the novels mentioned above, both

aspects of the literary representation of the farm will be regarded mainly from

the viewpoint of the woman's role in the pastoral novel. Both Schreiner and Smith

were English-speaking colonial women writing about women on the South African farm »0 .:. Lyndall and Em in The Story of an African Farm, and Andrina in The Beadle. The farm landscape is therefore inevitably presented partly through an English colonial

woman's eyes.

./ In this chapter I shall examine the myths and stereotypes that originated around

the South African farm and its inhabitants in travel literature and other

non-fictional literature about the Cape Colony. The writers of these non-fictional

1 'stereotype I can be defined as a crude, flattened version of reality, easy to use because it is in a simplified form. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines 'stereotype' as "anything undistinguished by individual marks" p.967.

1 accounts of the Cape Colony and its inhabitants tended to describe both the Boer and the Boer woman in the same terms, and therefore the same stereotypes were

created for both the man and the woman on the South African farm. It is in popular

literature, as the next chapter will demonstrate, that other European stereotypes

of the woman (such as the angel and the whore) were added.

The 'native' in the English South African farm novel2 is very much part of the

African background, and as such is used either to enhance the specifically African

atmosphere of the novel, or to add to the pastoral quality of the farm landscape.

~f The following scene from Jack and his Ostrich (E. Stredder, 1893) demonstrates

this point, and recalls a similar scene in The Story of an African Farm:

(H)ere at Jaarsveldt the more abundant water had partly covered the Karroo with a coat of green. In the very crevices of the loosely-built stone walls, dark green leaves peeped forth to the rising sunshine, and on the tumble-down sad walls by the Kafir hut, luxurious chick-weed was tangled with the glistening leaves of the ice-plant. A Kafir maid at her early dairy-work was singing a low-voiced chant in sleepy tones, which more nearly resembled the hum of the honey-laden bees than any other sound; whilst the growing sunlight tinted all around with the golden hue of the ripened corn. (p.lon

The native sometimes symbolizes the threat that 'dark' Africa poses to the white

colonist, especially to women. In Penny Rose (F.E. Young, 1930), for example,

the heroine is raped by a black man:

Out of the darkness there sprang a human shape; a shape terrible, powerfUl, sinister; dark as the night was dark, and evil as the beasts of prey which prowl the veld in search of plunder. The dark figure leaped upon Penny Rose and (she) realised that she was in imminent danger from the terrible black peril which menaced every white woman, unprotected, in the loneliness of the veld. (p.213)

2 The term 'farm novel' refers to a novel that has the farm as setting. For purposes of this dissertation I have chosen a group of popular farm novels written in or about South Africa by English (and in most cases, colonial) authors, in order to examine the cruder versions of the stereotypes that developed around the South African farm and its inhabitants. I shall use the term 'native' throughout to refer to the indigenous people of South Africa.

2 Because the 'native' generally blends in with the farm background both in The

Beadle and in The Story of an African Farm! I shall be discussing the black woman's

role only as she is placed in the patriarchal system as well as the racial system

that exist on the South African farm.

* * *

In this dissertation, more than one meaning is attached to the word 'myth'. The

first sense is that of a widely held - though often false - assumption about a

thing or a person. Where literature is concerned, this type of myth may be

referred to as a 'stereotype'. The second type of myth is linked to the first:

it concerns the deliberate creation of a myth or a group of myths that may be

~ termed 'justificatory myths'. Leonard Thompson quotes the following definition

of myth from the British Journal of Sociology: myth is "a tale which is told to

justify some aspect of social order or of human experience".]

The third meaning attached to the word 'myth' is that of 'classical' myth or

Christian myth. In this kind of myth, says Northrop Frye, one sees the structural

principles of literature isolated. 4 The Beadle, for example, is structured around

the myth of Adam and Eve in Paradise. A certain amount of 'disPla{ement' is needed

to make this myth plausible in the context of a novel. Frye defines 'myth

displacement' as "a general term denoting devices used to render the presence of

a mythical structure in a novel plausible" (Frye, p.136) - in other words, to

render the novel more 'realistic'. To sum up:

In myth we see the structural principles of literature isolated; in realism we see the same structural principles (not similar ones) fitting into a context of plausibility. (Frye, p.136)

s Leonard Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid, p.7 - 8.

4 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, p.136

3 The pastoral myth forms the background to the pastoral novels written in or about

South Africa. The pastoral myth has undergone many changes since the days of

Theocritus to the present day. Different ~roups of people, separated from each other by time and culture, have emphasized different aspects of the pastoral myth, according to their own concept of 'the ideal'. According to Thompson:

Myths originate in specific ~ircumstances as a product of specific interests, and they change with the changing interests of successive generations and successive regimes. (Thompson p.8)

In the days of Theocritus life in the corrupt court of Alexandria gave birth to a pastoral tradition in literature that upheld the ideal of a simple, innocent life in the country. In Britain during the nineteenth century conditions such as industrialization, over-population, and the Napoleonic wars were instrumental in creating a pastoral tradition in which the elements of peace, plenty, and the possibility of a 'new beginning' in a rural (untouched) landscape were emphasized.

The essential ingredient for any pastoral work is a sense of nQstalgia,- a longing L .~ for an idealized past or a 'golden age' in which life was lived in a pastoral setting. The myth of a 'golden age' represents, according to Peter Marinelli:

the general overarching myth of lost innocence which is common to both pagan and Christian traditions of pastoral, to the first by nativ right, to th~ second by assimilation to its own myth of the garden of Eden. 3

The elements of this myth of the 'golden age' are summarized by Marinelli in the following passage:

There is a time at the beginning of human history when Saturn and Astraea, the virgin goddess of justice, dwelt together in the fields of Hesperia, and life for the inhabitants of earth was of the utmost simplicity and beatitude. The earth produced fruits without the cultivation of plough or spade, nectar flowed from the trees spontaneously, and the streams ran with milk. No pine trees were felled to make keels for ships adventuring to foreign lands, no walls surrounded cities, war was unknown. For man, life consisted primarily

5 Peter V.Marinelli, Pastoral, p.13 4 in leisure and in the free exercise of love which was unconstrained by honour and unclouded by thoughts of shame. Life proceeded in a climate of everlasting spring ••• man exists in perfect harmony with nature •••Two elements predominate: a lack of ambition and aspiration, which implies a virtuous lack of the avarice and pride which are their source; and a desire for sinless pleasure, which in turn implies a virtuous lack of the passion of lust. The golden age establishes both an economic order and a personal freedom which are the main parts of a single complex of ideas. (Marinelli, p.lS)

As the centuries passed, 'pastoral' became a much broader concept, referring not

only to works set in Arcadia, or even concerning the lives of shepherds and

shepherdesses, but to any literary work - prose, poetry or drama - set in the

country, and upholding the ideals of pastoral life: joy, innocence, peace freedom,

leisure, and a simple life-style:

For us it has come to mean any literature which deals with the complexities of human life against a background of simplicity. All that is necessary is that memory and imagination should conspire to render a not too distant past of comparative innocence as more pleasurable than a harsh present. (Marinelli, p.3)

In the tradition of 1~:~I!:i,C!!"pastorai~~';;; that came into being around Southern

Africa, the 'golden age' took on the added connotations of a pre-industrialized world in which peace, freedom, the 'illimitable veld', and sunshine were contrasted

with the present realities of life in Britain. Perhaps the most important aspect

of colonial pastoralism is the belief that a 'new beginning' could be made in an

unspoilt country - a return, in other words, to the 'golden age'. In most of the

popular farm novels used in this study, a 'new beginning' is also a return to

Paradise.

As early as 1801, John Barrow perceived two extreme and contrasting views of the

Cape Colony, one of which depicted the colony as a 'terrestrial paradise', the

other asa barren desert.

This remarkable promontory... has been variously represented. While some -, i have held it out as a terrestrial paradise, where nature spontaneously yielded .x all that was necessary, not only for the supply of the ordinary wants and conveniences, but also of the luxuries and superfluities of life; others have described it as a barren peninsular promontory, connected by a sandy isthmus

5 to a still more barren continent.6

Barrow himself adds to the Edenic concept of the Cape Colony by stating:

"A temperate climate. a fertile soil. a mild and peacable race of natives. were advantages that few infant colonies have possessed". (Barrow. Vol. 1. p.46)

From the writings on South Africa during the second decade of the nineteenth century. one can deduce that the concept of the Cape Colony as a 'terrestrial paradise' was upheld. while the other concept - that of a 'barren continent' - was deliberately suppressed. The major reason for this suppression of undesirable elements of South Africa was that emigration to South Africa was being encouraged both by the British government and the government in South Africa. under the leadership of Lord Charles Somerset. In Britain over-population had made emigration a desirable prospect; in the Cape Colony. Somerset needed British settlers for two reasons: to hasten the process of anglicization. and to form a human barrier between the Colony and the Xhosas on the eastern frontier. A campaign was therefore begun to present the Cape Colony in a favourable light.

In pamphlets and booklets advertising the Colony as a possible destination for emigrants. one finds an important source of the 'Garden of Eden' myth surrounding the Cape. The country was presented by various writers as a beautiful and fertile country. where an abundance of food and other necessities could be obtained with ease. Comparing the Cape Colony to &~erica, one writer asserts:

It abounds also with all the edible roots and vegetables of Europe. and in addition to those peculiar to tropical and Southern climates. The finest and richest grapes are also cultivated. with other European fruit. In spring season. almost immeasurable tracts of country are said to be covered with the greatest variety of the most beautiful flowers. soliciting the hand of industry to render it more usefully productive. The land is brought into cultivation without much labour. since it is only encumbered in some instances by light brush wood. which is easily removed and useful as fuel. The seas abound with a great variety of the finest fish ••• 7

6 John Barrow, An Account of Travels into the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798, Vol I, p.26. 7 Anonymous, A Guide to the "Cape of Good Hope, 1819, p.11

6 This same writer quotes a "learned Traveller" on his journeys through the Colony:

It is a mighty pleasure to me to reflect on the many journies I made in the Hottentot countries; in which I was lead through valies of several miles in length, all over enamelled with flowers, so various and beautiful, and enriching the air with such exquisite perfume, that the charming scenes in my eye, were paradissical; and my senses of seeing and smelling were ravished up to the highest pitch of enjoyment. (Guide p , 11)

The excellent climate and its supposedly wholesome effect on the inhabitants were extolled by W.J. Burchell in his Hints on Emigration:8

This colony... lies in a temperate healthy and delightful climate The healthiness of the air in every district, is known to all who have breathed it, and has never been called in question •••That it is congenial to human life, is indisputably proved by the vigorous appearance of its present inhabitants.

Not only is the climate reputedly healthy and the soil fertile, but it may also be instrumental in procuring wealth for the prospective immigrants:

In addition to all the grain. fruits, and vegetables peculiar to the North of Europe, the soil and climate of Southern Africa do actually produce at present, or may be made to produce, many rich and valuable articles of commerce for exportation ••• (Guide, p. I 7)

Although the scarcity of water was shown to be a problem, the authors assured their readers that in places one would always find water: " an inexhaustible supply of the purest water will be found in the Berg River, which is never dry•••"

(Guide, p.2I, my emphasis).

Considering that the Suurveld was the proposed site where the immigrants were to be allotted farms, it follows that this region should be presented as a favourable part 'of the country. To the would-be farmer, the Suurveld must appear to be a farmer's paradise. Burchell described the Suurveld as:

the most beautiful and delightful country. varied with every diversity of scenery and surface: abounding in herbage, wood and water; and having a

8 W.J. Burchell, Hints on Emigration to the Cape of Good Hope, (1820) p.99

7 soil which, the writer has no hesitation in saying, is capable of feeding large herds of cattle, and of producing corn and vegetables, more than sufficient for the supply of a numerous population. (Burchell, p.l06)

Many people were persuaded by these authors to emigrate to the Cape Colony. The extent to which some of these emigrants were taken in by the Edenic pictures painted of the colony, is evident from observations made by Thomas Pringle on his arrival in Southern Africa in 1820: 9

While we remained encamped at Algoa Bay, I became acquainted with some of the heads of emigrant parties ••• and I soon found that several even of the most intelligent men, were carried away by anticipations of the capabilities of the country scarcely less extravagant than the expectations of some of our female friends, who fancied they would find oranges and apricots growing wild among the thorny jungles of the Zwartkops.

The less desirable aspects of the country were mentioned more or less in passing.

While Barrow claimed that all the incidents between colonists and natives were caused by the Dutch themselves - thereby assuring the readers that the natives posed no threat to those that treated them kindly - the sterility of the Karoo and other parts of the country was depicted by some as merely temporary. The anonymous author of An Account of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope10 declares that "no part of the earth has hitherto seemed abandoned to more complete sterility than the greater portion of those vast Karoo plains that occupy the interstices between the great mountain-ranges", yet even in these sterile plains the author foresees a potential fertility:

The operations of nature are here, however, conducted in singular extremes. Where iron or its oxyds are liberally mixed with the clay, and the fertilizing aid of the feeblest rill can be brought to bear upon the soil, astonishing fertility. will occasionally ensue; some of the best grapes and fruits of the colony are yielded on these spots; the influence of a few showers of rain in other places is equally remarkable; parched as they will appear with the hot season, and utterly deserted by everything living, the rains of a few days will clothe whole acres with verdure; the botanist is suddenly presented with the richest harvest of plants that is to be found in any country; and flocks of

9 Thomas Pringle, African Sketches and A Narrative of a Residence in South Africa, p.136.

10 Anon., An Account of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, with a view to the Information of Emigrants, p.20

8 antelopes are quietly grazing A deep and fertile soil appears to reward the long culture of some of the most unpromising spots. (Account, p.2I)

The concept of Southern Africa as a 'terrestrial paradise' was never completely relinquished by the popular imagination, even after the experiences of the 1820 settlers had to a large extent proved the above-mentioned authors wrong. Decades 1 later, writers of popular farm novels set in Southern Africa would depict hardships / such as poverty. drought. floods. and crop- failures against a backdrop of the ,/ pastoral idyll: this idyll would often be reinstated towards the end of the novel, when conflicts were resolved.

The stereotype of the Dutch colonist that became popular was created by people like John Barrow, travellers in the Colony, missionaries, and philanthropists.

The stereotype of the 'Boer' that emerged is a very negative one, and this stereotype prevailed throughout the 19th century. The historical 'Boer' of the interior was, because of the isolated environment in which he lived, a rough, uncultured, and - to a large extent - an uneducated person. Poverty and danger formed his character. Because of the cultural differences between the rural Dutch colonist and the urban Englishman, the latter tended to see the Ducth as essentially inferior to him, and negative descriptions of the Boers emerged from their writings. Perhaps the most influential writer in this respect was John

Barrow, who occupied an official position at the Cape during the time of the first

British occupation of the Cape. His description of the Graaff-Reinet Boer is one that numerous other writers took up after him, and applied to the whole of the

Dutch population at the Cape:

Placed in a country where not only the necessities, but almost every luxury of life might by industry be procured, he has the enjoyment of none of them ••• Three times a- day his table is loaded with masses of mutton, swimming in the grease of the sheep's tail. His house is either open to the roof, or covered only with rough poles and turf, affording a favourable shelter for scorpions and spiders; and the earthy floors are covered with dust and dirt, and swarm with insects ••• (Barrow, Vol.I, p.76)

A confined and sedentary life; eating to excess, twice and commonly thrice

9' a-day. of animal foods swimming in fat. or made up into high-seasoned dishes; drinking raw ardent spirits; smoking tobacco; and. when satiated with indulging the sensual appetite. retiring in the middle. of the day to sleep; seldom using any kind of exercise. and never such as might require bodily exertion. - are the usual habits in which a native of the Cape is educated." (Barrow. Vol. 1. p.43)

To emphasize the indolence of the Boers. Barrow declares that "a Cape boorll never works: Every day throughout the whole year is to him a holiday,,12 (Barrow.Vol.

12. p.78). The 'boor' is also described as a quarrelsome and selfish person.

(Barrow. Vol. 2. p.lOO).

A more favourable view of the Dutch colonists was presented by travellers such as

Lichtenstein. Burchell, and Wilson, but the very negative representation persisted and was strengthened by the accounts given by missionaries of reputed atrocities committed against the natives. As M. Streak points out:

••• these accusations went a long way to establish in the British middle class mind an incorrect conception of Boer brutality. for as Manning has pointed out. 'pious folk in England naturally believed what they were told by the missionaries whom thjr were zealous enough .to send out to convert the Hottentots and Kaffirs,.1

One of the most influential booklets written to 'inform' the British emigrant about the colony - An Account of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope -based its descriptions of the Boer on accounts of writers such as Barrow. As a consequence. the British public was informed that the Boers were "an obstinate and ignorant race of colonists" (Account. p.39). and that 'crimes of every kind were committed with impunity' (Account, p39), without anybody being severely punished for them.

11 This seems to have been an accepted spelling of 'Boer' among a large number of writers. 12 See J.M. Coetzee, "Idleness in South Africa" in White Writing: On the culture of letters in South Africa, in which he discusses the 'idleness' of both Hottentot and Boer, as outsiders perceived it. Other articles in White Writing that I have used are "Farm Novel and Plaasroman" (pp. 63-81); and "The Farm Novels of C.M. van den Heever" (pp.82-114)

13 M. Streak, The Afrikaner as viewed by the English, p.1S 10 Imitating Barrow, this author depicted the Boers as "a selfish and quarrelsome race". Having no periodical fairs or places of general resort,they can rarely be ) brought to seek any aggregate or common interest; each is striving to possess himself of some few more yards of land in possession of the other, and no two neighbours are said to agree. (Account, p.116 )

The writer concludes that "the whole manners of these boors are revolting to

Englishmen". (Account, p.118)

With the arrival of the 1820 settlers and the ensuing personal experience of the circumstances under which the Boers had lived since 1652, a more sympathetic \ . concept of the Boer was generated within the colony itself. The English were generally prepared to believe that whatever atrocities had occurred in the colony, these deeds were perpetrated by a small group of the Boers, and not all of them, as Barrow had claimed. Pringle summed up this more positive view when he remarked that "we found them generally, however uncultivated, by no means disagreeable neighbours ••• they were also generally civil and good-natured, and, according to the custom of the country, extremely hospitable". (Pringle, pp.169-170)

This more positive view was negated with the start of British philanthropic thought directed towards Southern Africa. This movement was signalled by the proclamation of the 50th ordinance of 1828, and the .publication of John Philip's Researches in

South Africa in the same year. While opinion about the Boers was divided within the colony between the philanthropists and those settlers who were more sympathetic towards the Dutch, the British reading public was yet again presented with a scathing attack on the Dutch colonists. This came in the form of J.W.D. Moodie's book, Ten Years in South Africa. He wrote:

Of all the people I have ever seen, the Cape- Dutch are the coarsest and least polished in their manners .14 They were "cruel and tyrannical to their

14 J.W.D. Moodie, Ten Years in South Africa, including a particular description· of the wild sports of that country, p.169

11 dependants" (p.33), immoral (p.lSl), not affectionate towards their spouses (p.1S8), or members of their own family (p.1S9), and finally: The Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope afford an instance of a people partially relapsed into barbarism from want of education, and from their intercourse with a race of savages whom they have subjected and demoralized •••• (Moodie, p.175)

Within the colony itself, the Englishman's views of the Boer were formed by his own conception of the native. During the philanthropic era, the native was seen by the philanthropists as Rousseau's 'noble savage', and the Boers were condemned for their treatment of the natives. Although not all the settlers in the colony agreed with the philanthropic view, it was only in the 1850s that the native was seen in a new light, and a more balanced view of the Boer was made possible.

Streak quotes a letter written by Sir Harry Smith to Sir George Grey in which he demonstrates the emergence of a new stereotype of the native:

I freely and candidly admit that my opinions as to the Civilisation and conversion to Christianity of the Native Tribes has undergone a complete change. The treacherous conduct of the Kaffirs staggered me as to the correctness of my previous views. Still more so the Revolt of the Hottentot Race after the treatment they had received from this government, under which they possessed every Right and Privilege of the most favoured Citizen, and owing to whom they were provided with Seminaries, Schoolmasters and ministers. The fact that these men quote the holy Scriptures as the authority under which they aim at the destruction of their former protectors, proves that curly headed man of colour is not to be abruptly reclaimed from his savage nature and propensities. (Streak, pp317-318)

This writer's indignation at the behaviour of 'curly headed man of colour' - whether it was justified or not - was echoed by more and more of the English colonists. As a result of this new conception of the native as a treacherous barbarian, the Boer came to be seen in a different perspective. His treatment of the 'treacherous' and 'ungrateful' native was certainly viewed more sympathetically. Archdeacon John Xavier Merriman attests to this different conception of the Boer:

I learnt also to modify much of my ideas of Dutch harshness towards the coloured people who serve them. It may be true that, if not restrained by law, they would often inflict severe corporal chastisement on their servants, and it is true that they seem generally to disregard the duty of providing for them any Christian instruction, but it is also true that there is much kindness

12 exercised towards them 15 In spite of these more favourable views of the Boer. however. it is the more negative stereotype that survived. strengthened by reports from the interior of

slavery practised by~_t:he froIltiex farmers. and later. of course. the Anglo-Boer

~.. ~"-...... ",",,-,r.,,,.,~~ wars.

The negative concept of the Boer was caused in part by the Boer's Iiteral interpretation of the Bible. and the way in which he applied parts of the Old

Testament to his own situation. Historians emphasize the fact that the Voortrekker was very attached to the Old Testament.16 Sheila Patterson suggests a reason why

the Old Testament was so important to the Boers:

To the Boers the Old Testament was like a mirror of their own lives. In it they found the deserts and fountains. the drought and plagues. the captivity and the exodus. Above all they found a Chosen People guided by a stern but partial Deity through the midst of the heathen to a promised land. And}~ was the Old Testament and the doctrines of Calvin that moulded the Boer •••

Calvinism provided the Boer with a set of myths with which he could justify his

possession of the land. his treatment of women, and the enslavement of the natives:

all of which met with English disapproval.

To the Boers, the interior of the Colony - the part that lay on the other side of

the eastern and northern frontiers - ~as regarded as a 'promised land', and they

likened themselves to the Israelites of old who left Egypt to find their Promised

Land. The myth of Exodus ('myth' in the sense that Frye uses the word)'provided

them with a justification for the Great Trek - an event that the British public

15 J .X. Merriman, The Kaffir, the Hottentot, and the Frontier Farmer: Passages of Missionary Life from the Journals of the venerable Archdeacon Merriman, pp.148-149

16 See F.J. du Toit Spies, Van ons Land Suid-Afrika, p.17 and Dr. D. Kempff, Bestry en Bevestig: 1806-1900, p.9

17 Sheila Patterson, The Last Trek, p.177 ,~ _ "_,/

13 perceived as a rebellion.

The Biblical parallel between the Israelites and the Boers was an accepted notion of the time, though few of the Voortrekkers (being partly or completely illiterate) wrote this down. 18 In 1909, Totius (J.D. du Toit, 1877-1953) published

Potgieter's Trek in which he draws the parallel between Israel and Voortrekker.

maar sie! die wereld woester worde; die ongediert woed feller steeds, van bowe naak die swarte horde, van onder volg die dwingland reeds. Hoe lij die Klompie landsontdekkers, die vrijheidsoekers, volksverwekkers! Gelijk 'n ander Israel, vijand-omsingeld, ve~1-verlore, maar ver 'n Kanan uitverkore, voortwandelend op Gods bestel.

The original inhabitants, like the original Canaanites, were regarded as unbelievers who had to be either enslaved or exterminated:

As before stated, the Dutch law has made provision against these Hottentots and Bushmen being enslaved. But as the Boers advanced they did not dream of sharing the soil with the natives. So they were gradually dispossessed of it - sometimes under the pretext of purchase; sometimes by being hunted off it - and reduced to a state of serfdom. This they did without any scruple - they looked upon themselves as the Israelites in the midst of a horde of Canaanites,

18 Historians such as F.A. van Jaarsveld (Wie en Wat is die Afrikaner) and Sheila Patterson (The Last Trek) agree that the Voortrekkers perceived a parallel to their own situation in the Exodus-myth, but there is some controversy surrounding this point. Some of the younger historians argue that the Israel myth was applied to the Voortrekkers by those who wanted to justify the Afrikaner's possession of the land decades after the 'Groot Trek' had taken place. See: A. du Toit "Captive to the nationalist Paradigm: Prof. F.A. van Jaarsveld and the historical evidence for the Afrikaner's ideas on his calling and Mission" in South African Historical I Journal, Nov. 1984, no. 16 pp 49-80 and: A. du Toit, "No chosen people: the myth of the Calvinist Origins of Afrikaner nationalism and Racial Ideology" in The American Historical Review, Oct. 1983, no. 4 pp 920-952

19 But see! the world becomes wilder;/the fierce vermin worsen, Istark naked black hordes, Ifollowing tyrants./How the handful of trekkers suffer, Ithe freedom seekers, creator of a People, IJust like another Israel, Iby enemies surrounded, I lost in the veld, Ibut for another Canaan elected, lIed forward by God's plan. For a complete discussion on Totius' appropriation of the Israel myth, see I.Hexham "Just like another Israel - Calvinism and Afrikanerdom" in Religion: it Journal of Religion and Religions , Vol. 7, Spring 1977, Y' pp.1-15

14 who must either serve. or suffer extermination.20 The enslavement of the natives ensured greater security for the Voortrekkers in the interior. and the comforting myth of the Israelites served as justification for possession of the land. Another myth from Biblical times was applied to the natives by the Voortrekkers: it was 'proved' that the natives were descendants of Ham. and therefore ordained by God to slavery. In a letter that Janssens wrote to De Mist. he remarks: .. Een broeder van Thomas Ferreira die eenige literatuur vermeent te hebben, heeft de ontdekking gedaan dat de Hottentotte de afstammelingen van Gam zijn. en des Jfr dienstbaarheid in mishandeling door den almagtigen God zijn gedoemd.

Perhaps the~~influential-aspectof the Israelite myth as the Boer applied it ~e_p~y to himself. followiog the example of the \-1 old patriarchs'. the Voortrekker society was bas~d on large families and filial \ . obedience. Lichtenstein noted: The respect of children for their parents and their submission to them. even to their latest years. is a very estimable feature in the character of tcolonists. which again has a great resemblance to the patriarchal days.22the The patriarchal system ensured a measure of order in the interior. when there was not yet a stable government to maintain it. The reverence with which the patriarchs of the Boer families were regarded even in later years. and their association with the Patriarchs of old. was noted by Mackinnon:

Yesterday was Oom Paul's birthday. This is a great occasion. The old patriarch has about as many descendants as Jacob. and they all reverently flock to do their venerable progenitor reverence. (Mackinnon. p.150) As head of a large family. the patriarch had to provide for many people. including servants. A typical household consisted of the patriarch. his wife. children.

20 James MacKinnon, South African Traits, p.223

21 Quoted in Scholtz, Die Ontwikkeling van die Politieke Denke van die Afrikaner, p.3 !:-__~~~~-t8~~6~Yl.:~.~~av~~~ _~~_~thern Africa ~_~~

15 (often including married children), servants, and slaves, and any other members of the family that were under his roof. Lichtenstein describes one such household: The family itself, including master, servants, Hottentots, and slaves, consisted of a hundred and five persons, for whose subsistence the patriarch ! had to provide daily... By what is here stated, it will be seen that an L African farm may almost be called a state in miniature, in which the wants i and means of supplying them are reciprocal, and where all are dependant one upon another. (Lichtenstein, p.58) .------= ~role of the women in such a household wa~ a S~b~. The more liberal Englishman rather disapproved of the Boer's treatment of their wives,------as Percival notes: A Dutchman regards his wife and family in a light different from most other nations; he looks on his spouse as fit only for one particular station throughout life, namely to take care of his house, his children, and slaves. He considers her as a creature infinitely beneath him, and scarcely ever deigns to notice her but at the times of food and rest; whilst she, finding herself so muc9 inferior, is contented to remain in that humble and insignificant state. 3 O~ '-OvN\-~O-V\'V\Ae b\C':'.().'L \~ ~\ett::o~}.~pe'. -V'fO\ This humble and submissive creature appears later in the popular farm no~ls as .

one of the stereotypes of the Boer woman. Another stereotype that became very

popular among the writers of these farm novels was created by Barrow in his Travels

when he wrote:

The women of the African peasantry pass a life with the most listless inactivity. The mistress of the family, with her coffee-pot constantly boiling before her on a small table, seems fixed to the chair like a piece of • furniture. The good lady, born in the wilds of Africa, and educated among slaves and Hottentots, has little idea of what, in a state of society, constitutes female delicacy. She makes no scruples of having her legs and feet washed in warm water by a slave before strangers; an operation that is regularly performed every evening. If the motive of such a custom were cleanliness, the practice of it would deserve praise, but to see the tub with the same water passed round through all the branches of the family, according to seniority, is apt to create ideas of a different nature. Most of them go constantly without stockings and shoes, even when the thermometer is down to the freezing point. They generally, however, make use of small stoves to place their feet on. The young girls sit with their hands before them as listless as their mothers. Most of them, in the distant districts, can neither read nor write, so that they have no mental resources whatsoever. Luckily, perhaps, for them, the poverty of ideas prevents time from hanging on their hands. (Travels, Vol.1 pp.80-81)

16 Moodie, whose Ten Years in South Africa was published in 1835, described the Boer women in almost identical terms: Of all the people I have ever seen the Cape- Dutch are the coarsest and least polished in their manners. The conversation of both sexes is marked by an almost total absence of common decency, the most disgusting oaths are used on all occasions by the men, and the women do not even feel ashamed to talk on the most indelicate subjects, hardly condescending to use any circumlocution. In this respect, indeed, they are even less refined than the Hottentots. Wherever they have had much intercourse with the English, however, a gradual improvement is observable. The females, though often handsome when very YOUng, are from this coarseness of manners exceedingly distasteful to the English, and few even of the lower classes of our countrymen can bring themselves to marry into a Dutch family. The moment a Dutch-woman enters into the conjugal state, she takes her seat by a little table in the hall, from which she never stirs if she can help it; and they often laugh at the folly of the English women, in going about the house to attend to their domestic concerns, when they might have everything done by calling to servants, without quitting their places. When the Dutch ladies marry, they become exceedingly torpid and ~ phlegmatic in their manners and habits, dirty and slovenly in their dress, and . from their cold constitution and freedom from care, like the men, they generally at an early age grow to an unwieldy size. (Moodie, pp.169-170)

Other stereotypes of women - wife, mother, angel, whore - were conventional

European stereotypes of women that exist outside the colonial context, but were used by the authors of popular fiction. These stereotypes will be discussed in the next chapter in relation to the popular novels. )

Apart from the very negative stereotype of the Boer and his wife there was also \ a more favourable stereotype of the South African farmer that saw the Boer as a l ) child of nature - rough and uncultured, but essentially good. Often the more sympathetic views of the Boer described the same elements that writers such as

Barrow and Moodie had noticed, but coloured by a pastoral perspective. Their slovenly clothes and rough manners are depicted by MacKinnon as postive aspects of the Boer, that almost transform him into a pastoral 'shepherd' figure:

They dress plainly and rather carelessly, and seem to shape their manners more according to nature than artifice. In intercourse they are hearty and amiable, easily tempted to become loud-voiced and demonstrative, and, like all Afrikaners, are fond of exaggerating. (Mackinnon, p.88)

Pringle negates some of the claims that the Boers are a rude, unpleasant people.

He describes them as "these rustic inhabitants of the mountains" and states:

17 There was nothing very Arcadian about them; but their appearance was decent and comfortable and their manners frank. hospitable and courteous. (Pringle. p.294) The picture painted of the Boers by Lord Charles Somerset stands in complete contrast to the 'idleness' stereotype that Barrow created. In a letter to Bathurst

(24 April. 1817) Somerset wrote:

I dwell with particular pleasure on this remark of industry of the (Dutch) settlers. because from previous reading and from hearing the contrary opinions of many who had travelled through this country without making allowance for the peculiarity of climate and the nature of the avocations of a peasantry. whose wants do not call them to constant agricultural labours. I was not prepared to meet. as I have done throughout. an energetic. hardy and active race of men. courteous to each other Jind hospitable to strangers far beyond what our habits induce us to.expect. 2 In 1848 an article appeared in The Cape Frontier Times that depicted the Boers in pastoral terms:

We are persuaded that there is no race of men in the world who are easier to ) manage than the Dutch African farmers. Their habits are simple. Their wants are few. Their attention is principally bestowed upon their flocks and herds. their gardens and their fields. They require to rest heartily. fatigued with the labours of the day. The Bible is their text book; they read little else••• Their temperament is sober.

Finally there are those who described the Boers as physically more pleasing than the fat Boer that Barrow and Moodie wrote of:

The Dutch Boers are in person the finest men in the colony. I have seen them constantly from six feet two to six feet six inches in height. broad and muscular in proportion. Occasionally they reac95a height and size bordering on the gigantic. Their strength is immense ••••

These stereotypes of the Boer. the woman. and the land persisted throughout the nineteenth century and emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century in popular novels. It is not the purpose of this study to determine to which extent these stereotypes are 'realistic'. but to trace the stereotypes in the popular farm novels. and to discuss the degree to which they are used. expanded. or rejected in the three novels with which this study is concerned. The next chapter deals

24 Quoted in M. Streak, The Afrikaner as viewed by the English, pp.l05-106. --I

25 Cole, The Cape of the Kafirs; or, notes of Five Years' Residence in South Africa, pp.122-124

18 with the popular novels, after which the focus will fallon Schreiner, Smith, and

Coetzee.

19 CHAPTER 2

The stereotypes and myths that originated around the Cape Colony and its

inhabitants during the first decades of the 19th century, were perpetuated in the

literature written about South Africa. I have chosen to discuss in this chapter \~ a group of popular farm novels written in or about South Africa from' about 1880 / ~ to 1930. My purpose in choosing these particular novels .ts to demonstrate the way

in which the stereotypes, discussed in the first chapter, emerged in the literature

written about South Africa. The popular novels present these stereotypes with very

little modification, and as such define clearly the context within which The Story

of an African Farm (1883) and The Beadle (1926) were written.

As I have previously outlined, the stereotype of South Africa as an Edenic world

was deliberately created during the first half of the nineteenth century, to

encourage emigration to the Cape Colony. The idyllic descriptions of the country

made an impression on the English mind, since the Colony seemed to represent

everything that a people living in an over-populated,city, a cold and wet climate,

and in a time of war, could desire. Decades later the writers of popular farm

novels partly based their accounts of life in the Colony on these propagandistic

pamphlets and books. In the interval between the publication of these books and

the appearance of the English South African farm novel, however, accounts reached

England of conditions in the colony and the hardships suffered by the 1820 settlers

which created a totally different picture of South Africa. A very bleak picture

was sometimes painted of life in this country, and this second representation of

the South African landscape was incorporated into one overarching stereotype: that \

of a land of contrasts. At the one extreme one finds a lush paradise; at the \

other a barren, waterless desert. The following passage from Gloria, a Girl of

the South African Veld (Mansfield, 1922) sums up the main elements of this

stereotype:

The two children (the beautiful Gloria and her deformed brother) might be said to represent South Africa, the land of surprises and contrasts, of rain and

20 drought, plentiful harvests and utterly destroyed crops; cattle flourishing on little, or killed by disease while plenty flaunted its stores of good food.

(p.3)

The myth that underlies these two extreme views of the South African landscape is the pastoral myth. In the popular farm novel the South African farm is represented as a potential (if not actual) pastoral world, while varying degrees of myth displacement are evident in individual novels. Contrasting representations of the

South African farm are also often found in the same novel, where they are used as a structural device: the landscape varies with the structure of the novel, being desertlike at times of conflict and becoming more paradisal towards the end when conflicts have been resolved. Because the tendency in a popular novel is towards a 'happy ending', the Edenic concept of the farm is the dominant one and replaces the desert-stereotype at the end. The displacement of myth in these novels is towards 'realism', which incorporates elements of the South African landscape and includes a drought-stricken landscape in which the South African farm is presented ) as a potential paradise.

In novels such as The Settler in South Africa and other tales (Hodges, 1860); The.

Rose of Rietfontein (G.H. Close, 1882); The Breath of the Karroo (Brinkman,

1914); With love from Gwenno (Stormberg, 1920); The Glory of the Backveld

(Brinkman, 1924); The Snake Garden (A. Baker, 1928); Anne of the Veld (M. Bevan, n.d); the pastoral myth is evident in an almost undisplaced form. The farm is often explicitly identified with Eden or Canaan or another desirable world, though even this mythical world is never quite free of undesirable aspects. In Tante

Rebella and her Friends (C.R. Prance, 1937) there is a farm called 'Paradys', but the farm is mortgaged. Another farm, called 'Donkiesrust', is also identified with

Paradise, and there is only one aspect of life on this farm that detracts from its desirability:

(Oom) Betje and Sannie were living at Donkiesrust in a boy-and girl honeymoon, like Adam and Eve in Paradise before the Fall, except that they conformed to the stern sumptuary laws of Oom Paul Kruger's Police. (pp 40-41)

21 In The Secret Veld (1931), F.C. Slater describes some of the dangers and problems that the Voortrekkers had to face when they had reached that part of the country to which they were bound. In carving out their farms from the wilderness in the interior of the Colony, the Voortrekkers came up against dangerous animals and bloodthirsty natives: The wilderness had been conquered; and, in like manner, the mountains were scaled, and the pioneers entered the promised land. But their troubles were not yet over, for in the uplands of waving, red-brown grass, in the odorous, primeval forests, lurked malignant serpents, ravening beasts of prey, and hordes of bloodthirsty savages. Their troubles were not over and they paid a bitter price for the possession of the land of their desire. (p.174)

This 'land of their desire' - whether Paradise, Arcadia, Canaan, or merely a pastoral setting - is generally depicted in terms of the traditional English idyll.

In transposing these traditional English pastoral ideals onto South African soil, the farm novels became an interesting mixture of pastoral elements and South

African geographical and sociological ' realit y ' • Billy Carfax, one of the characters in Baker's The Snake Garden, claims that in spite of the stereotypical

'slim' Boer and the fat Dutch women, South Africa still remains a very desirable country:

'I tell you it's the finest country God ever made', he burst out, 'There's lots to put up with, but you get a run for your money. There's miles of grass waitin' for sheep to eat it. There's sunshine every day and lots of shootin'. Some of the boers are damn good chaps, though they'll do you down like the devil; it's their nature - same as it's the nature of a dog to gnaw a bone. Some of the Dutch girls are dashed pretty, though they run to fat as they grow older ••• ' (p.23)

L.H. Brinkman creates pastoral surroundings as background to his novels, and very little displacement of myth - just enough to make his story plausible and to place it within a South African context - is evident in The Glory of the Backveld. He depicts the world in traditional pastoral terms, and the farm' Prospect' as a place in which this pastoral lifestyle is possible.

The stubborn world would not, and did not, come to an end, in spite of signs of the time, prophecies and sermons. It obstinately contrived to encourage people to live, laugh and be merry, it yielded its harvests as plentifully as ever, in utter contempt of the slanders upon its stability. The farmers reaped

22 and sowed; the youth made love and got married; in short, mothe~ earth and her children were never on better terms with each other. (p.66)

This is indeed a very pastoral world with its abundance of harvests, merry-making, and love, and a benign Mother Earth blessing her children with so much happiness.

The peaceful rural surroundings of the farm form the background to the following pastoral scene from the same novel, one which not only recalls English rural paintings, but is also compared to an imaginary painting by a 'Royal Academician':

As soon as he was on the ground the little pig began to trot around his mistress, emitting a low, plaintive squeal, for all the world like a baby crying to be picked up and carried, while the pet lambs stood nibbling at her dress and rubbing their heads against her. Flynn thought he had never seen a prettier rural picture before. In the background the old farmhouse with its quaint old- fashioned architecture, set off by hills and koppies in the distance, the dam and the Kraal showing at the side, where the old shepherd could be seen bringing home his flock and Minnie surrounded by her pets in the foreground, made a picture worthy of the efforts of a Royal Acadamician. (p.138)

In Hodges' The Settler in South Africa the only indication that the following scene is not set in England is the reference to the different food that would have been provided 'back home' •

The shearing was followed by a feast; but instead of the beer cider and substantial viands provided in their native land, the table was laden with fruit, wine and all the etceteras produced by change of climate. The apartment, too, was adorned with flowers; and Joe formed for his little friend Ellen, who was queen of the festival, a crown composed of the golden-rain, whose bright blossoms might well be compared to showers of that metal. James then took up his flute, and the evening concluded with a dance. (p.9)

The references to fruit, wine, dancing and flute music are very suggestive of pagan festivals, and as such the scene might as well have been set in pagan Arcadia rather than South Africa.

The abundance of food and the frequency of feasts are common images in these farm novels. In The Rose of Rietfontein "the long table groaned under the weight of the good things to eat" (p.S3) while a specifically South African flavour is given to the feast with a description of the different kinds of "komfyts" on the table

(p.S3). Mrs Carey-Hobson makes the statement in The Farm in the Karoo 1883) that

23 "we aiways have fruits of some kind at the Cape" (p.55). This is true as far as the fertile regions of the Cape are concerned, but, as I shall point out later, Mrs Carey-Hobson transforms even the drier parts of the Karoo into ideal farming land in this novel. In The Snake Garden one finds suggestions of two elements noted by Marinelli as belonging to the 'golden age': an everlasting spring and a leisurely attitude towards the cultivation of the earth. (Marinelli p.15) In this novel "the seasons are scarcely marked and ••• fruit and flowers hang together on the branches" (p.8). The soil is so rich that "without manuring at all it always yields two crops of anything in the year and sometimes three" (p.105)

This leisurely way of producing food is also mentioned in Jill's Rhodesian Philosphy (Geraldine Page, 1910), According to one of the booklets on Southern

Africa that Jill has read: You can grow lots of things by chiefly looking at niggers. They do all the work, and the farmer rides about on a nice horse with a gun, and makes his fortune. (p.5)

Even when it is necessary to work hard, Parker and Hazelton - two characters in

Westrup's FUrtive Farm(1930) - still agree that the life on a South African farm is enjoyable (p.94) According to G.H. Close:

On the farm, vast as a farm generally is, in this part of the world, life is absolutely luxuriant, from the great freedom and variety nature revels in. (The Rose of Rietfontein, p.66)

The freedom that the farm inhabitants enjoy is the keynote of a large number of

these farm novels, as for example in Bevan's Anne of the Veld, in which the

farmer's twin daughters love the freedom of life on the farm: All their lives they had roamed over the wide spaces of the veld, loving its freedom and complete satisfaction of their open-air lives. (p.S1)

The peace and solitude of farm life in South Africa are qualities often mentioned

even by those authors who reveal a great deal of myth displacement in their novels.

The Purple Kists, (Young, n.d.) although not strictly speaking a farm novel, since

the heroine leaves the farm early in the story, speaks of the "solace and peace of the veld" (p.38) while The Rose of Rietfontein mentions "the calm stillness and

24 unambitious toil of a rural existence" (p.41).

Most writers admire the simple rural existence on a South African farm and often ascribe the farmers' good health to the simplicity of their lifestyle. as well as to the healthy and unpolluted air of the farm:

As they opened the door to pass out. the breath of the veld blew in strong and clean, fresh and full of that health that Keats would have given his world to attain ••• (Sannie, p.312)

The love that the farmer has for his farm. and his identification with the farm landscape. is an element of pastoral novels that Marinelli notes when he states that in the ideal pastoral world, a perfect harmony exists between man and nature

(Marinelli. p.lS)26 This harmony is expressed in these farm novels when the farm landscape reflects the moods and emotions of its inhabitants. In Between Sun and

Sand, (W.C. Scully, 1898) for example, Susannah falls in love in the spring and feels "the rapid sap of sudden springtime rise in a sweet storm to her heart and to her brain" (p.3). In Katrina, a Tale of the Karno , (A.Howarth. 1899) Allan's feelings are echoed by the landscape around him: "There was a storm in his own breast which made him oblivious of the storms of nature outside" (p .140). After his wife has left him. Jack. the English farmer in Brenda Trevisky. (Bennett and

Hamilton. 1930) feels that "drought has entered his soul" (p.226) in response to the drought outside.

In Sannie (Iverach, 1928) Dirk is described in terms of the farm. He is a "true son of the soil" (p.12) with "one ambition, one idea permeatinx.hf.s.whol e existence and shaping him accordingly - agriculture" (P.12)C-~cret Bird (D. Muir, 1930)

.._--..,,,---,, '-',,-. . .•.--,,/ depicts the closest relationship between farmer and earth-when-Mart-in-identifies his mother's body with the earth in which she is buried:

26 See also Coetzee's discussion of the bond between farmer and his land in "The Farm novels of C.M. van den Beever" in Coetzee, White Writing: on the culture of letters in South Africa, pp 82-114

25 the noise of the first earth falling back into the cavity from which it had been lifted to make room for that other earth, which yesterday had been the living breathing body of a woman. Low and high, they were the perfect complement of one another. (p s l )

These pastoral elements - fertility, abundance, simplicity, beauty, love, joy, peace, leisure, freedom and perfect harmony between man and nature - that are present in the farm novels are descriptive of every farm irrespective of setting. Certain concessions are usually made according to the province in which the farm is situated - wine farms, for example, in the Cape Province and sheep farms in the

Karoo or in the Transvaal - but in general the geographic setting of the farm is more or less irrelevant to the novels discussed above. There is, however, a large group of novels in which the setting is important. These novels are set in the dry ~I areas of South Africa (usually the Karoo) and a high degree of displacement towards I - - I the desertlike landscape is evident. In these novels the interaction between the II,f two concepts of the South African farm - paradise and desert - is structurally [I -..--..---.-...--.----...- ....-.--.---- l' . iI Ul important. The use of a drought-stricken landscape to reflect or suggest an . f ----- '''- -,~- ,,~"'. ~-'.....~,· .•~"-...._~ ...<'''"''_.~"....«.,-'.,,-._.,_.-..-,~~'''·_~P .... '''--._..~ • both in these popular novels and in the earlier prototype, Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. 27

The description of the drought in Brenda Trevisky is representative of these novels that present a very displaced form of the pastoral myth, and is paralleled by the description of drought in The Story of an African Farm. In Brenda Trevisky, the

South African farm is at first presented as dry and barren, and completely undesirable:

A white sun blazed down pitilessly on the veld, shrivelling and disintegrating into dust the scattered remnants of herbage, stripping earth naked, scoring its face with scars and fissures. Fine sand driven along by the hot wind skimmed along the hard brown surface like dust on a concrete road. Nothing

27 Most of the farm novels in this dissertation were written after the publication of The story of an African Farm. Schreiner, however, draws on the same stereotypes, and a number of farm novels were indeed modelled on The Story of an African Farm.

26 now to relieve the monotony of an endless bare waste save the stunted Karoo bushes and these as dry and dead as though a tornado of flame had swept across this vast expanse of desolation. No cloud in the sky; no respite from the grilling heat - day after day, week after week, month after month; for so long now that it was hard to imagine that the veld had ever looked otherwise, or that blessed clouds had ever veiled the sun ••• (p .174)

In these novels, not only drought, but other hardships such as floods, crop failure, locusts and cattle diseases are part of the negative concept of the South African farm. Nora Stevenson highlights some of the difficulties of life on such a farm. They were a long way from the towns, transport was difficult, plagues visited them continually, there was snow, there was frost, there was fever, and God willed that Lekkerbat should be sterile ••• (The Farmers of Lekkerbat, 1930, p.ll) Unlike the previous group of novels in which the desirable aspects of farm life in South Africa were foregrounded, these novels emphasize the undesirable aspects. Yet the pastoral myth is seldom completely dispelled and as the novels progress the pastoral qualities associated with the farm assert themselves with increasing frequency until all conflicts are resolved. There are a few exceptions to this general movement towards. a pastoral ending - the hero and heroine of Rhodesian

Farm, (J. England, n.d.) for example, leave the farm to go to England - but in general the tendency is towards a harmonious synthesis of farm landscape and farmer.

The potential that the South African farm has for being an earthly paradise is sometimes revealed after some rain has fallen over the dry desert landscape. In

Scully's Between Sun and Sand the desert is turned into a 'smiling garden' (p.7) for a few weeks. In Brenda Trevisky the transformation is described as follows:

Within two days of the first fall of rain the miracle of the veld's rebirth had begun and the bare brown earth was pricked with countless million tiny shoots of green. In a fortnight a transformation had taken place: the veld rippled and waved with fresh green grass, the dry sticks of the Karoo bushes had put on a luxuriant mantle of foliage. In a little while blossoms would burst forth and wild flowers of every colour and hue bedeck the scene with a richness of colour so vividly beautiful that the eye, in wonder at the sight, could scarcely believe it real. (p.157)

27 Geraldine Page suggests that the farm has a hidden beauty that will be revealed to the patient onlooker:

it's like a butterfly with its wings closed - all grey and nondescript and common- place. But if you look long enough, and see it open its wings to fly, you'll see beauty that defies description. (Jill's Rhodesian Philosophy, p.74)

Often the farm is transformed into an Edenic environment as a reward for industry and perseverance. South Africa is sometimes compared to a rough diamond whose beauty and worth can only be revealed after a certain amount of cutting and polishing. The author of An Account of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope (1819) claimed that even the driest parts of the Karoo possess a potential fertility that may be revealed through industry. This idea was taken up by Mrs Carey-Hobson, who states that the Karoo was turned into an ideal farming land by the farmers, who had constructed dams or reservoirs to catch the rainwater. Referring to descriptions of the Karoo as barren and dry, she writes:

But since (then), the Karoo has been acknowledged to be the best pasturage for sheep, ostriches, and angora goats, immense tracts have been occupied as farms, many of which are watered, not only by the permanent springs spoken of by the traveller above quoted, but also by large dams or reservoirs constructed by the farmers within the last quarter of a century; and it has proved also to be a good wheat and maize growing country, and indeed suitable for any kind of cereal, vegetable, or fruit, so long as there is sufficient water for irrigation. It is very evident that more rain falls in the Karoo at present time than formerly ••• (The Farm in the Karoo, p.5)

The implication is that after the farmer has done his best to improve the land, nature lends a helping hand in the form of rain. Adhering to the Calvinist work ethic, these novels demonstrate the traditional concept of industry as a panacea for various ills, including, in this case, a drought-stricken landscape.

In Brenda Trevisky, as I have pointed out, the Karoo is described as a sterile and waterless country, but in the barren landscape Brenda and her husband, Jack, discover a fruit farm which seems to be an oasis in the desert. Jack immediately resolves to apply the same energy to the improvement of his own farm in order to create his own oasis.

I've seen how this oasis was made to spring up in the wilderness, and it is

28 just an example of what determination, money and brains can do on the veld. This Dutchman spent money freely in boring for water and building a great dam. Windmills draw up water from the artesian wells and pour it into tanks, and thence into the dam. (p.73)

After suffering a number of hardships - among which are a severe drought and the

break-up of his marriage - Jack finally achieves his goal. The reward for his

determined perseverance is not only his own oasis in the desert, but the return

of his wife. In L.R. Brinkman's The Glory of the Backveld Oom Piet buys a neglected farm called Eierdop, and transforms it into an earthly paradise. At

his wife's insistence, Oom Piet changes the name of the farm from Eierdop ("an

empty eggshell which you have filled with your labour and your sweat", p.12) to

'Prospect', because "our prospects are good." (p .12) • The farm remains throughout

the rest of the novel an almost paradisal environment against which the action is

set.

In Nora Stevenson's The Farmers of Lekkerbat the only hard-working farmer is Sanie

Loubser who, not surprisingly, owns the only prosperous farm in the district. With

the help of his 'bywoner' Andries, Sanie's diligence achieves miraculous results,

over and above what mere industry could have achieved:

Andries ••• had scarcely been a month with Sanie before everything became still more prosperous on the farm; it seemed as if new soil had been put into the ground. The locusts did not touch the best lucerne, the fruit trees produced in great abundance, the price of bacon increased in all the markets, and at table they no longer ate only buck, but prime mutton and calf's head; and one sheep's tail alone, had kept Christina Loubser for a month in fat. (p.43)

This novel presents both extremes of the land-of-contrasts stereotype as the

effects of either industry or sloth. Uncle Eloff's farm where "the water in the

dam had a bad smell from the pigsties, the refuse infected the water, and Uncle

Eloff's cattle suffered often from diseases" (p.16-17) is representative of the

other farms in the district that are neglected by their owners. The suggestion

that the farm rewards industry implies that the farm is an active participant in

the novel. To a greater or lesser degree this is true of all the novels in this

study. At the one extreme the farm is the background against which the action is

29 set - an example is Close's The Rose of Rietfontein -; at the other extreme the farm is experienced as a living force in the novel. The farm in Veldt Man, (H.M.E.

Clamp. 1930) for example, plays a passive role after having been 'conquered' by the Klihller sisters:

The Klihller women had conquered the veldt. produced order from chaos, fecundity from sterility. forced the red earth to bring forth. (p.10)

In The Secret Bird the farm actively influences events. After having ensured that

the line of people who had been its slaves remains unbroken. the farm succeeds in driving away the outsider - the farmer's wife - after she had given birth to a boy.

There is a very strong impression of active malevolence against the young mother after she has fulfilled the purpose for which the farm needed her. Thus a strong patriarchal influence is felt, which affects the treatment of women; even the farm

regards women as vessels of reproductive forces.

The most stereotypical image of the earth is that. of 'Mother Earth, , and in this

respect she is often depicted as a healing. life-giving, and fertile force. In

The Snake Garden, Theo turns to the farm for comfort:

The thought of ripening fields brought comfort; for the earth is a great healer ••• (p.88)

In The Glory of the Backveld Marriott, the schoolteacher. is cured of his alcoholism through the influence of the quiet and peaceful farm:

He had fought a hard battle with himself on that quiet. peaceful farm; had conquered the gnawing craving for drink and the persistent call of the bar and canteen drawing him back to town; he had prevailed against these insidious foes and had regained his manhood. He felt a new being, and found a purpose in life. (p.7S).

This suggestion that the farm/earth has the power to renew spent strength is the

basis of the Antaeus-myth, which is closely associated with the South African

farm. and ispart~--S~uth African pastoral myth. In Between Sun and Sand a

hunter recalls the rejuvenating quality of the "pungent scent. the very breath

and essence of the quick earth" (p.161) after a day spent in hunting. In Muir's

The Secret Bird the Antaeus-myth is explicitly mentioned, as the farmer - like

30 the mythical Antaeus - draws his strength from the farm/earth: He wanted to stand and feel Dauphine about him, comforting and close, demanding of him his life, in return for which the earth would restore it to him, renewed, perfected. Out of doors among his own trees he felt like Antaeus getting strength from the soil as they did. (p.97)

This novel presents the farm as mother, wife, and mistress to the farmer, Martin:

the suggestion of the farm being an active participant in the novel - in fact one

of the protagonists - is at its strongest in this novel. To both Martin and his wife the farm seems to be a living thing with its own desires and demands:

He no longer possessed it. It possessed him. He must work for it, and marry, and get sons, who should in their turn work for it, and carryon unbroken the line of those who had been its slaves. (p.57)

For Martin, the farm takes on the shape of everything he had ever needed; the

farm is not only 'Mother Earth', but "his friend, his wife, his mistress ••• and all his ancestors" (p. 202). As he stands looking at the farm, he realises the

extent to which the farm has influenced his life as well as that of his ancestors:

This was the apex of the year's building, God's work and man's work, and the work of that secret hidden thing - the earth itself. This was the abundance that those veins had fed, that that enormous body had conceived and had now brought forth, gloriously. And it was also the culminating point of the years that went before, from the day that the first stone of the house had been laid, the first field cleared, the first spade of rich brown earth had been overturned. Men's lives and men's deaths had gone to the making of this moment. Births and marriages and births again had helped in its accomplishment. It satisfied him to feel that he was only a stone in this great pyramid. It did not detract from his individuality, it rather enchanced it. He had come out of the house full of doubts, with anxieties, with thoughts that distressed him immeasurably, vexations and uncertainties. And suddenly, with the first breath of this familiar air, peace came on him again. He belonged to this and this belonged to him. It was himself. (pp.23l-232)

Martin's fascination for his farm, Dauphine, evokes a different image of the earth

that is echoed in some farm novels. Instead of the benign Mother Earth, the farm

is presented as bewitching and dangerous at the same time. In Cynthia Stockley's

The Claw, the African landscape is depicted as a mysterious, yet fascinating

country that leaves 'claw marks' in the heart of those who live in it. Africa has

been given the reputation of mystery, romance and barbarity by writers of adventure

31 stories such as Sir Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. 28 The appeal of these elements is described in Jill's Rhodesian Philosophy:

Rhodesia conveyed the very atmosphere of romance and mystery, which is further shown by the fact that we were both elated to observe it was in South Africa, somewhere near Nyasaland, Bechuanaland, and the Congo - all names equally fraught, to us, with mysterious whereabouts, climes, and happenings. (p.)

In some farm novels the elements of mystery and primitiveness have been

superimposed on the pastoral elements and the result is a different, specifically

(South) African·version of the pastoral myth. One manifestation of this pastoral

version is found in Penny Rose (Young, 1930):

She became silent again, preoccupied with watching the scenery, fascinated by it. In a way she understood how it might grip a man. She too felt the grip of its barbarity, the attraction of great open spaces, of the dry, hot, light air. The eternal conflict between life and death, and the savage and brutal triumph of nature which brought forth life only to destroy it, was powerfully evident. The influence of nature, her superb arrogance, was assertive, it directed attention to her power, to her reckless prodigality and her disregard of life. (p .12)

Not all the farm novels reveal this concept of the South African farm - as part

of the African stereotype of barbarity and mystery, or "a wide brown land where

life is full and demented" (Snake Garden, p.24), - to this extreme. Displacement

of myth in the direction of a South African version of the pastoral myth usually

includes only a few elements to give an African atmosphere to the farm. The

native, as I have pointed out, is often incorporated into the landscape to enhance

the African atmosphere of the novel. Other elements of colonial-pastoralism that

have been created around the farm are the 'illimitable veld' or "the great open

28 In Conrad's Heart of Darkness the sense of Africa as a dark and mysterious country is particularly strong: "Beyond the fence the forest stood up ghostly in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its goodness, the amazing reality of its concealed life ••• The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils... (Conrad pp 26-27)

32 spaces" mentioned in the above quote, and the sunshine. South Africa is often referred to as 'the land of sunshine'. In The Farmers of Lekkerbat one of the characters states that the English will never leave South Africa "because the sun never shines in their own country, it is always dark there, so they will not go and leave us" (p. 75) •

The concept of the farm as an active force in the popular farm novel is also expressed on the level of structure. The two images of the farm - the desert and the lush paradise - play an important role in a number of these farm novels. In most of the novels - examples are Brenda Trevisky, Katrina, Sannie, The Wine Farm

(Young, 1924) - conflict and imperfect relationships are reflected in the farm landscape. In Katrina, Allan is married to a woman he does not love, while his family have cut him off because of the lies that his brother has told about him.

These conflicts in the plot are reflected in the drought that is not broken until the truth is finally told and reconciliation has taken place:

To Allan (the drought) was all of a piece with the dreary life he now thought was all his lot. The deadly monotony of the glaring sunshine, barren hills, starving animals and despondent neighbours; the dry, unvaried food, bread without butter, tea and coffee without milk, meat without a particle of fat in it, vegetables conspicuous by their absence, - all these were to him merely the outward accessories of that inward barrenness which possessed his mind, his heart, his whole existence. (p.89)

In The Wine Farm the farm fulfils the structural role of Eden. At the beginning of the novel the farm is described as an Edenic garden with all the pastoral qualities discussed above. The heroine/Eve falls in love with her aunt's new husband, and at the first stirrings of lust, the farm loses its pastoral character for her and she perceives farm life as monotonous. Although she is not physically banished from 'Eden' the banishment is mental as she suffers for her love for Roy, and feels dissatisfied with her life on the farm. Her redeemer, the person who makes it possible for her to experience paradise again, is a man "with the heart of a child" (p.30) who "draws her... towards the steps, down the steps, into the

33 garden ••• "(p.310 my emphasis).

In The Wine Farm the pastoral qualities of the farm are directly linked to the way in which Sheena perceives the farm. As she loses the pastoral quality of innocence, her perception of the farm changes and loses its pastoral character. This novel demonstrates Marinelli's point that the pastoral world is very vulnerable to attack from outside (Marinelli, p.68). The threat to the pastoral world that is always lurking beneath the surface is symbolized by the locust eggs buried in the soil in The Glory of the Backveld.

After decades of inactivity the eggs suddenly hatch and the locusts appear:

Where did they come from? What secret. mysterious life force did thus suddenly electrify them into activity? How were those countless millions of eggs, buried only a few inches in the earth, preserved for nearly a third of a century? Year after year the ground had been soaked by penetrating rains, warmed by the life-giving rays of the sun and yielded successive crops of vegetation. but the eggs had remained unhatched. Flocks of sheep and herds of cattle had for years roamed to and fro over the veld. trampling the ground until it had acquired a hard surface. yet the eggs had apparently escaped all injury. Whence this unaccountable immunity from destruction and decay? (p.S)

Other human attitudes that are seen as disruptive to the pastoral qualities of the farm are materialism. greed. cruelty. and utilitarianism.

In A Virtuous Woman (D. Muir, 1929) Klaas finds farm life unbearable. one of the most important reasons being the materialistic attitude of the farmers that blinds them to the pastoral qualities of the farm:

'Stock. ' broke in Klaas passionately. 'Increases! God I'm sick of farming; ugliness. squalor, dirt. smells. utility! Always at the back of everything utility! And if you're a farmer, you can't look at a green field of lucerne, \, without wondering how many horses it'll feed. You can't watch the river come down, without wondering how many sheep will be drowned. You can't look at a fruit tree in flower without thinking of jam. ' (p.12)

In Jill on a Ranch (Page. 1921) one of the pastoral passages from the novel ends with the thought that "the advent of man and his beads and coins would, most emphatically, ruffle that perfect serenity. and evil passions and human cruelties

34 will follow. "(p.192)

An event that most often disrupts pastoral life in these novels, is war - both the Anglo-Boer war and the first world war. In Tante Rebella and her Friends Oom Koos's almost paradisal life on his farm is disrupted by the "English war":

Rent free with free labour, self sufficient for the simple life with which in those days any intelligent man was content, Oom Koos had almost achieved his dream of Eden, his wheat lands, his maize lands, his orchard and garden, when the 'English war' broke upon his peace • (p.60)

The Anglo-Boer War also threatens the farm in Karina de la Rey (C. Moor, p.I03). The farmer, walking around on his farm, thinks: "Alas! - and is all this to disappear in the red rain of war? Is this peaceful scene •• to be trampled under the feet of ruthless men.. 7" (p.134).

The most important element in a pastoral work, is nostalgia for an idealized past. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century the 'ideal' past or golden age was seen as a pre-industrialized, unspoilt world in which men lived (or were presumed to live) a pastoral life. The strong desire that these writers had to return to a 'golden age', i. e. a pre-Victorian age without industrialism, utilitarianism, war, and other evidence of civilization, can be deduced from the phrases they used to describe the Cape Colony in the second decade of the 19th century as part of the campaign to encourage emigration to South Africa. Jill's reaction to a booklet on Southern Rhodesia typifies the expectations that the English settlers had about South Africa:

'Why, here was an Eldorado! a Mille~um! a Garden of Eden! ••• A country of mystery and charm, an Arabian Nights Fairyland There is that land over there, with its fruits and flowers and sunshine and richness. (p.4)

The strongest element in the South African version of the pastoral myth is the belief that a 'new beginning' could be made in an - as yet - uncivilized country.

35 The specifically South African version of the pastoral myth, including all the elements mentioned so far, is indicative of a collective desire to return to a 'primeval' veld or a new Garden of Eden. In spite of negative reports about the Colony, the unconscious belief in the farm's potentiality to be an earthly paradise survived. The desire for a 'new beginning' in a fresh and unspoilt world is particulary strong in Page's Rhodesian novels. In Jill's Rhodesian Philosophy Jill describes an Edenic-looking part of the country.

It's all new, and fresh, and young, and untried. It's like going back to Creation. You and I are looking at a world God has just made, and wondering what is going to happen in it. Nothing at all has happened yet, you see, so no one can tell. I hope God is going to try another plan altogether, don't you? One in which duty won't always be something detestable; where goodness isn't almost always dullness, and where little children will stop little much longer, and miss out the tiresome, awkard years altogether, and where one can be quite sure that dogs and horses go to heaven. (p.103)

In the sequel to this novel, called Jill on a Ranch, Page, writing just after the First World War, emphasizes the ideals of peace and beauty, and an absence of

/ 'human passions and greed'. The desire to return to Eden is again stated:

The beautiful scene was so utterly and entirely serene. It was easy to realise the absence of human passions and human greed. Such things had no place in that fair garden of Eden. The fruit of the Tree had not yet been eaten •••

(p.l92)

The authors of these popular farm novels peopled the farm landscape with characters that closely resembled the existing stereotypes of the Boer, the woman and the native. Although the figure of the Boer does not play an important role in either -, ./ The Story of an African Farm, The Beadle, or In the Heart of the Country it is necessary to discuss briefly the stereotypes that emerged in popular literature.

Two contrasting stereotypes of the Dutch farmer can be traced in the popular farm novels. The first is the 'backvelder' stereotype that was created mainly by

Barrow, and taken up by other writers such as Moodie. The second stereotype is almost the exact opposite of the 'backvelder' stereotype, and depicts the Boer as

:~ a simple. trusting. hospitable 'child of nature'. In his novel Between -Sun and Sand. Scully describes the Boer as a combination of the two stereotypes. and lists the most important characteristic of each:

He is usually ignorant to a degree unknown among men called civilised. He is untruthful. prejudiced. superstitious. cunning, lazy and dirty. On the other hand he is extremely hospitable. Simple as a child in many things, and as trusting where his confidence has once been given, he cannot be known without being loved, for all his peculiarities. (p.4)

Scully was very sympathetic towards the Boers, and he tried to give a balanced picture of the Boer by combining the two stereotypes. Barrow's 'backvelder' stereotype, however, became prevalent after the Anglo-Boer war, and was often applied to the Boer nation as a whole.

John Ogg'S 'typical' Backvelder is described as follows:

Hofmeyer ••• with his unkempt hair, grisly beard and dirty appearance, typified the Backveld or Takhaar Boer to whom work was as great a luxury as a bath would be. (Piet Plessis, 1915, p.28)

Ogg also gives a rather amusing description of the Boers as lazy by comparing them to the train that takes his character, Ian, to his destination.

The train was thoroughly Boorish in its ways. It stopped wherever and whenever it could for the slightest pretext - at every station as a matter of course, and in between stations as often as possible, apparently for a piece of coal or a drink of water, or at times, as far as Ian could make out, for absolutely no reason whatever save sheer national laziness. (Piet Plessis, p.16)

In Stevenson's African Harvest (1928) Piet uses the locusts as an excuse to be lazy, choosing to view them as a sign that God no longer wants him to plant barley

(p.ll). Piet is also a typically dirty Boer who sleeps in his clothes - a characteristic that Howarth also ascribes to the Boer in Katrina: "Van Heerden appeared, looking as if he had slept in his clothes all night. and washed himself last week " (p.8)

37 Dishonesty is another characteristic of the 'backvelder' streotype. Ogg's Piet Plessis has earned the nickname 'Slim Piet' because of his dishonesty. while

Stevenson declares that "truth is not a strong point with the peasants" (African Harvest. p.66). Charlotte Moor claims that their own dishonesty and immorality has made the Boers suspicious of everyone else:

Christine was rendered half miserable. half recklessly amused by this new proof of the inherent. indelicate suspicion of the lower order of the Boers. who are so accustomed to frequent instances of immorality and disregard to the commonest decency amongst themselves that to them no one is pure - they suspect the most harmless and irreproachable of friendships. (Marina de la Rey, p.9S)

Barend Labuschagne' s habitual expression is one of "alert suspicion" (Marina. p.24).

Stupidity and ignorance are further elements of this stereotype. Phrases such as

"slow of understanding" (Jack and his Ostrich. (1893), p.36) "slow witted" (Bywonner. (1916), p.SO) and "the illiterate Dutch" (Piet Plessis p.18) are often used. while a favourite example of the Boer's ignorance is his belief in a geocentric world (Farmers of Lekkerbat; Glory of the Backveld) In African Harvest.

Uncle Piet is a very conservative farmer and, although Stevenson implies that it is his inherent laziness that prevents Uncle Piet from applying more progressive

farming methods, Uncle Piet himself uses his religion as an excuse:

As has been said before, uncle Piet was not among the enterprising Dutch farmers. For one thing he had been born to different ways, for another thing he considered it irreligious to go against nature and the way God had arranged the earth. (p.SH

Charlotte Moor is an example of an author who uses the 'backvelder' stereotype to express the animosity that the English felt towards the Boer during the Anglo-Boer war. In Marina de la Rey (1903) she depicts the Boers as rude and sadistic cowards, and calls them "these insufferable, unfriendly. suspicious, unbearable

38 people. with their utter lack of humanity" (p.56-57). One of the .characters in this novel describes the Boer nation as "a blot upon creation. which it was to be hoped the creator might some day wipe out" (p.l40). There is also mention of cruelty towards natives. which the missionaries and philanthropists accused the Boers of in the nineteenth century.29 One of the characters reports a conversation he had with another: "He told me some almost unbelievable yarns about the lawlessness and tyranny shown towards the natives" (p.42).

The Boer is a compound of both good and bad qualities. In Marina de la Rey. Piet Plessis, African Harvest, The Bywonner. and Katrina. the bad qualities are foregrounded.

As I have shown in the first chapter, a more positive view of the Boer was given by authors such as Lichtenstein and MacKinnon. The one characteristic of the Boer that almost all writers about South Africa have noted - including those who held negative views about them - was their hospitality. This element can be found in .---.------.., most of the popular farm novels discussed in this chapter -even if, as is the case in Jack and his Ostrich (E. Stredder, 1893) the farmer's hospitality is slightly tempered by his dislike of the English. The child-of-nature stereotype was more prevalent before the Anglo-Boer war, but writers such as Brinkman. lverach and

Stormberg used it even after the war.

In The Bush-boys (1896) M. Reid describes the Boers as a "brave. strong, healthy. rural. peace-loving. industrious race - lovers of truth, and friends to republican freedom. in short, a noble race of men" (p.3). The elements mentioned here are

29 John Barrow reported cruelties towards the natives (for example in Travels Vol. 1 p.145; vol. 1 p.236; vol. 1 p.290) and in 1828 John Phillip's Researches in South Africa was published, which also accused the Boers of committing atrocities against the natives. The Cape Frontier Times accused the Voortrekkers in the interior of slavery. See for example articles on 11 Nov. 1840, and 3 Nov. 1842

39 almost the exact opposite of those elements contained in the 'backvelder' stereotype. The same description of the Boer can be found in Stormberg's two novels. With love from Gwenno and Mrs Pieter de Bruyn (Stormberg n, d. ). In The Glory of the Backveld Brinkman rejects the 'backvelder' stereotype through the observations of Flynn, an Englishman:

(Flynn) had been imbued with the idea that Boers were a lot of lazy, dirty beings wholly unadvanced and disreputable - a reputation that somehow, unfortunately, gets into the minds of those who never met or associated with them. His delusion was, however, soon dispelled••• (p.79)

In Brenda Trevisky the heroine notes a quality "difficult to define but very pleasing - a chee ranes, a characteristic air of independence" (p.60). E. Stredder praises their "wonderful Dutch patience"(p .105) and their "unwearying industry"

(p.l05, 6), which is in complete contrast to the 'idle' stereotype.

There are some descriptive elements that are included in both images of the Boer, though each element is coloured by the writer's own attitude towards the Boer.

According to Reid, "every boor is a smoker" (Bush-boys, p. 9) and the Boer is often pictured with a pipe in his mouth and a cup of coffee (or 'sopie') in his hand.

If the Boer happens to be a typical 'backvelder' he would also be "varying the monotony of existence by spitting freely on the floor" (Marina de la Rey, p.)7).

When Howarth describes Van Heerden smoking on the stoep, she makes it clear that his 'meditation' is not a spiritual e~ise but the result of a mindless acceptance of the pastoral qualities to farm life: "Johannes Petrus Christian van Heerden sat at his homestead door, enjoying simultaneously his evening pipe and his evening meditation his habitual expression was one of placid and rather vacant content ••• "(Katrina, p.45). The same situation is described in Reid's The Bush boys. The Boer is seen in a different light as Hendrik van Bloom blends in with his surroundings.

The ex-field-cornet (Hendrik van Bloom) was seated in front of his kraal ••• From his lips protruded a large pipe, with its huge bowl of meerschaum. Every boor is a smoker. Notwithstanding the many losses and crosses of his past

40 life, there was contentment in his eye. He was gratified by the prosperous appearance of his crops ••• (p.9)

Other elements that are shared by both images of the Boer include fatalism (The

Farmers of Lekkerbat), phlegm (Jack and his Ostrich; The Bush boys). obstinacy or perseverance, (depending on stereotype) and a slow, deliberate approach to any situation (which can be translated as either the result of stupidity and ignorance, or the natural behaviour of an inhabitant of a peaceful and quiet farm).

Both stereotypes of the South African farmer were created exclusively around the Dutch or Afrikaans farmer. The prevailing idea in these farm novels is that the

Boer lives close to nature and - because of the isolation in which he lives - is/ still "unspoilt by too much contact with too much civilisation" (Hans van Donde~

Montague. 1896, p.3). Both the 'backvelder' and the pastoral farmer belong on th

South African soil while the English farmer and, by implication the writer of the novel - with his sophisticated and civilized background, is never integrated into the farm landscape.

The stereotypes of women found in these popular novels are more varied than those of the men. The 'angel in the house' and the 'fallen woman' are both found in these novels, as in other novels of the Victorian period; but added to these are the 'typical' Boer-woman as Barrow and Moodie described her.

On looking towards his hostess, Ian at once recognized that he was in the presence of a typical Boer-vrouw. There she sat, half- reclining, on on easy-chair, her heavy face, of which the swollen features had lost all their early comeliness, expressing nothing but sullen, torpid calm; her eyes fixed on vacancy, her large flabby hands crossed in front of her unwieldy person and her whole attitude that of one who had little to occupy her attention save her own personal indulgence and comfort. (Piet Plessis, p.27, 28)

In complete contrast to this unflattering concept of the Boer woman, one finds a woman such as Tante Let in The Breath of the Karoo (Brinkman, 1914) who,

41 possessed many sterling qualities, and, as far as she was known, was not only respected, but loved. In times of sickness or want she was the first appealed to; for she would sympathise and help to the utmost of her power ••• (p.3)

This is, of course, the 'angel in the house30 that was so popular in Britain during the 19th century, valued for her sympathy, service, and self-effacement.

In a number of popular farm novels, the writers presented what they thought of as the Boer's concept of the woman. At one extreme, the woman was seen as little better than a servant. In Marina de la Rey the woman is described as "a fool to be tolerated: God having made it, and man not being able to do without it".

Moor's attitude is very disapproving of this concept of woman, especially considering that the English heroine of the novel is a liberal, outspoken young girl. This heroine describes Mr. Labuschagne's attitude towards his wife in a letter:

Mr Lab's manners are supposed to be mightily superior, because he allows his wife to sit down to meals with him instead of feeding him first, and having a lick at the dishes afterwards herself. (p.40)

In A Virtuous Woman Sanni is another submissive and obedient wife in the patriarchal system. Her attitude towards Sarel, her husband, is one of awed loyality:

Sarel was her husband, the father of her children, the head of her household. She feared and respected him; honoured him, obeyed him, responded to his every wish, worked for him. He was beyond disloyalty. He stood only just below God, his own sons grouped about him, infinitely above her. (p.67)

30 The term 'angel in the house' is derived from a poem by Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the Bouse (1854) in which the 'ideal' Victorian women is described. Authors such as Elizabeth Gaskell (Ruth, 1853), Mrs Wood (East Lynne) Thomas Hardy, (Tess of the d'Urbervilles) explored the theme of the 'fallen woman'. It is interesting to note that the 'fallen woman' in a Victorian novel usually dies at the end of the novel, apparently suggesting that death is a fitting punishment for her 'fall' from the status of 'pure' and ideal womanhood.

42 The effect of this description is very much like the old family portraits where the woman is sitting down, her husband and sons standing next to or behind her.

The submissive role of the woman in this novel is seen partly as the effect of a rigid and conservative patriarchal system that still existed on South African farms. In The Farmers of Lekkerbat the heroine suffers from the same system. At first Christina rebels against the emphasis laid on marriage on a farm:

"Why should I marry? ••• Oh, Almighty God! there's always some talk about marriage. It's either a woman who is asking, or a girl or a stranger, even. There's never any peace. In everything it's marriage. Marrying and marrying. Annie Loubser wanted to get married. She was always worrying, and her man is old and bitter, she's worse off than she was. Tell me, Papa, why should I get married? I don't want to. (p.20)

She is, however, forced to acknowledge that marriage is a woman's only career on a farm, having been told that "women are useless on a farm" (p. 210). J

Marriage is seen in a different light in Veldt Man. In true Barbara Cartland style, the heroine (even if she had been a spirited and independent girl throughout the novel), submits gratefully to her husband and promises to obey him.

He rose, towering, and came to the table. Feeling and looking small, Fontein gazed up at him from where she sat opposite the loaf, and at that moment he became to her mind the 'baas'. (p.316)

"Jan - Jan! I will work hard! I only want to be with you, work for you, be your faithful vrouw! •••• (p.319)

This attitude of the woman towards her husband is a conventional one, especially in popular literature (both in the Victorian period and today), and it fits in very well with the general concept of the South African farm as patriarchal to an almost extreme degree. The extent to which a woman is trapped on a farm and in the system, is expressed by F. E. M. Young in The Bywonner.

Katrijn hated the farm... and there was no escape from it. She had neither the wit nor the enterprise to break away and take up a line of her own. The life of a woman on the farm is no enviable lot, unless the woman loves the land, and have some deeper interest wherewith to fill her days. The drudgery

43 of housework is dull and unsatifying - men labour in the service of others, for which the women of the household receive no pay, and seldom even appreciation ••• Katrijn, like the vast majority of women, perceived no remedy: she rebelled in spirit, while acquiescing in her lot as the common heritage of her sex. (p.247)

Apart from the wife-as-servant concept, the women on a farm are often regarded in the light of a commercial article. In Broadway's The longest way round (1916),

Sannie, according to a Boer woman,

is a good huisvrouw, and she has a nice flock of goats and is fat. What more could any farmer want? (p.23)

The satire is directed against the materialistic attitude towards marriage ascribed to the Boers. According to these authors, the Boer woman was often discussed in terms of her dowry. In Hans van Donder she is presented as a horse that "weighs well for her age" (p.34), and the important question is " do you think she will step into your harness easily?~(p.34)

Another aspect of the woman's role, especially on a farm, is that of mother. Yet she is only needed to provide the farmer with an heir, after which she becomes negligible. In The Secret Bird Martin's concept of a mother is a conventional one: mothers are supposed to be pure and passionless creatures:

If she would only spend her distasteful passion on a baby she might in time become a passionless and unexacting wife. Also Dauphine would have an heir. That was important. All those lovely acres, those enchanting trees, would have a young master who would be brought up as he had been brought up, to love them with his undivided heart. (p.lIO)

In this passion that the farmer has for his land, there is no place for a woman.

There is also no place on a farm for a 'fallen' woman. In The Bywonner Adela

(like Lyndall) dies after her pregnancy is discovered; in The Wine Farm Sheena

(like Andrina) is temporarily expelled from 'Paradise'. In African Harvest Trix is the wife of one of the farmer's sons and she obviously does not belong on the

44 farm. Her role is more that of the 'new woman' in Victorian fiction: the woman who refuses to obey the husband or father. and who decides for herself whether she wants to become a mother or not. The farmer sees her as utterly depraved. and she rejects both him. the farm. and the patriarchal system.

In Daphne Muir's A virtuous woman one finds another stereotype of the woman: the matriarch. She is invariably presented as a hard. ruthless. almost masculine woman:

Mrs Le Roux was above all things a woman of spirit. So easy had been her dominion over her third husband that nobody in Verdriet had seen her in action. Life had gone forward smoothly for she had been unopposed. and her wish was law. In consequence of this she had passed for a peacable woman. stern but just. without friends and without enemies. untouched alike by scandal and affection. pure with that rigid virtue so esteemed by people of her period.

(p.40)

The implication is very strong that the only opportunity a woman has to assert her will is by doing it in secret. and to preserve the appearance of a 'peacable' woman of 'rigid virtue'.

These different concepts of women are in every way Victorian: the angel. the whore. the 'new woman'. the servant. Yet in these popular farm novels they are placed within a South African context of rigid patriarchy. The farm (or the Boer) is seen as the force that shapes the woman into these moulds. These stereotypes of the land, the Boer. and the women are explored in Schreiner's The Story of an

African Farm. which forms the subject of the next chapter.

45 CHAPTER 3

The title of Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm indicates that the farm is the focal point of the novel, and both narrative and structure confirm this initial judgement. At the level of narrative the farm is the focal point. It is frequently referred to, and all the events either take place on the farm, or are narrated (usually to Em) on the farm. The only event that takes place away from the farm is the wedding. The comings and goings of the characters centre in the farm: Waldo leaves the farm and returns after his wanderings; Lyndall leaves and tries to go back when she is dying; Gregory Rose follows her, and returns to the farm to tell of her death.

At the level of structure the farm plays a more complex role than the relatively simple movement from desert to paradise that one encounters in popular novels. Narrative and structure do not correspond in the same way in this novel.

Although the 'year of the great drought' corresponds to the arrival of Blenkins, the drought that is broken at the end of the novel is not the same one. There is also a gap of several months between the final pastoral scenes and the first rains after the drought. As far as the structure of the novel is concerned, however, there is a clear movement from the dry, brown plains to the green, pastoral scenes of the last few pages. Even when the farm is described in pastoral terms during the novel (for example on p.144) the colours used are brown, red, and yellow (winter or autumn colours). It is only at the end of the novel that the plain is described as green. In this novel Schreiner both demonstrates that the traditional

European pastoral conventions and attitudes are unsuitable for an African farm, and attempts to create a specifically South African pastoral mode. My suggestion is that Schreiner created a South African pastoral ideal through an imaginative

46 synthesis of European conventions and her own personal pastoral ideals.31~

Her own attitude towards the South African farm can be deduced from the fact that she both loved the life on a Karoo farm. yet found it impossible to exist for long - .._- ~~_~~~::ause_~~!~E.!_p_~jii~-.!c~~~~:~.~~~=-:~!:~~~~.~:~.~~~i:~?2 ThifLamp;ig~~---_ towards the farm is central to the novel. Her admiration for the life on a farm is expressed in "The wanderings of the Boer" in which she describes life on a South African farm in pastoral and idealistic terms. 33 The central comparison is between a rural existence and an urban one:

To an outsider this life of the primi.tdve Boer may appear monotonous and blank. But it has aspects of beauty and rich compensations of its own. Is it nothing that he should rise morning after morning ••• in the sweet grey dawn. when the heavy brains of the card-player and the theatre-goer are still wrapped in their first dull sleep. and watch the first touch of crimson along the hills - a crimson fairer and more rich than that of any sunset- sky - while the stars fade s lowl y up above; that he should stand. drinking his coffee on the'stoep '. in the sharp exhilarating air. as the earth grows pinker. till after a while. as he stands at his kraal gate and watches his sheep file out. he sees all his plain turn gilt in the sunlight? Is there no charm in those long peaceful days. when hours count as moments; when one may hear the flies buzz out in the sunshine. and the bleat of a far-off sheep sounds loud and clear; when upon the untaxed brain. through the untaxed nerves of sense. every sight and sound trace themselves with delicious clearness and merely to live and hear the flies hum - is a pleasure? Is there no charm in those evenings when after the long.

31 A. E. Voss discusses The story of an African Farm, as a pastoral work in his article, "A Generic Approach to Jffr" the South African Novel in English", UCT Studies in ll English, pp. 110-119 32 Schreiner frequently referred to her love for the Karoo. In a letter to Havelock Ellis dated 20 April 1890 she wrote: It is perfect, so still, so still, the motionless Karoo with the sunlight shimmering on it ••• I can't describe to anyone the love I have to this African scenery ••• Yet on 22 September 1891 she wrote to Louie Ellis: I feel so lonely here, mentally lonely; not a soul in all this great country that shares a thought or t\\ feeling with me. Both letters taken from Uys Krige (ed.) Olive Schreiner: A Selection, pp.200, 202

33 In Schreiner, Thoughts on South Africa, pp 148-190

47 still day the farm breaks into its temporary life and bustle, and the· sheep stream bleating home, and the cows come hurrying to the little calves who put their heads between the bars and over the kraal gate; and the Kaffirs come up to the house for the milking, and the children and dogs play about, and in the great still sky the stars come out one by one; while there is still light enough from the clear west for the house-mother to finish her seam of sewing, as she sits at the back- door? Is it nothing that the competition, ambition, worry and fret, which compose the greater part of men's lives in cities, are hardly known here? - that with untired nerves and untaxed brain man and woman may sink to sleep at night, and in the course of long years hardly know a night of broken rest or wakeful torture? Are this man's pleasures smaller or less rational, when he breaks in his young horses,or rejoices over the birth of a dozen white-nosed calves, than those of the man who finds delight in watching the roll of the dice at Monte Carlo, or who quivers with excitement as he determines whether he shall put his coin on this square or that? Is he not a more rational and respectable object when with his wife and children behind him, he drives his wagon with his eight horses through his own veld on his way to church, than the man, who sometimes with the care of an empire on his shoulders, with all the opportunities for culture which unlimited wealth and unlimited opportunity can bestow at the end of this nineteenth century, and with almost unlimited opportunity for the exercise of the intellect in large fields for human benefit, yet finds life's noblest recreation in driving round and round in an enclosed park, with four horses, and a lacquey behind with a trumpet, and a red coat - like a four years' child showing off his go-cart! Is not his life, not merely more rational, but more rich in enjoyment than that of worldlings, over-gorged with the products of a material civilization? (Thoughts, pp.185-186)

One can conclude that this picture of man living in complete harmony with nature is Schreiner's own ideal, as well as being an important element in a pastoral work. There is a definite sense of nostalgic longing in this description of the

Boer's life on his farm. But the very act of describing it places Schreiner in) the position of an observer and distances her from the pastoral essence of the

Boer's life. As Marinelli points out, the shepherds did not write the pastoral ~ poetry. (Marinelli, p.14) Schreiner inevitably writes as a sophisticated urban dweller, and her position as a liberal intellectual of the nineteenth century forces her to criticise aspects of farm life in South Africa. Her novel seems to point to the conclusion that an intellectual questioning mind (the characteristic of the period in which she wrote) tends to disrupt the pastoral qualities of farm

life, while Schreiner as an outspoken feminist could not accept the oppression of women - and to a lesser extent of the native - within farm society.

48 As I have demonstrated in the second chapter, the representation of a South African farm usually includes a vast plain stretching as far as the eye can see, brilliant sunshine, and an empty sky. Schreiner uses the same elements in her description of the 'African Farm' of the title. But the farm changes throughout the novel because different subjective emotions are projected onto the landscape. From the opening paragraphs her descriptions of the farm encompass the above mentioned elements, though a different perspective is given to them. In the first description the farm is seen by moonlight, which gives a "weird and almost oppressive beauty" to the farm landscape.

The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted 'karroo' bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk bushes with their long, finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light. In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the centre a small, solitary 'kopje' rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round iron-stones piled one upon another, as over some giant's·grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stone, and on the very summit a clump of prickly-pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad, fleshy leaves. At the foot of the 'kopje' lay the homestead. First, the stone-walled 'sheep-kraals' and Kaffir huts; beyond them the dwelling-house - a square red-brick building with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden ladder that led up to the 10ft, the moonlight cast a kind of dreamy beauty, and quite etherealized the low brick wall that ran before the house, and which enclosed a bare patch of sand and two straggling sunflowers. On the zinc roof of the great open waggon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, till it seemed that every rib in the metal was of burnished silver. Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the solitary plain. (p.29)

The farm is immediately given a definite setting - Africa and the structures against which the story unfolds itself are described: the 'kopje', the sheep-kraals, Kaffir huts, the homestead, the loft.

There is a suggestion of the 'land of mystery and charm' so beloved to writers of adventure stories in "a weird and almost oppressive beauty" as well as a sense of unearthly - though transient - beauty in "dreamy beauty", "etherealized" and "burnished silver".

49 The 'kopje' stands as a monument to the very distant past - a 'giant's grave' - in the centre of this scene. The past it represents, as we learn later, is the time before the farm as structure was imposed on the African landscape: the 'kopje'is also a reminder that nature transcends the temporary man-made structures and suggests something vaster than either the farm or the time-span of one human life. Its position in the middle of the scene renders it very visible, and it is referred to throughout the novel.

This picture.of the farm is an idealised picture in which the moonlight symbolises the transforming power of imagination or artistic creativity. The moonlight has the power to transform the fixed elements of the farm landscape into something beautiful, partly, as the following passage suggests, by hiding the defects:

In one (bed) lay a yellow-haired child, with a low forehead and a face of freckles, but the loving moonlight hid defects here as elsewhere, and showed only the innocent face of a child in its first sweet sleep. (p .30)

The colours in which the first picture of the farm is painted - white, silver, and blue - stand in contrast to the red, brown and yellow tones of most of the descriptions of the landscape in this novel. The second description of the farm presents a different and contrasting perspective from the previous one. The s~e elements are used, but this time bathed in sunlight that reveals the defects.

The farm by daylight was not as the farm by moonlight. The plain was a weary flat of loose red sand sparsely covered by dry karroo bushes, that cracked beneath the tread like tinder, and showed the red earth everywhere. Here and there a milk-bush lifted its pale- coloured rods, and in every direction the ants and beetles ran about in the blazing sand. The red walls of the farmhouse, the zinc roofs of the outbuildings, the stone walls of the 'kraals', all reflected the fierce sunlight, till the eye ached and blenched. No tree or shrub was to be seen far or near. The two sunflowers that stood before the door, out- stared by the sun, drooped their brazen faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like insects cried aloud among the stones of the 'kopje'.

The Boer-woman, seen by daylight, was even less lovely than when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was damned. Less lovely too, by daylight, was the dead Englishman's child, her little step-daughter, upon whose freckles and low wrinkled forehead the sunlight had

50 no mercy. (p.32)

Here the Boer-woman stereotype emerges fully - the coarseness of Tant' Sannie, the wooden stove, and the coffee.

The descriptive terms in this passage are indicative of the emotions that prevail on the farm, in particular in the chapter called 'The Sacrifice'. The plain is a weary flat of loose red sand, as well as being dry. The blazing sun and the dryness of the earth echo both Waldo's intense emotions, and his bit ter disillusionment. The harshness of the landscape and the effects of the fierce sun reflect the uncompromising quality of the religion that Waldo tries to accept as his own.

The sunlight is symbolic of the 'reality' that tends to undercut the pastoral qualities of farm life. Otto, who represents the pastoral world in this novel, is blind to the fact that the two 'boys' are making fun of him while he tries to explain to them the approaching end of the world. "The boys, as they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other and worked as slowly as they possibly could, but the German never saw it" (p.32). Instead of being admirable the pastoral qualities of Otto - childlike and innocent - make him appear foolish and naive.

Everywhere reality can subvert the ideal.

Schreiner modifies the 'land of contrasts' stereotype in this novel, as well as the 'potential paradise' quality of a South African farm. The extent to which the farm is perceived as a terrestrial paradise depends not only on nature or the structure of the novel, but frequently on the subjective perceptions of individuals. The different characters in the novel - both inhabitants and outsiders - experience the farm differently, and through these different responses to the farm the reader is presented with a multi-dimensional representation of the 'African farm'.

51 The farm is most often presented through the eyes of Otto and Waldo. Neither of these two characters rationalizes his perception of the farm but experiences the farm landscape directly. When Otto, whose vision of reality is filtered through his idealistic perception of the world, looks at the empty sky it is a "serene" blue sky (p.67, my emphasis) that he sees. The pastoral ideal that is projected onto the farm landscape by Otto's imagination is congruent with Otto's religious sensibility. Bonaparte Blenkins, for example, becomes Christ when Otto looks at him.

Opening a much worn Bible, he began to read, and as he read pleasant thoughts and visions thronged in him. 'I was a stranger, and ye took me in', he read. He turned again to the bed where the sleeper lay. 'I was a stranger'. Very tenderly the old man looked at him. He saw not the bloated body nor the evil face of the man; but, as it were, under deep disguise and fleshly concealment, the form that long years of dreaming had made very real to him. 'Jesus, lover, and is it given to us, weak and sinful, frail and erring, to serve Thee, to take Thee in!' he said softly, as he arose from his seat. Full of joy, he began to pace the little room. Now and again as he walked he sang the lines of a German hymn, or muttered broken words of prayer. The little room was full of light. It appeared to the German that Christ was very near him, and that at almost any moment the thin mist of earthly darkness that clouded his human eyes might be withdrawn, and that made manifest of which the friends at Emmaus, beholding it, said, 'It is the Lord! (p.49)

Apart from Otto, Waldo is the only character who is integrated into the farm landscape,34 and it is his emotions that colour most of the descriptions of the farm landscape. When he is working on his wood carving, the farm landscape is infused with pastoral qualities:

Waldo lay on his stomach on the red sand. The small ostriches he herded wandered about him, pecking at the food he had cut or at pebbles and dry sticks. On his right lay the graves; to his left the dam; in his hand was a large wooden post covered with carvings, at which he worked. Doss lay before him basking in the winter sunshine, and now and again casting an expectant glance at the corner of the nearest ostrich-camp.The scrubby thorn-trees under

34 Jean Marquard states that Waldo's identification with Africa is incomplete and undefined, "since it is never more than the private experience of an isolated individual" in "Hagar's Child: A reading of 'The story of an African Farm' in Cherry Clayton's, Olive Schreiner, pp.143-153.

52 which they lay yielded no shade, but none was needed in the glorious June weather, when in the hottest part of the afternoon the sun was but pleasantly warm; and the boy carved on, not looking up, yet conscious of the brown serene earth about him and the intensely blue sky above. (p.144)

Apart from the predominant colour (brown), this scene has a definite pastoral quality within the framework of the African landscape: sunshine, veld, and blue

sky.

When Waldo confesses that he hates God (but loves Jesus Christ) he projects his own feelings of wickedness and loneliness onto the landscape, and specifically

the leaves of the prickly-pear on the 'kopje':

He turned up the brim of his great hat and looked at the moon, but most at the leaves of the prickly-pear that grew just before him. They glinted, and glinted, and glinted, just like his own heart - cold, so hard, and very wicked. His physical heart had pain also, it seemed full of little bits of glass that hurt•••• He felt horribly lonely. There was not one thing so wicked as he in all the world, and he knew it. (p.35)

In this scene, the moonlight does not transform the landscape into' something

ethereally beautiful, but infuses the landscape with an atmosphere of evil in

response to Waldo's feelings. Waldo's response to the farm landscape is emotional

and instinctive, and is only one of the possible responses to the farm. It is

partly conditioned by the fact that his status on the farm is that of servant,

which is symbolic of the oppressiveness of a farm system created by the English

colonizers (Blenkins) and Dutch conservatism (Tant' Sannie).

Tant' Sannie's attitude towards the farm is strictly materialistic, as is shown

in her desire to marry little Piet vander Walt, with his "two farms, twelve

thousand sheep" (p.187). This attitude is one commonly found in the stereotype

of the Boer and indicates a complete ignorance of the pastoral qualities of the

farm.

53 Bonaparte Blenkins is another character who sees the farm only. as a means to

satisfy his desire for property and power. His wish to "wander in the benign air,

and taste the gentle cool of evening" (p.54) is nothing more than a pose to impress

Otto, though couched in second-hand pastoral terms.

In contrast to the materialistic attitude of Tant' Sannie and Bonaparte Blenkins,

Gregory Rose offers a conventional and romantic (if not melodramatic) response to

the farm. His is the romantic pose of the solitary figure against a rural

landscape; his farm - 'Kopje Alone' - is the 'pastoral retreat' favoured by poets.

The name of his farm - 'Kopje Alone' implies that this is a European attitude

towards the countryside, both because of its allusion to pastoral poetry, as well

as in the English translation of 'alleen'.

Another European response to the farm is offered by Waldo's stranger:

What had that creature (Waldo), so coarse-clad and clownish, to do with the subtle joys of the weather? Himself, white-handed and delicate, he might hear the music which shimmering sunshine and solitude play on the finely-strung chords of nature ••• (p.149)

His response to the farm is that of a European intellectual, and is both

inappropriate and conventional. His "white-handed and delicate" appearance is suited to a landscape of "shimmering sunshine and solitude" in which music is

played" on the finely- strung chords of nature", but this is not Schreiner's

African farm of red sand, rocks. and blazing sunshine. To someone imbued with pastoral works in which the landscape is green, filled with flowers and gambolling animals. the empty veld of the African landscape appears monotonous. The stranger's attitude towards this landscape that refuses to imitate the

English pastoral ideal. is one of boredom:

The stranger forced himself lower down in the saddle and yawned. It was a drowsy afternoon, and he objected to travel in these out-of-the- world parts. He liked better civilised life •••• (p.145 ) The stranger's perception of farm life is conventional and simplistic. His belief that hard work on the farm could give relief to suffering or confused minds reflects the idea that life on a farm is natural and wholesome. "When the suspense fills you with pain you build stone walls and dig earth for relief" (p.160). This response to pain is ironic on a farm where very little farm work is noticeably being done. The stranger's perception of the South African farm is that of a pastoral retreat that offers peace and quiet as opposed to the bustle of a nineteenth-century town. In this aspect his concept of the farm is the same that

Gregory Rose holds.

Lyndall looks at the farm from a feminist point of view and perceives it as oppressive to women. To demonstrate her point that men and women are only equal at birth and in death, she speculates on what would happen if either she or Waldo were to arrive at a farm alone:

We stand here at this gate this morning, both poor, both young, both friendless; there is not much to choose between us. Let us turn away just as we are, to make our way in life. This evening you will come to a farmer's house. The farmer, albeit you come alone and on foot, will give you a pipe of tobacco and a cup of coffee and a bed. If he has no dam to build and no child to teach, tomorrow you can go on your way with a friendly greeting of the hand. I, if I come to the same place tonight, will have strange questions asked me, strange glances cast on me. The Boer-wife will shake her head and give me food to eat with the Kaffirs, and a right to sleep with the dogs. That would be the first step in our progress - a very little one, but every step to the end would repeat it. (P.177l

Her criticism can be applied to a wider society than that of the farm, but she specifically criticises the patriarchal farm society that was instrumental in moulding her own character. She draws on her own childhood experiences on the farm to demonstrate the way in which women are shaped according to a patriarchal society.

They begin to shape us to our cursed end ••• when we are tiny things in shoes and socks. We sit with our little feet drawn up under us in the window, and look out at the boys in their happy play. We want to go. Then a loving hand is laid on us: 'Little one, you cannot go' they say 'your face will burn and

55 your nice white dress be spoiled'. We feel it must be for our good, it is so lovingly said; but we cannot understand, and we kneel still with one little cheek wistfully pressed against the pane. Afterwards we go and thread blue beads, and make a string for our neck, and we go and stand before the glass. We see the complexion we were not to spoil. and the white frock and we look into our own great eyes. Then the curse begins to act on us. (p.177>

She is obviously referring to herself and her own childhood experiences of patriarchal moulding.

The farm represents certain values against which Lyndall rebels. Hacked out of \ the primeval veld by white Calvinist voorr.rekkers , the farm represents patriarchy, racism, and Calvinism. The patriarchal system on a south African farm not only demands that women be submissive. but places the emphasis on marriage. Even

Lyndall is forced to admit that - at that time - women did not have other options but to marry.

They say we complain of woman's being compelled to look upon marriage as a profession but that she is free to enter upon it or leave it as she pleases. Yes - and a cat set afloat in a pond is free to sit in the tub till it dies there, it is under no obligation to wet it s feet; and a drowning'man may catch at a straw or not just as he likes -:rt is a glorious liberty! Let any man think for five minutes of what old maidenhood means to a woman - and then let him be silent. (p.l8l)

In Lyndall's case, old maidenhood would make her dependent on Em's charity. since

Em will own the farm after Tant' Sannie's marriage. Lyndall rejects Em's attitude towards marriage - that love is service (p.269) - by claiming that she is "not in so great a hurry to put (her) neck beneath any man's foot" (p.l72). Knowing that she is pregnant, she briefly considers marrying Gregory Rose. who only wishes to serve her, but rejects him too. Finally she consents to go away with her lover but refuses to marry him:

'I cannot marry you' she said slowly, 'because I cannot be tied. but. if you wish you may take me away with you. and take care of me; then when we do not love anymore we can say good-bye •••• ' (p.224)

56 While she is claiming her freedom, she also tacitly admits that she needs someone to take care of her.

Another form of oppression on this farm is the relationship between the adults and the three children. Both Blenkins and Tant' Sannie are tyrants. Tant' Sannie has some feelings of kindness, but Blenkins enjoys exercising his 'patriarchal rights'. As soon as he is master of the farm, he takes every opportunity to hurt and degrade Waldo, while pretending to do so for Waldo's own good:

'Chasten thy son while there is hope' said Bonaparte, 'and let not thy soul spare for his crying. 'Those are God's words I shall act as a father to you, Waldo. (p.1l5)

Blenkins crushes Waldo's dreams by stepping on the machine that Waldo has worked on for months; he also prevents Waldo from gaining knowledge by burning the book that Waldo found in the 10ft. Lyndall is the only one on whom this tyranny has

little effect, but Em is punished in her place.

(Tant' Sannie) waddled after them, and caught Em by the arm. She had struck Lyndall once years before, and had never done it again, so she took Em (p.82)

and:

'Lyndall made (Blenkins) angry', said (Em) tearfully, 'and he has given me the fourteenth of John to learn. He says he will teach me to behave myself, when Lyndall troubles him' • (p.69)

Schreiner mentions the opression of natives only obliquely. There are very few (\i: instances that she shows the resentment the natives feel towards the white master. j It'", One such a moment is when Otto turns to the Hottentot woman for help:

She was his friend; she would tell him kindly the truth. The woman answered by a loud. ringing laugh. 'Give it him. old missis Give it him!' It was so nice to see the white man who had been master hunted down. (p.82)

White oppression causes the spite and resentment that the native woman feels, but

~\ 57 Schreiner shows her to be oppressed not only by a white racist society. but also by a black patriarchal pattern in black society.

There at the foot of the 'kopje' goes a Kaffir; he has nothing on but a blanket; he is a splendid fellow - six feet high. with a magnificent pair of legs. In his leather bag he is going to fetch his rations. and I suppose to kick his wife with his beautiful legs when he gets home. He has a right to. he bought her for two oxen. (p.213)

Lyndall seems to have insight into hlack patriarchy as well as white patriarchy. ) yet Schreiner herself is guilty of a Victorian stereotypic vision of the native. The phrase "he is a splendid fellow" denotes both a patronising attitude towards the native. as well as an adherence to the 'noble savage' concept of him. In her ( essay "The Englishman" (Thoughts on South Africa pp.312- 366» Schreiner shows a patronising attitude towards the native:

It would be a lie to say that we (the English) love the black man. if by that is meant that we love him as we love the white. But we are resolved to deal J with justice and mercy towards him. We will treat him as if we loved him: (I ..~ and in time the love may come. When you pick up a lost child in the streets / I') i.•./ I'~" ; covered only with rags and black with dust. you have first to take it home and wash and dress it and then you want to kiss it. When we have dealt with the dark man for long years with justice and mercy and taught him all we know, we shall perhaps be able to look deep into each other's eyes and smile: as parent and child.

The process that Schreiner seems to advocate - a process of shaping the black man

according to British standards - is reflected in The Story of an African Farm. The native is not given a voice of his or her own. but is present to enhance the I ,! pastoral quality as well as the African atmosphere of the novel. The way in which

the native blends in with the farm landscape at pastoral moments in the novel is indicative of Schreiner's unconscious perception of the native and his place in the farm.

It had been a princely day. The long morning had melted slowly into a rich afternoon. Rains had covered the karroo with a heavy coat of green that hid the red earth everywhere. In the very chinks of the stone walls dark green leaves hung out. and beauty and growth had crept even into the beds of the sandy furrows and lined them with weeds. On the broken sod-walls of the old pig-sty chickweeds flourished, and ice-plants lifted their transparent leaves. Waldo was at work in the waggon-house again. He was making a kitchen- table for Em. As the long curls gathered in heaps before his plane. he paused for

58 an instant now and again to throw one down to a small naked nigger, who had crept from its mother, who stood churning in the sunshine, and had crawled into the waggon-house. From time to time the little animal lifted its fat hand as if it expected a fresh shower of curls; till Doss, jealous of his master's noticing any other small creature but himself, would catch the curl in his mouth and roll the little Kaffir over in the sawdust, much to that small animal's contentment. It was too lazy an afternoon to be really ill-natured, so Doss satisfied himself with snapping at the little nigger's fingers, and sitting on him till he laughed. Waldo, as he worked, glanced down at them now and then, and smiled; but he never looked out across the plain. He was conscious without looking of that broad green earth; it made his work pleasant to him. Near the shadow at the gable the mother of the little nigger stood churning. Slowly she raised and let fall the stick in her hands, murmuring to herself a sleepy chant such as her people love; it sounded like the humming of far-off bees. (p.273)

Phrases such as "little nigger" and "that small animal" both dehumanize the black child, and take away his indiViduality. As is the case in most descriptions of the native in the novel, the native woman is present at these pastoral moments.

The Hottentots (especially the little Hottentot maid) are not absorbed into the farm landscape, but into white farm society. At the Sunday service, for example, the Hottentot maid and her husband are both present, dressed in western clothes:

There too, was the spruce Hottentot in a starched white 'kappje' and her husband on the other side of the door, with his wool oiled and very much combed out, and staring at his new leather boots. (p.62)

The extent to which the Hottentot maid has lost her own individuality and has been absorbed into farm society can be seen when she shares the slapstick humour of

Tant' Sannie and Bonaparte Blenkins:

The lean Hottentot laughed till the room rang again, and Tant' Sannie tittered till her sides ached. (p.95)

Blenkins looks forward to whipping the 'madness' out of Waldo, and at this prospect the three people in the room - Blenkins, Tant' Sannie, and the Hottentot maid - almost resemble the three witches in Macbeth:

Bonaparte rubbed his hands and looked pleasantly across his nose; and then the three laughed together grimly.

59 (p.96)

The Hottentot maid also has to act as interpreter between Blenkins and Tant' Sannie, but in spite of this she remains the servant who washes feet.

Waldo's story of the Bushmen and their extermination reminds one that the farm is a structure imposed on the African landscape by white men; the Bushmen could not adapt to this and were exterminated. The novel thus shows the ruthlessness of \ colonial history - one in keeping with a Victorian stress on tithe survival of the f~tte~t".

The idealization of the past - as for example in Waldo's depiction of the Bushmen living pastoral lives - is the basis on which a pastoral work is built. Although ) Schreiner incorporates different pastoral perceptions of the farm in the novel, this is not a pastoral work. It deals rather with the moment of transition from ( a past of rural societies in South Africa to an industrialised country. Because the novel chronicles a particular historical moment in South African history, it is infused with a sense of nostalgia for a disappearing pastoral 'mode'. Schreiner is trying to be faithful to the brutal 'realities' of South African farm life, yet she projects her own idealizing imaginative vision of its past onto the farm, as well as her philosophy of the 'unity' hidden in the Karoo landscape, and the underlying harmony of all things.

There is a very complex handling of time in this novel. Schreiner presents the reader with an idealized concept of the past, an unstable present, and a bleak future. The past is represented both by Waldo's Bushmen, and by Otto, who is the symbol of a pastoral world. With Otto's death, the end of the pastoral era is } implied, since Otto represented all the pastoral qualities of love, innocence, trust, and a childlike experience of the farm landscape. The fragility of the pastoral world is, according to Marinelli, one of the elements in a pastoral work,

60 either explicitly treated or implied (Marinelli, p.68) Schreiner's novel .1.,,) demonstrates the passing of the pastoral era - the 'golden age' - in South African history. ?

Blenkins, with his costume that is a "combination of the town and the country"

(p.98), is both destroyer and 'preserver' of pastoral life. He is the cause of Otto's disgrace, and ultimately of Otto's death; yet he crushes Waldo's tentative movement towards an industrialised world by destroying both Waldo's 'machine' and his desire to learn about the 'outside world'. Blenkins is not, however, a true preserver of pastoral life. Waldo, with his artistic imagination, might have succeeded in creating a synthesis of pastoral life and industrialisation that could have perpetuated the essential pastoral qualities of farm life. It is, after all, a sheep-shearing machine that Waldo makes.

Waldo is partly a pastoral character, and partly a modern "nineteeth century

Christian" (p.269) with his questioning mind. Waldo's stranger sees him as "childlike" (p.146) and describes him, in pastoral terms, as "clownish" and a

"hind" • His experience of nature is that of a pastoral 'child of nature', and his identification with the farm landscape is clearly shown in the way he can

'read' what nature (the stones) say to him. Waldo also has the imagination to transform the brutal farm realities into something beautiful. Waldo's transforming imagination is linked to that of his father, who saw in Blenkins' arrival on the farm a vision of Christ:

Long years before the father had walked in the little cabin, and seen choirs of angels, and a prince like unto men, but clothed in immortality. The son's knowledge was not as the father's, therefore the dream was new- tinted, but the sweetness was all there, the infinite peace, that men find not in the little cankered kingdom of the tangible. The bars of the real are set close about us; we cannot open our wings but they are struck against them, and drop bleeding. But, when we glide between the bars into the great unknown beyond, we may sail for ever in the glorious blue, seeing nothing but our own shadows.

(p.271)

61 The ending of the novel implies, however. that for Waltlo it is already too late to find this "infinite peace" except through death. Waldo has "flown against the bars of reality" too often: his experiences with Blenkins. his attempts to survive

in the 'outside world' and the shock of Lyndall's death.

The end of the novel is fraught with ironies and, instead of re-establishing a pastoral ideal, in fact mourns the impossibility of attaining the pastoral ideal

in an industrialized modern world:

At the side of the waggon-house there was a world of bright sunshine, and a hen with her chickens was scratching among the gravel. Waldo seated himself next to them with his back against the red-brick wall. The long afternoon was half spent. and the 'kopje' was just beginning to cast its shadow over the round-headed yellow flowers that grew between it and the farm-house. Among the flowers the white butterflies hovered, and on the old 'kraal' mounds three white kids gambolled, and at the door of one of the huts an old grey headed Kaffir-woman sat on the ground mending her mats. A balmy, restful, peacefulness seemed to reign everywhere. Even the old hen seemed well satisfied. She scratched among the stones and called to her chickens when she found a treasure; and all the while clucked to herself with intense inward satisfaction. Waldo. as he sat with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms folded on them. looked at it and smiled. An evil world. a deceitful, treacherous. mirage-like world, it might be; but a lovely world for all that. and to sit there gloating in the sunlight was perfect. (p.278)

The farm is described in very pastoral terms. yet the pastoral quality is undercut by a number of factors. One of these is that, in order to attain this pastoral

ideal. Waldo denies his hunger for knowledge. He rejects Em's offer of money to pay for his studies. preferring to sit there 'gloating in the sunlight'.

He was an uncouth creature with small learning and no prospect in the future but that of making endless tables and stone walls, yet it seemed to him as he sat there that life was a rare and very rich thing. He rubbed his hands in the sunshine.. Ab. to live on so year after year, how well! Always in the present; letting each day glide •••• ------(p.279-280)

Schreiner's description of Boer life in "The Wanderings of the Boer" underlined a pastoral ideal: that of man and nature living in perfect harmony. At the end of The Story of an African Farm Waldo attains this perfect harmony. Yet. Schreiner suggests this can only be done when the desire of people, as well as a desire for

62 knowledge. has gone. Her description of the state a person has to be in before he/she can attain this pastoral ideal. is another of the elements that tend to undercut the pastoral ending:

I When that day comes, that you sit down broken, without one human creature to \ \ whom you cling, with your loves the dead and the living dead; when the very \ ... ~.. i. thirst for knowledge through long-continued thwarting has grown dull; when i I: in the present there is no craving and in the future no hope, then, oh. with \ . I a beneficent tenderness. nature enfolds you. (p.279) \, \ 'J\' ~

Schreiner also suggests that this attainment of the pastoral ideal is transitory:

Well to die then; for, if you live, so surely as the years come, so surely as the spring succeeds the winter, so surely will passions arise. They will creep back, one by one. into the bosom that has cast them forth. and fasten there again, and peace will go. Desire, ambition, and the fierce agonizing flood of love for the living - they will spring up again. Then Nature will draw down her veil: with all your longing you shall not be able to raise one corner; you cannot bring back those peaceful days. Well to die then! (p 279)

This passage emphasizes the fact that this is a death scene. The repetition of "well to die then" at both ends of this passage both implies that 'then' is only a moment in time that will soon be lost, and underlines the fact that Waldo dies.

The pastoral descriptions of the farm are therefore presented in the tradition of pastoral elegy, rather than the pastoral ideal. The elegiac tone mourns not only '\ Waldo's death, but also the impossibility of attaining that pastoral ideal. The \ lyricism of the death-scene attempts to resolve poetically an unresolvable conflict \ \ between a lost pastoralism and a brutal industrialism. /~

The indications of industrialization at the end of the novel - the new soap pot, and the railway - underscore the fact that the pastoral era has passed. There is \ irony in the fact that Waldo, who might have created a synthesis of pastoral ideals and modern 'reality'. is dying. while Tant' Sannie's complete rejection of industrialization is shown to be narrow, ignorant, and inadequate to save the pastoral world.

'You see if the sheep don't have the scab this year!' said Tant' Sannie, as she waddled after Em. 'It's with all these new inventions that the wrath of

63 God must fallon us. What were the children of Israel punished for. if it wasn't for making a golden calf? I may have my sins. but I do remember the tenth commandment: Honour thy father and thy mother that it may be well witb thee, and that thou mayst live long in the land which the Lord thy God givetb thee! It's all very well to say we honour them. and then to be finding out things that they never knew, and doing things in a way they never did them! My mother boiled soap with bushes. and I will boil soap with bushes. If the wrath of God is to fall upon this land, , said Tant' Sannie, , with the serenity of conscious virtue, 'it shall not be through me. Let them make their steam-waggons and their fire-carriages; let them go on as though the dear Lord didn't know what he was about when He gave horses and oxen legs, - the destruction of the Lord will follow them. I don't know how such people read their Bibles. When do we hear of Moses or Noah riding in a railway? The Lord sent fire-carriages out of heaven in those days: there's no chance of ais sending them for us if we go on in this way. ' said Tant' Sannie sorrowfully. thinking of the splendid chance which this generation had lost. Arrived at the soap-pot she looked over into it thoughtfully. 'Depend upon it. you'll get the itch, or some other disease; the blessing of the Lord'll never rest upon it, , said the Boer-woman.

Not only are the stereotypes of the South African farm - 'land of contrasts';

'potential paradise' - expanded and modified in Schreiner's novel, but also the stereotype~ of women that prevailed in the period. These stereotypes are adapted both to fit in with the farm situation, as we 11 as Schreiner's expression of thene , From a feminist point of view it is interesting to note that two of the male characters - Waldo and Gregory Rose - are given qualities that traditionally belong to the stereotypical female figure in Victorian novels. Waldo is imaginative and artistic, and it is significant that he works for nine months on two of his artistic creations. His submissive attitude towards the 'tyrants' on the farm -

Blenkins and Tant' Sannie - is also characteristic of female submission to patriarchal authority in Victorian literature. Gregory Rose is depicted as an effeminate weakling with chauvr.rriat aspirations. He writes to his sister: "1 don't believe in a man who can't make a woman obey him .• ••• If a man lets a \lOman do what he doesn't like, he's a muff" (p .193). Lyndall, however, points out that

Gregory Rose is a "muff" and she compares him to a woman: "There" said Lyndall,

"goes a true woman - one born for the sphere that some women have to fill witbout being born for it. How happy he would be sewing frills into his little girlS' frocks, and how pretty he would look sitting in a parlour, with a rough man making love to him!" (p.184, 185). This passage demonstrates the danger of ascribing certain qualities and desires to someone merely on the basis of sex i\d Ii '~ differentiation. Gregory Rose is transformed into Lyndall's vision of him as an /t 'angel in the house' when he dons female clothing and nurses Lyndal I with a ~" selfless devotion. The best Qualities35 in Rose are only revealed when he plays ,y the role of a woman. Schreiner explores sexual identities also through her depiction of the women. Lyndall possesses all the 'masculine' qualities that Rose lacks: determination, rational thinking, a hunger for new experiences and power, and the ability to translate her thoughts into action. From the start Lyndall is

the complete opposite of the conventional view of a Boer girl. She is not submissive, and her ideas on the position of women in a (farm) society are very liberal. She rejects the farm values of patriarchy, marriage, Calvinism and - to

some extent - racism; but her life follows the pattern of other fallen women in Victorian novels and she dies because of her rebellious refusal to conform. Her death is seen as a direct result - not only of the death of her baby - but of the

oppressive farm system that cannot accommodate a liberal spirit like Lyndall's. Tant' Sannie, although she is one of the 'tyrants' on the farm, is not the

conventional matriarchal f i.gur'e, but rather a substitute patriarch until a manit' comes along to fill the position. Bonaparte Blenkins becomes 'master' of the farm

soon after his arrival, and when he leaves, Tant' Sannie immediately starts thinking of someone else as a possible husband. Although Tant' Sannie is not

depicted as a totally unfeeling person, her tyrannical tendencies are only subdued

when she gets what she wants: a meek husband and a baby of her own. She is not

a submissive wife, but she is depicted much more sympathetically towards the end of the novel.

35 See Cherry Clayton's discussion of Waldo and Lyndall representing Imagination and Will respectively, in "Forms of Dependence and Control in Olive Schreiner's fiction, " pp.20-29 in Smith, Malvern van Wyk (ed) and Maclennan. don (ed), Oliver Schreiner and After: Essays on Southern African literature in Honour of GUy Butler.

65 In both the depictions of Tant' Sannie and Em, Schreiner demonstrates a prejudice against the Boers, although she professes to love them. Tant' Sannie is presented as the 'typical' Boer-vrou that Barrow described in his Travels: she is plain, fat, insensitive, suspicious, materialistic and gross in her physicality. Em is presented with more sympathy, but she too is plain, fat, and not very intelligent.

She embodies the qualities of an 'angel in the house' - she is passive, submissive,

and performs all the housewifely duties on the farm when Tant' Sannie leaves. Her acceptance of patriarchy and marriage are expressed in her desire to marry Gregory and have children, as well as in her wish that he would display more 'manly' qualities: "Em wished he would still sometimes talk of the strength and master-right of man" (p.229).

Em is the only one who 'survives' in the farm system, and the implication is that

is her acceptance of farm values~.- ~_~ that.~_,.enables~___'".,', =~~_~:her~.~.:::..:._:_=::::_::::::~to survive. _. '_--'..;0.00. __. .• " .• _. __ •• •. Schreiner seems suggest that it is only when a character has found his proper sphere in society iI:: ------i , - without being hindered by conventional attitudes towards the concepts of f - "-I--'-'~;"-'--'-'-"--'- ..--;'"'--'";'------! I masculine and feminine ,that true happiness can be \fouJ~·. (1~-T~~" '~gvel{ i.~Plies,

however, that the rigidity of the farm system prevents a character from attaining

his or her proper sphere. 'Pastoralism' is inimical to self-realization. -""-"-11:::...,-,"-""_'-_' _

r-. '! \ () \

66 CHAPTER 4

In The Beadle Pauline Smith's representation of the South African farm differs from Schreiner's farm in The Story of an African Farm. Smith's Harmonie is not

a desert-farm: it is a near perfect pastoral world that, on the level of structure, is associated with Eden. The displacement of the pastoral myth that does occur in the novel, is in a Calvinist direction, in which Andrina fulfils the structural role of Eve.

According to J. M. Coetzee, the modern reader tends to give an anti-pastoral reading to a pastoral novel such as The Beadle. He reasons that

the silences in a South African farm novel... speak more loudly now than they did fifty years ago. Our ears today are finely attuned to modes of silence. We have been brought up on the music of Webern: substantial silence structured by tracings of sound. Our craft is all in reading the other: gaps, inverses, undersides, the veiled; the dark, the buried, the femine; alterities. (White Writing, p.81)

The 'gaps' and 'silences' in The Beadle are marginalized aspects of the novel,

though to a reader attentive to such issues as racism and patriarchy, these aspects

tend to undercut the idyllic picture painted in the novel. On the surface,

however, the farm in The Beadle is an idyllic world, easily identified with Eden. 36

The Aangenaam valley is first presented to the reader in the

following terms:

The Aangenaam, though the longest, was the poorest of Platkops valleys, and I poor as an Aangenaam man I had long been a saying in the dist rict • The farms, with their many acres of desolate veld, their rocky mountain-slopes and their widely scattered lands, green only where water was to be found or where water

36 See S. Christie; G. Hutchings; D. Maclennan, Perspectives on South African Fiction, in which The Beadle is discussed as a novel in which there is "a pastoral view with concomitant pastoral values which are undermined or eroded by contact with history" (p.55). 1

67 could be led. lay far apart. and a man might ride for many hours seeing no sign of life between homestead and homestead. All through the valley - at Schoongesicht. Harmonie. La Gratitude. Vergelegen - much of the farming was done by poor men working hired lands for their own profit. or by bijwoners working lands on part shares for their masters. (p.S)

In spite of this description of the Aangenaam valley as poor. desolate. and dry. I there are indications right from the start that the valley - and the farm Harmonie in particular - will be revealed as a near-perfect earthly paradise. These indications are in the names of the valley and the farms: Aangenaam. Harmonie. Schoongesicht. La Gratitude. We learn that Stephan van der Merwe. the owner of

Harmonie. is "the wealthiest and most highly respected of all the Aangenaam valley farmers (p.29) and that. although there are poor people living on his farm. poverty is not a major concern. The text itself is silent on the more undesirable aspects of poverty. Tan' Linda de Neysen. the post- mistress. has lived for years at

Harmonie as a guest. and the two Steenkamp sisters. Johanna and Jacoba. have their house rent-free from Mijnheer van der Merwe.

The representation of the farm in The Beadle is the opposite of that in The Story of an African Farm. Smith's Groot Karoo. where Andrina discovers her pregnancy. resembles Schreiner's farm with its wide open spaces of brown stones and bushes.

Here were no mountains and rocky aloed slopes, no fertile lands and brown streams. no poplar groves and orchards. The homestead - a bare whitewashed building - stood in the open veld and within sight of it was neither green land nor green tree. Look where one would. north. south, east or west. one saw only mile after mile of kopjes and stones and little brown bushes sweeping across the plain to meet the distant sky. Here and there a farm-house was gathered into the rhythmic monotony. but no farm-house could break it. Calm and indifferent as the peace of God the Great Karoo absorbed both man and the labour of man as things of naught. (p.l71)

But Smith deliberately chose the Klein Karoo as setting ·for her novel, and foregrounds all the desirable aspects of this area to create a pastoral or near-pastoral world. The image of the farm is that of enclosure: "the Aangenaam

68 valley shut in between the Teniquota mountains and the Aangenaam hills" (p.17l).

Just as a traditional concept of Paradise is of a walled garden, Harmonie is cut. off from the outside world. Within this enclosure, Harmonie is a self-contained community with pastoral qualities interwoven with a South African atmosphere.

The first of the pastoral elements in the novel is its framework of nostalgia. Smith's farm is set firmly in the past. The story is set in a pre-industrialized South Africa, though written in 1926, and because of its isolation from the

'outside world', "men and women still retained many of the old customs which have already died out elsewhere" (p.S4). The valley also still uses a barter economy, the inhabitants pay for their purchases with "mealies, pumpkins, dried fruit, forage and tobacco, pigs and poultry" (p.lO) which are in turn taken to Platkopsdorp and exchanged for whatever is needed to replenish stocks in the

'winkel'.

J. M. Coetzee notes a pervasive tone of nostalgia in The Beadle ("White Writing" p.67). This nostalgia is both the result of a longing for a 'golden age' in which industrialization and economy played no ro l e, as well as a longing for a lost childhood. Pauline Smith spent her childhood in the little Karoo and her love and sympathy for the people and the land are expressed in the novel. The very desirable qualities of life on Harmonie are created by her idealized childhood memories of South Africa.

Marinelli notes that fertility and abundance are elements of a pastoral world

(Marinelli, p.lS): Harmonie is presented as a fertile farm that produces an abundance of food. The upper lands of Harmonie are "green now with spring corn"

(p.34), and the family have their meals "at that long, heavily-laden table, where everything served but the rice, the salt, the sugar and the coffee had been grown on the farm" (p.S!). Little mention is made, however, of the work needed to

69 produce fruit and food on the farm. Apart from a few reminders that the farmers on Harmonie are Calvinists who regard industry as a virtue (as for example Johanna and Jacoba) the general impression is that life on Harmonie follows a fairly leisurely pattern. As Marinelli notes about the Golden Age:

The earth produced fruits without the cultivation of plough or spade, nectar flowed from the trees spontaneously and the streams ran with milk. (Marinelli p.lS)

The name 'Harmonie' also refers to the peaceful quality of life on the farm. The valley in which this farm is situated is a very beautiful place:

They drove on, and before them, meeting in the distance only to part again as one drew near, rose the mountains to the south and the hills to the north in a vivid, softening, ever- changing glory of pinks and purples and greys. To the young man from the green forest-lands of the Princestown district this amazing wealth of colour, of light and shade, beautifying barren rocks on mountains and hills, was a miracle of which at that moment he felt he could never tire, though he knew it to be of daily occurrence against the rising and the setting sun. Closer at hand, in the lands of the far-lying farms, the corn was already up and the fresh young green of mealies was showing through the dark grey soil. The little orchards were pink with peach-blossom, and the veld too, grey and bare for so many months of each year, was gay with spring flowers. The freedom, the sense of space, the sharp, clear, invigorating air filled the young man with an exhilaration of spirit which was almost triumph. He would get well here. He would get strong. (p.l7)

This passage hints at the conventional concept of South Africa as bare veld suddenly covered with flowers after rains have fallen. Most of this novel, however, is set in spring, and therefore only the desirable aspects - such as a veld covered with flowers, and green spring corn - are foregrounded. When the seasons change to autumn and winter, the scene shifts to the Great Karoo.

A second element in the above passage that is both pastoral and belongs to the

South African version of the pastoral myth, is the "freedom, the sense of space" that the Englishman notices.

A third South African element is found in Nind's conviction that he would get well in this "sharp, clear, invigorating air" This quality of the air in the Karoo is

70 also hinted at in the fact that both Nind and Jantje are sent to Harmonie to recuperate.

South Africa's reputation as 'land of sunshine' is emphasized in the novel: Smith refers to the "brilliant sunshine" (for example on p.88) that one finds on

Harmonie.

The kitchen of the homestead at Harmonie, described as the most beautiful room in the house, combines beauty with a sense of tradition and a specifically South African atmosphere: The kitchen was a big sunny room with a fire- place resembling a low raised platform taking up one entire side of it ••• The shovel, the chairs against the whitewashed walls, ~he mealchest, the kneading trough, the bucket- rack with its row of brass-bound wooden buckets, were all, like the ceiling of the room and its doors and windOW-frames, made of yellow-wood grown rich in colour with age and beautiful with the constant use of years. At one end of the room was a low brass stand, brought out from Holland by the first Van der Merwe Who, as a Landrost in the service of the Dutch East India Company, had settled at the Cape. On this stood a copper jam-pot, shaped like a huge fish-kettle, in which preserves were still made. Above the lidded jam-pot was a deep wooden rack bright with polished copper baking-pots and pans, also of the old Landrost's time and still in constant use. The scoured cleanliness of the tables and racks, the dazzling polish of copper and brass, the deep, rich colouring of the yellow- wood ceiling, the dark mist-smeared mud floor, and the high, wide, many-paned windows, made the kitchen at Harmonie one of the most beautiful rooms in the old gabled house. (pp.12-13)

The Cape-Dutch style of the house, the copper ornaments, the yellow-wood, and the mist-smeared floor are all typically South African elements. The general impression of this room is of light and order and cleanliness, and a sense of a

tradition stretching far back into the past.

This same sense of tradition is found in the rest of the novel, as if time has stood still for this particular part of the world. One of the images in this novel is that of the garden. Not only is Harmonie linked with the Garden of Eden, but there is also a garden next to the homestead on the farm. This garden is enclosed by a high wall, and is described as a "tangled wilderness" in contrast to both the kitchen, and the cultivated lands. The garden is "a tangled wilderness of roses, wistaria, and plumbago in early bloom" (p.42) and also "a wilderness full

71 of strange and beautiful and unexpected things" (p.43). It is the domain of the children - Jantje, Magdalena, and also Andrina - though Henry Nind, Mevrouw Van der Merwe, and the beadle occasionally enter. To Jantje, the garden is an "enchanted spot" (p.43) and the small stream that runs through the garden is "the

River of Water of Life" (p.43). These elements associate the garden with Eden, or at least evoke an image of Eden. The garden also plays an important role in the novel. Henry Nind flirts with Andrina in the garden, and seduces her in his room that overlooks the garden (p.44). Because this garden occupies such a central place on the farm, the farm is more closely linked with the garden of Eden.

Abundance, fertility, peace, and beauty seem to create a picture of a perfect pastoral world, yet there are elements that tend to undercut this 'perfection'.

References to poverty and drought are merely indications of myth displacement: they never dispel the potential that the farm has for being an earthly paradise.

The elements that subtly undercut the pastoral qualities of Harmonie are the 'gaps' and 'silences' in the text. In his novel In the Heart of the Country, Coetzee foregrounds the 'silences' in the South African farm novel. Smith in The Beadle foregrounds only the pastoral and desirable elements of farm life. Slavery, for example, is glossed over, yet it is one of the subversive elements in the novel

- not explicitly, but so subtly that it does not detract from the pastoral atmosphere. 37 While personal freedom is one of the ideals of pastoral life (Marinelli, p.lS), slavery is the very opposite:

All the furniture in this spacious room - the chairs strung with thongs of

37 P.A. Gibbon makes the statement that in The Beadle, "a critical dimension ~s not absent, but is partially suppressed, " in ft.i=s article, "Pauline Smith's The Beadle: A Colonial Novel" in Dorothy Driver's Pauline Smith, (pp.214-219)

72 leather, the great brass-bound chests, the tall corner cupboard was, like the doors, the window- frames and the fire-place, of dark, polished stink-wood or teak, and most of it had been made in the time of Stephen van der Merwe's great-grandparents by slaves trained to copy the work of European or Batavian masters. Against this dark setting, achieved so many years ago for the Van der Merwe family by the labour of slaves, there now shone the soft, shy, fair beauty of old Piet Steenkamp's granddaughter, Andrina du Toit. (p.68)

In this passage there is a strong contrast, both visual and symbolic, between:

"the time of Stephan Van der Merwe's great- grandparents" - the "dark setting" - and the pastoral world represented by the young, innocent, and beautiful Andrina.

The phrases "in the time of Stephen Van der Merwe's great grandparents" and "so many years ago" attempt to push slavery as far as possible into the past, but there are indications that slavery still exists to some extent on the farm.

Jafta's memories of "the old days of slavery" (p.l8), and references to the slave-bell, are reminders of that time, as well as the padlocks on the canisters in the pantry. The attitude of the Boers - including the inhabitants of Harmonie

- towards the natives is suggested in the following passage:

For the heathen he had something of the bitter contempt of the writers of the Old Testament. The freeing of the slaves by the English was for him, and remains for many of his descendants, an incomprehensible act of injustice towards himself and of indifference to the warnings of the prophets. (p.26)

The reference is, of course, to the belief that the natives are the descendants of Ham, and therefore doomed to be slaves. The tone of the passage is both sympathetic and critical, yet the criticism is not overt. The clearest indication that slavery still exists to some extent on Harmonie is the presence of the indentured children on the farm, and particularly their prayers at "huisgodsdiens":

From the doorway came the indentured children and they, too, at their master's knee, repeated a prayer. 'Make me to be obedient to my mistress, 0 Lord', prayed Spaaisie in her rough hoarse voice. 'Make me to run quickly when my master calls', prayed Klaas. (p.137)

In their prayers, the children are not allowed to speak in their own voices, but they express the ideals of a white farm society: white supremacy and black obedience. As in The Story of an African Farm, the natives blend with the

73 landscape to such an extent that they become practically invisible. It is only in Coetzee's novel (1985) that this pattern of white master and black slave is reversed.

The farm society - in this novel as well as The Story of an African Farm and the popular novels - is on the whole a white male society in its values. 38 Both

Schreiner and Smith are aware of this patriarchal system as oppressive of women, yet in The Beadle the undesirable aspects of patriarchy are only hinted at. Only the beneficial aspects of patriarchy are foregrounded and, unlike Magda in In the

Heart of the Country, or Lyndall in The Story of an African Farm, Andrina does not directly experience male oppression as undesirable (though the novel is about a viable relationship with her 'natural' father, Aalst Vl.okman) , Neither do the other women, children, and servants on the farm suffer in any overt way under the rule of Stephan Van der Merwe. In the following passage it seems that Stephan van der Merwe shares his power with his wife, thereby making patriarchy seem even more desirable.

Yes, though Harmonie would go in time to Frikkie as the youngest son, until that time came he and his wife must have no ties at the homestead which would interfere with the natural development of their young married life. Though family life among her people might still be, to a large extent, patriarchal, with the older generation imposing its will upon the younger, to each of her sons and daughters in turn Alida Van der Merwe had granted such freedom as this. (p.160, my emphasis)

The phrase "granted such freedom as this" suggests, however, that "freedom" is limited to what Alida (and by implication her husband) is prepared to give. This freedom is also apparently given only after marriage, and concerns only the right to have a house of their own. This implies that in all other respects the older generation still imposes its will upon the younger. Although only the desirable aspects of patriarchy are emphasized, the question may be asked: "who is to say

38 Tant' Sannie's position on the farm in The story of an African Farm is not indicative of a matriarchal society, since she upholds the patriarchal values, and tries to find a suitable male to fulfill the position of 'master' of the farm.

74 that the son who succeeds to Harmonie will not be a despot?" ("White Writing) p.70)

An element that is linked to patriarchy in popular novels is the business side of a marriage contract. Women are treated as commercial articles to be bargained for, and their worth is seen in terms of material goods. In The Beadle marriage is seen as a business contract and, although affection usually follows marriage (as in the relationship between Stephan van der Merwe and his wife) most men in the Aangenaam valley would repeat the pattern that the beadle predicts for Jan Beyers:

After marriage he would settle down, to the life of a faithful husband and affectionate parent. But until he was so settled Jan Beyers would bargain for his wife as a man might bargain for cattle. (p.56-57)

Although this issue is treated humorously in The Beadle, there is a serious undertone to Jan Beyers' difficulty in deciding between three sheep and a sewing machine.

Both the racism and the patriarchal system should be seen in the context of the

Afrikaner Boer's religious beliefs, and the (justificatory) myths that he has woven around himself and the native. The Beadle uses religious myths as structuring principles. The pastoral myth is strongly displaced in a Calvinist direction, while the novel moves from an Old Testament concept of religion to New

Testament qualities of love and redemption. The religious life of the Harmonie community is based on Old Testament precepts. Lip-service is paid to the New

Testament 'Nachtmaal', but the New Testament ideals of love and forgiveness as embodied in Christ are ignored. Only in Jacoba and Alida does one find the love and forgiveness that pave the way for Andrina's eventual return to 'Paradise'.

At one level Smith shows how religion involvES every area of life on Harmonie. She uses the concept of the Boer as a deeply religious person to demonstrate the origin of racism and patriarchy on the farm. This concept was a conventional one at the time that Smith wrote. The intensity of the Boer's religious feelings is depicted

75 in the following way:

In the mingling of the two races (French and Dutch) there came, through the memory of past sufferings and sacrifices, that intensity of religious feeling which still makes the Boers a race apart. (p.25) Life on the farm clearly revolves around religion. Henry Nind is received by the

inhabitants of Harmonie with a "simple, almost Biblical hospitality" (p.25) and the quarterly sacrament "remains the great religious and social event of their

life" (p.25). Smith also suggests a reason for the influence that religion has on the Boer:

in the Aangenaam valley, as in every other South African community, the Dutch retained their own direct Biblical interpretation of life. (p.25 )

It is in this direct interpretation of Biblical 'myths' that one finds the reason for both the patriarchal and the racial systems on the farm. As many writers have noted, the Boers (Voortrekkers) regarded themselves as the Chosen People to whom

God promised the possession of Canaan, and the native as descendent of Ham. In these myths they found justification for the possession of the -land, the enslavement of the natives, and their attitude towards women.

In that strange new land of their adoption it was to the Bible that they turned for help, guidance and comfort in all the crises of a life which, in its simplicity and in the physical conditions of the country in which it was led, closely resembled that of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. In their long treks through unexplored desert and veld, in search of water and green pasture for their flocks and herds: in the dangers which beset them from wild beasts and heathen savages: in the weeks, months, years perhaps, of isolation from any forms of civilization but those which they carried with them in their wagons, they were sustained by the intensity and simplicity of their faith ••• Throughout the colony, under English rule, the Dutchman felt himself to be, in the sight of the Lord, the rightful owner of a country which he, and not the Englishman, had taken from the heathen. (p.26)

Smith criticizes (although not overtly) the assumption of the Voortrekker that

God has given him the right to take possession of the land, and to enslave the native. She also criticises the Boer's apparent love for the Old Testament, and his belief in the God of Wrath, as opposed to Christ.

76 Stephan Van der Merwe' s concept of God as an Old Testament God of Wrath is contrasted with Alida's concept of God as a God of love: His God was not, as He was for his wife Alida, a God of love drawing His people towards Him like little children. He was Jehovah - the God of justice and of righteousness: the God to whom vengeance belongeth: the God who, showing mercy unto thousands of them that keep His commandments would, in His own time, bring His chosen people into their full inheritance. _ (pp.27-28) Johanna and the beadle have the same concept of God, namely that of "a jealous god, visiting the sins of the fathers upon their defenceless children" (p.29).

Andrina is the only person who is capable of a growing understanding of the New Testament ideals of love and mercy. Through her 'sin' in loving Henry Nind and bearing his child, Adrina becomes an instrument of redemption.

Smith uses the Paradise myth as structuring principle in The Beadle to demonstrate

the redemption of society that follows with the acceptance of Christ's love and

forgiveness. Harmonie is throughout the novel presented as a near-perfect Garden of Eden. In this Paradise, Andrina's life follows the pattern of Eve's, who is

tempted by the snake (Henry Nind). As in the original myth, it is the knowledge of sin that causes shame and eventual expulsion from the garden. Again as in the

original myth, there is the possibility of redemption (a move, therefore from the Old to the New Testament) and an eventual return to Paradise.

It is in the concepts of love and sin that the pastoral world and the Calvinism

of Harmonie differ. In a pastoral world the ideal is "the free exercise of love which (is) unconstrained by honour and unclouded by thoughts of shame" (Marinelli,

p.lS). In a Calvinist society, however, premarital sex is considered a sin and

Andrina's love for Nind becomes something to be ashamed of. In her abandonment

to her own sensuality and in her ignorance of shame, Andrina belongs in a pastoral

(pagan) Arcadia. (p.lS) "With the strange, disturbing, physical response of her quivering body to these passionate caresses there went an exultant, overwhelming, primitive desire to minister to his needs. And in thought of service to him there was for her now no absolute cleavage between the joy of her body and the joy of her soul. Together they made for her, in the outpouring of her love, in the

77 humility of her spirit, in the innocence of her mind, a glory that had no shame. (p.121) In her discovery that she is pregnant, Andrina is unaware that, in the eyes of a Calvinist society, she has sinned:

What was it that she felt? She did not know. Amazement, terror, joy and sadness - her heart held them all. Shame she did not feel. The child she bore within her was not for her the sign and the seal of her sin, but the sign and the seal of her love. (p 174) Andrina's previous experiences of sin are limited to a 'presumption' in daring to dream of Nind, and in her jealousy of the woman that he loves: Nothing in her sorrow was so terrible to Andrina as this. Here alone, in her jealousy of this unknown woman whom her dear Arry loved, was she conscious of sin. Fight against it as she might the woman whom the Englishman loved was the one human being for whom she could feel no tenderness and to whom she could not be just. Night after night did she kneel by the side of her bed crying to a pitiful Father to cleanse her heart of this stain. (p.172)

In other words, Andrina's 'sin' is not defined in terms of Calvinist dogma, but in human and moral terms. In this re- enactment of the Paradise myth, Andrina's sin is a redeeming factor in the novel, since it is her pregnancy that suddenly reveals Christ's tenderness to her, and lifts the burden of jealousy from her heart.

Christ as the Son of God meant nothing to her, yet suddenly His tenderness meant everything and her own troubled heart answered to it with a tenderness that embraced even the English woman for whose sake her child must for ever be fatherless. The burden of her jealousy was lifted from her. (p.174) The child that is born is instrumental in establishing a relationship between Andrina and her own father, as well as between the beadle and his grandson. There are also indications that Andrina and the beadle will return to Harmonie. Mevrouw van der Merwe is anxious to find Andrina and bring her back to Harmonie. There are hints that, when they return to Harmonie, Andrina and the beadle will find that even Johanna will have learned the New Testament virtue of forgiveness, instead of her rigid condemnation of sin:

That Mijnheer might wish him to return to his land; that the pastor might wish him to return to the church: that Johanna, robbed of every support for her pride, might come in time, slowly and painfully, to yield that forgiveness for which Jacoba had pleaded so long in vain - these were possibilities which did not then exist for the beadle though the future might hold them. (p.184)

78 The entrance of the snake/Nind into the Garden of Eden/Harmonie demonstrates that the farm is vulnerable to attack from the outside, in the same way that the farm in The Story of an African Farm is invaded by Blenkins. Marinelli's description

of Arcadia, and its proximity to the 'outer world, , can be applied to Harmonie.

According to Marinelli, Arcadia "represents a midway point between perfection and imperfection, the latter represented by the outer world touching, as Sparta did upon the geographical Arcadia, upon its borders" (Marinelli p.13). In the same way Harmonie is not a perfect paradise, but still to some extent cut off from the 'outer world' In The Beadle the outside world is represented by Platkopsdorp and Princestown, as well as England. Harmonie is to some extent cut off from this

"outer world". The Aangenaam valley is cut off from the Groot Karoo by a "jagged bar of steel" (p.S) - the Zwartkops range - and Harmonie itself is cut off from both Platkopsdorp and Princestown village. Harmonie is, however, not inaccessible

to the outer world, and outsiders enter Harmonie from time to time, as the strangers enter the farm in Schreiner's novel. Examples of these outsiders who enter Harmonie are the two Shokolowskys, Aalst Vlokman, and Henry Nind~ Frequent references to the 'outer world' also emphasize its proximity to Harmonie.

The people who inhabit the Aangenaam valley resemble to some extent the stereotype

of the Boer that was created by the writers of fictional and non-fictional accounts

of South Africa. Jan Beyers, for instance, is described as slow, cautious, and cunning and both the typical Boer's hospitality and his love for the land are mentioned. These stereotypical elements do not, however. influence the main characters to such an extent that they become stereotyped characters.

Throughout the novel, Andrina (in spite of the Calvinist Society in which she

lives) is described in pastoral terms. From the first description of her, Andrina

is depicted as having all the pastoral qualities of beauty, innocence, and youth, and she is shown to be integrated with her pastoral surroundings:

To the beadle the young girl was as beautiful as her mother had been. She

79 had Klaartje's clear blue eyes, the colour of the winter sky, and Klaartje's fair, glossy hair, the colour of ripe yellow mealies. She had also, as Klaartje had had, that astonishing fairness of skin which is sometimes found among the South African Dutch, and when she spoke, or was spoken to, shyness brought a soft faint pink to her cheeks. Her features were as regular as were her aunt Johanna's, but softened and rounded by youth. Her body was slim and straight, and though many young girls in the Aangenaam valley were fully developed at fifteen, Andrina at seventeen was still shy of her little firm round breasts. (p.8)

Andrina is not only beautiful, but her beauty shows her to be in perfect harmony with nature. Andrina's beauty is described in terms of her surroundings (the sky and the mealies). There are also other instances in the novel in which Andrina is identified with nature, such as "Like the sun itself was the love that she had in her heart for the Englishman" (p.62) and: "The glory of the awakening world was but part of the glory of her own awakened heart" (p.l09). The novel also insists on Andrina's innocence, even in her 'sin'. It is only at the insistence of the younger Mevrouw Van der Merwe that Andrina starts to realize reluctantly that her love for Nind has caused her to sin unwittingly. But as the reader learns, Andrina never loses her inherent innocence; that "innocence of mind which was not merely the ignorance of inexperience, and of which no experience was ever completely to rob her ••• "(p.l02). Henry Nind recognizes in her the pastoral qualities of instinctive wisdom, goodness, and simplicity: "never had he known one whose natural simplicity of eart came so near to wisdom and to beauty and to goodness" (p.l27). There are many references to her simplicity, yet, as

Nind discovers, she is never superficial. "Simple as she was, she remained a mystery to him" (p.l27).

Before her seduction Andrina is often described as a child, or as child-like.

Henry Nind calls her an "adorable child" (p.l5), and Jan Beyers sees her as a "shy young child" (p.55). Her acquiescence to Henry's will, "so gentle and yet so absolute, was like a child's" (p.96). She is also associated with children -

Jantje and Magdalena. As spring turns into summer, Andrina slowly changes from child to woman, and these changes are indicated throughout the novel: In these last few weeks before the Sacrament many strange r-ew emotions had swept through her heart, her mind, and her shy young body, and the new Andrina was constantly surprising, constantly alarming the old.

80 (p.29) Henry Nind's arrival is the catalyst that starts this process ofdRange in Andrina. Her growing awareness of herself is paralleled by her growing love for Nind. and the symbol of her developing self-awarenes& is the mirror that Jacoba gives her.

When Andrina discovers that 'adorable' or 'adored' means 'greatly beloved'. and she realizes for the first time that Henry Nind might love her. (Her) heart beat so loud that it sounded like a drum in he valley for all men to hear. And to the beating of thatJrum the new Andrina came into her own. (p.4l)

That evening she stands in front of her mirror. gazing into her own reflection. Her awareness of her body and her own sensuality develops more slowly:

Quickly Andrina slipped out of the 'made-up' white dress she~d worn on the previous day and stood shyly before her aunts in her plain white calico underslip and petticoat. She was painfully conscious before them of the size of her firm round breasts filling out the plain white expanse of herSLip.She was unhappy about her breasts. and. though she could not say why. ashamed of them. They were one of the many mysteries of her mysteriously developing body - and she was afraid of her body. That her breasts were the glory of her dawning womanhood was a fact which she was as yet incapable of realizing. (p 86)

Her fear stems from her austere Calvinist upbringing in whichsensuality is frowned upon. but her sensuous nature. coupled with innocence. shows her to be a pastoral character. Her sensuality is noted by the beadle when he sees "that same half spiritual. half-sensuous joy which had once shone in Klaartje's (eyes)" (p.47). Andrina herself becomes aware of it during one of Nind's English lessons: "She was moved to a sudden. overwhelming. terrifying consciousness of the hunger of her body for his" (pp.96-97). Later. Nind exults in "the strange. unquestioning abandonment of her shy young body to his caresses" (p.102).

There is however. as the beadle notes. a spiritual component to her sensuality.

Because she inhabits a Calvinist society she also has the Calvinist virtues of charity. modesty. industry. and humility. Her growing feelings for Henry Nind are linked to the steps she takes towards her initiation into church society in such a way that her initiation into the church is paralleled to her initiation into love and sexuality. Her initial concept of God does not include Christ and

81 she has to move from this Old Testament concept of God to a New Testament concept of God before she can regain paradise:

Andrina's God was not~ like theirs, a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon their defenceless children. Andrina's God was a serene and beneficent being who bore a perfectly natural resemblance to Mevrouw van der Merwe. Of Christ Andrina had never been able to form any definite picture or any definite opinion. (p.29-30)

Her awakening love for Henry" Nind is linked to the divine adventure that would lead her in the end to an understanding of Christ's tenderness and forgiveness as she sees it expressed in Oom Hans~ who does not condemn her. The young girl was, in fact, JOlnlng the church through no religious 'experience' as the beadle and Johanna understood it, and with no religious convictions whatever. But because she was joining it her heart was filled with a vague gentle expectancy of some divine adventure outside her daily life. (p.30)

This 'divine adventure' is explicitly linked to Nind's intrusion into her life:

On this cold, clear spring morning the Englishman's voice~ which had brought tears to her eyes, had brought also a strange~ new, exquisite fear to her heart. And though she might master her tears she could not master the fear. Nor did she guess that in her fear lay the prelude to that divine adventure which her soul awaited. (p 31)

As I have mentioned, Andrina's discovery that she is pregnant does not fill her with a sense of shame, but rather leads her to form a tentative concept of Christ.

It also makes her more considerate towards others.

At Harmonie her love for the Englishman had made her not less considerate of others but more so. At Uitkijk her tenderness for her unborn child did the same. (p.176)

Andrina attributed her happiness at the beginning of her affair with Nind to God, and proves that she did not regard it as a sin.

Sin? She never thought of sin. It was to God, the Heavenly Father, that she owed this rapture and to God, day and night, she gave thanks for it. (p.25)

Her redemption of her father (and of Harmonie society) is therefore accomplished within the cycle of church activities, and from her love for Henry Nind. She neither rebels against the Calvinist society nor becomes embittered when Henry

Nind leaves her.

82 In the displaced version of the myth of the fall offered in The Beadle, Adam is represented. not by a husband. but by a father. This 'Adam' has in fact never been a part of the Harmonie community. although he has lived on the farm for thirteen years. A feature of 'Eden' in the displaced form is that it can accomodate "outsiders" such as the beadle and old Esther Shokolowsky. Of the beadle. the following is said:

It was not that he was an outcast. To be an outcast one must first have been a member of the community from which one is expelled. And never. in spite of his position as beadle. had Aalst Vlokman been accepted as a member of the Aangenaam community. (p.123)

The beadle is not a pastoral character. He is described as morose, friendless. and bitter. and he refers to himself as the 'sinner' for whom Klaartje had died in Platkopsdorp.His 'secret sin' prevents him from becoming a part of the near-pastoral life on Harmonie, and he remains a spectator, watching Andrina with- brooding, jealous eyes. Like the original Adam, Aalst tries to hide his sin by refusing to acknowledge Andrina-as his daughter, and he tries to blame other people for not preventing Andrina from falling into sin. Just as the mirror is a symbol of self- awareness for Andrina, so the beadle discovers his own guilt when he looks into the mirror and sees "the face of a man abandoned by God" (p .135). He realizes that it is his refusal to acknowledge Andrina as his daughter that caused Jacoba's death, and rendered him powerless to save Andrina from sin. He is driven to confession by Tan' Betje's reminder that one cannot escape the will of God. (p.125) and by Pastor Niklaas' sermon: ,<1

Seek each of you forgiveness for his own sin, grant each of you forgiveness for the sins of others - God himself has commanded it. Is there one of us that is without sin? Let him that would listen to the evil that is spoken of another acknowledge first the evil that is within himself, and who then will dare to listen? Who then will dare to speak? (p.258)

Slightly twisting the meaning of the pastor's words. the beadle tries to shield

Andrina from being gossiped about, by 'daring to speak' of his own sin.

Mijnheer! If they would judge Andrina let them first judge me! If evil be spoken of her let it first be spoken of me. What is Andrina's sin to mine?

83 (p.235) After his confession. he leaves the valley to search for Andrina. and. identifying himself wit~ Adam. he sees himself as an outcast from Harmonie. He saw himself now only as an outcast. and all his thought. all his care. was for the child of sin who was now also an outcast. (p.274)

His love for Andrina has turned him into a humble man who is prepared to acknowledge his guilt and. like the original Adam. he will have to work hard to take care of Andrina and her child. For both Andrina and the beadle. however. there is the possibility of redemption and return to Paradise. In the beadle's case inner redemption paves the way to outer return.

Henry Nind fulfils the structural role of the Snake. yet he is never presented as totally evil. He is depicted as careless. superficial. pleasure-seeking. irresponsible. and selfish. but he is on occasion capable of suffering twinges of conscience. Because he fulfills a structural function his character does not undergo any major developments in the story. Like the Snake in the Garden. he brings suffering to Andrina/Eve. but he also leads her to an understanding of

Christ's love. and gives her the child that finally reconciles her with her farther. He is thus. like Satan. an instrument in the 'fortunate fall'.

Although Andrina's story is modelled on the Paradise myth. the figure of God is strangely absent from the novel. His presence can only be found in the different concepts of God and religion held by the different characters in the novel. Alida van der Merwe presents Andrina with a concept of God: "Andrina's God was a serene and beneficent being who bore a perfectly natural resemblance to mevrouw van der

Merwe" (p.29-30). Alida's own concept of God is a very 'feminine' one. filled with tenderness. mercy. forgiveness. and love; Her concept of God is in fact congruent with her own character. She is the embodiment of the 'ideal' Victorian woman - the 'angel in the house' - with her ability to heal the sick. in her serenity.

84 gentleness, love, and housewifely service:

At sixty mevrouw was still a famous and active housewife. She was a big, gentle woman, capable and kind. All children and young people loved her and found comfort for the troubles of their age in her serenity and tenderness, in her low, clear voice, and in her smile which, in lighting up her own rather full and heavy face, seemed also to light up the hearts of those upon whom it fell. She was a deeply religious woman, yet all her religion lay for her in the fulfilling of a single command - my little children, love one another. Beyond this she never ventured. If in her youth love had ever been for her a passionate adventure of the body or the soul, it was in all things now but a serene and gentle attitude of mind. (p.14)

Because she temper(s) judgment with mercy for all (p.164), she is the one who eventually paves the way for Andrina's return to paradise.

Alida and Jacoba are two characters who embody Christ-like qualities of mercy and forgiveness. But these qualities lie dormant in the nove I until Andrina' s pregnancy becomes known. Jacoba's plea to Johanna to be forgiving has no immediate effect, but a possible future effect is envisaged: "that Johanna, robbed of every support for her pride, might come in time, slowly and painfully, to yield that forgiveness for which Jacoba had pleaded so long in vain••• "is presented as a possibility that the future might hold. The fact that Jacoba's plea has only a possible softening effect on Johanna, emphasizes Jacoba's ineffectiveness in terms of the action in the novel. Because her mercy is untempered by judgment, she extends mercy to all without discriminating between the deserving and the unworthy. Her gentle and forgiving nature, however, makes ,her Andrina's only confidante.

If Jacoba is the embodiment of mercy in this novel, Johanna complements her as

Judgement. Her concept of God, like that of Alida's, reflects her own character.

Her God is a "jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon their defenceless children" (p. 29) and Johanna takes it upon herseIf to judge and condemn the peop Le around her. She is presented as a "silent, righteous woman who, in her judgment of others, was as hard and final as her father, old Piet Steenkamp, had been" (p.7

85 She judges and condemns the beadle "secure in her own sense of virtue" (p.98) and takes it upon herself to punish ·him for past sins by refusing to reveal Andrina's. whereabouts. Soon, she knew, the beadle must learn where Andrina had gone, but let him suffer a little first! Let him suffer! This was her prayer in her righteousness. Let the sinner suffer, 0 Lord! (p.150)

She is as final in her judgement of Andrina when she learns of Andrina's pregnancy. Her rigidity prevents her from being a part of the pastoral world. The beadle's fear that Andrina has no 'saving sense of sin' should be applied to Johanna who, because she is so rigidly virtuous, has no understanding or forgiveness for a sinner. The beadle judges her correctly when he feels she would have been a better person if only she had sinned:

Righteousness with Johanna had proved a terrible weapon for evil. If Johanna had but sinned a little she would have been a better woman •••• But Johanna had never sinned. Thus she was damned. (p.116)

Johanna's concept of God is essentially the same as that of Stephan van der Merwe:

"He was Jehovah, the God of justice and of righteousness: the God to whom vengeance belongeth: the God who show(s) mercy unto thousands of them that keep

His commandments

"(p.27). Again this is an Old Testament concept of God. Stephan van der Merwe does not playa major role in the novel, but the dtscription of his physical and his moral qualities establishes the moral keynote of the novel:

Stephan Cornelius van der Merwe, the wealthiest and most highly respected of all the Aangenaam valley farmers, was a tall, loosely-jointed man, slow in speech and in movement, just, generous, and patient. Both men and women stood a little in awe of him and he had a quiet nobility of carriage which made even little Jantje, whose joy in life it was to jump, step more gravely when he walked by Ou-pa's side. (p.27)

This description of Stephan Van der Merwe echoes the more positive stereotype of the Boer, and his concept of God - that of an Old Testament Patriarch - is the one commonly ascribed to the Boer by English writers. He embodies the values of the stereotypical Boer; piety, dignity, serenity, and he is one of the most

86 faithful adherents to the myth of the Chosen People: The square white church was the temple of His chosen people. Harmonie was their Jerusalem, the Sacrament their passover, None might feel this as ;ntensely as Stephan van der Merwe~lt it, but it lay behind the consciousness of all who had journeyed thither. (p.55)

It is significant that the'Nachtmaal', a New Testament sacrament, is identified with the Old Testament passover.

Most of the characters in this novel are integrated with the farm~ciety in so far as they accept and conform to farm values: patriarchy, Calvinism, and racism.

The two characters who are not integrated into the Harmonie community are Johanna

(because of her pride and rigidity) and Aalst Vlokman (because of the violent sin of rape that he committed seventeen years earlier). Andrina is the only character who is fully integrated with the farm landscape, and it is through her pastoral qualities, and her spiritual growth towards an understanding of Christ, that she becomes an instrument of redemption. The final image of the family - Andrina, her son, and her father - foreshadows the future harmony in the Harmonie community when

Andrina can take the New Testament concepts of mercy and forgiveness with her to the farm.

Through the identification of Harmonie with Paradise, The Beadle&ecornes a vehicle not only for Pauline Smith'S criticism of South African farm society, but also for her vision of the redemption of that society by a woman's love. The aspects of that society that she does not deal with directly - patriarchy and racism - are explored in Coetzee's novel, In the Heart of the Country.

87 CHAPTER 5

Coetzee writes in a tradition that is decades removed from that of the conventional farm novel, which in this context includes The Beadle and The Story of an African

Farm. Instead of using a straightforward displacement of the pastoral-myth,

pas~..r~!~r.:~.~!Ll2resent,bu~_.l.n an inverted form. Michael Hollington defines myth

in literature as an "absence,,39: it is precisely this 'absence' or 'gap' between

the pastoral ideal and 'reality' that Coetzee explores in In the Heart of the Country. 40

;I'he..subversi.wL.oLLQrID is ch~eristic Qf postmodernis..t wriJ;iIlK• ..J}L~ubYerting _

~el, CQetzee liberates the farm frQm a 'dead' literary traditiQn. In the Heart

._.Qft:lI.e_ ~Q\lIlt!YJQ.r:~grolln4~U:I:te "gaps, inverses, undersides; the veiled; the dark,

__1:h~.1Jt1.ried, the !emi!1!ne, atterattes", and in SQ do ing attacks the assumptions made by conventional farm novels. CQetzee fQregrounds, fQr example, the positiQn of those disadvantaged Qr dispossessed by the Afrikaner patriarchal system, such as

the woman and the native.

CQetzee, as postmQdernist writer, is cQncerned with creating a new form. This

desire for originality stems f rom moderrrist writing about which Donald M. Kartiganer writes:

The prQcess Qf making comes tQ the fQregrQund seeking to liberate itself frQm any CQntent that could exist prior to the event of fQrm: to free itself from

39 Michael Hollington, "Myth", A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, Roger Fowler (ed. ), pp.119-121.

40 See also T. Dovey's chapter on In the Heart of the Country in her The Novels of J.M. Coetzee, pp 149-207

88 plot. from extractable meaning. from referentiality. above all from the past. 41

Form is liberated from a dead literary tradition through inversion of the informing

pattern of the pastoral myth. Foregrounding the gaps and silences left by the

traditional farm novel - the position of women and natives. female sexuality, and

economic issues. for example. Coetzee not .only l~ber~t~~._E()~__~~~._~_~~_:E~t_~~._ t~~ _

consciQ.~snes.~ of th~..!'p.pressed.

A characteristic of postmodernist novels is the fragmented nature of its strn~tu.r...~,--_, _

nature of time in the novel. Time is perceived as chunks. fragments: " ••• we •••• ____""'"-·,__ ....,.~._.~.• ._. .<_.~~~~c~~ ~~._.._.~c ." ,.,' ~ ....__ .__ ._" ..._.-...-.__ ~ , ,_~ __ ...,__._._._..__ ~~~ .~ _

chewed our way through time" and "at a moment in time, a point in space, at which

a block of violence, followed by a block of scrubbing rattled past on their

way from nowhere to nowhere " (p.16) • .The._fragmented ..nature__of__.1ime is also

ref]ected j n the..-Short.-numbered..sections.oLthe novel :.although the sections are

_ numbered sequentially,the.contents oLsucceeding sectionsare..often discontinuous--....-

...elliLx,Cin.dom•

As previously stated, an element common to popular farm novels written in or about

South Africa is their representation of the farm as a potential earthly Paradise.

In the undisplaced version of the South African pastoral myth, the farm is

Paradise, with all its associations of life, growth, fertility, abundance,

innocence. order. and peace. Straightforward displacement of this myth about the

South Afri~,~.!!Ja~~!}.ows for _~E-=

various other hardshaps to intrude on this arcadian or paradisal vision of the

farm: yet the ideal is never completely dispelled. The protagonists of the

popular farm novels either remember an idyllic past which they hope to find again.

or the pastoral ideals are reinstated at the end of the novel. The Beadle is set

in a 'golden age' in which industrialization has - as yet - no part, while The

41 Donald M. Kartiganer, The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner's Novels, p.178.

89 Story of an African Farm mourns the passing of a 'pastoral' past and the advance

of nineteenth century industrialization. C,petzee uses th~__IDY.t1LP!_an__idyllic, prelapsarian past ironically.

(man and master lived a commQn 1i(~Lal!-i~I!Q.£~!1tJl§ the starsvm thesky'~, (p.7).

present endurabl~. However illusory an idyllic past may be, it is a comforting

How am I to endure the ache of whatever it is that is lost without a dream of a pristine age, tinged perhaps with the violet of melancholy, and a myth of expulsion to interpret my ache to me. (p.7)

Magda's attempts to interpret herself and the world she inhabits are temporarily

satisfied by the stories or interpretations that she invents. The feeling of

something having been lost, the "ache" of nostalgia, is very strong: yet in the

light of her later statements about the past she is clearly being ironical. She

aS~~Et_~, in fact, that the idyllic past is no more real than "dreams of.u~p'ri.stine / age": .

tales from a past that really happened, how grandfather ran away from the bees and lost his hat and never found it again, why the moon waxes and wanes, how the hare tricked the jackal. (p.114, my emphasis)

Her departure into the realms of folklore or legend ("how the hare ••• ")

underscores the 'unreality' of this mythic past. In contrast to the other two

novels, the past that is referred to is not an idealized past, but a past which

she knows to be mythic. There is a new self-consciousness concerning myth.

Mag~~.~!?o~~J~n;~oa 'golden age' in connection with a pre-colonized country in

which ~drik .Ithe coloured servant) and his kin followed their fat-tailed sheep -"- ._-,--,_.._---_... _-~"~-~-~--:._::~~-~;"-~-:;-.<~--;-_...::..:---~ ... ;: -~;.; ..:._._.-.. ..- _.. .- ~~-._-~ ..--

__ .JXQm,pastur.~.t,opasture" (~18). This was "the golden age before the worm arrived, ----.----_. ._J.. ._. .. _,._.-'_;_._~~ __._." __"O,_~_~__ .•_•..__.._.__~. __ . '_ .. ,.,_ -,-Q,l'itJl~_~illg§_()f:the.howli~ storm no doubt, and decamped at the very spot where

I sit , what a coincidence ••• " (p .18)s: ,,_Magda identifies herseJf .. ~:itJl._JJ!~_. _

..:.....c;Jtlonizer•.the "worm" - tllat .destr:oyed J.l1is pastoral life in the same way that the

worm destroys the rose in Blake's The Sick Rose. Yet, in contrast to the story

90 of the Bushmen in The Story of an African Farm,cthis past of HendriJt and his kin is not seen as an ideal past: Hendrik (or his ancestor) is described as having been -----_._--~~-~--_.-_.__ _...•.. _.~~_."" ~._._"_ ~-" _-_._._ _;-......

._ is a novel in which patriarchy or the oppression of women is experienced as .', ....._~._~~_.,_ .._...._-~."_.~._"_._,.~~-_.~~----~~._-~---~<~-"-"-""----'---."'.-"~_" -- -,-_..,-,.<,-- -'..." ...-_.~-_.._...... --._----._- ...._'~._ ..~-----_.. •...... ~_._--_ ..

undesirable, Magda's imag~nation p.J~_~~!es~~undesirable past:

(Hendrik) took to bed two wives who revered him, did his will, adapted their bodies to his desires, slept tight against him, the old wife on one side, the young wife on the other ••• (p.18)

There are ironic references to the conventional view of the farm as Eden in this

There are two major ironies in her statement. The first is the context or

in ~hich the master - slave hierarchy existed in its 'ideal' form. After she has ~ .. .. ""~-.. __.T._"_.__ ._._·_~ .__"-'.....,_. ~~_ .._._.~ ..,.. ,'.' __', ..,.... ,__.,.. _" __ .~._ .. __ .~_.~~ __ . ... ,. .... _,~ .. _, ...... _.,.. ~ ~,._._ ... __.. ~.~ ~ _.. "~ _.~ .

as C1_~h;ite_woman. Their knowledge of her guilt gives Hendrik and Anna and her

With the dark subtle figures of Hendrik and Klein-Anna wagging their finger~ behind me I shall find my days turned into a round of penitence. I shall find myself licking my father's wounds, bathing klein-Anna and bringing her to his bed, serving Hendrik hand and foot. In the dark before dawn, drudgemaiden of a drudgemaiden, I shall stoke the fire, I shall serve them breakfast in bed and bless them when they revile me. Already the snake has come and the old Eden is dead! (p. 70)

The second irony in her remark is that the "Old Eden" never existed on this God-forsaken farm. Elements associated with paradise or a pastoral world are

present, but they are used either ironically, or to subvert the original pastoral

myth. The central irony in the novel is the gap between the pastoral ideal and

the representation of the farm and its inhabitants in In the Heart of the Country.

Magda also refers to the farm as a paradise, yet she qualifies this by describing

this 'paradise' as a "petrified garden;' (p .139) • She refers to the convention of seeing the farm, or the interior of South Africa, as Canaan, when she says:

91 the first merino is lifted from shipboard, with block and tackle ••• bleating with terror, unaware that this is the promised land where it will browse generation after generation on the nutritious scrub and provide the economic base for the presence of my father and myself in this lonely house•••

(p.19) _-,~=-~ __Themythof .thefarm as the .. ~pr01nisedJan<1'isundercut firstly by the mention of

economic co~d..~ra!J.Q.ns-:whictlthreaten to destroy the pastoral world in the

popular novels, and are ignored in The Beadle - and secondly by the fact that the sheep is unaware of or indifferent to the 'promised land'.

In the popular farm novel, as well as in The Beadle and The Story of an African

Farm, there are numerous references to the Boers as deeply religious men and women

- even though some writers depict the Boer's religion as essentially hypocritical.

In the popular farm novels that present the pastoral myth in a virtually

undisplaced form - such as the novels by Brinkman, Stormberg, and Reid - God plays

a very beneficial role, and His presence in nature and on the farm is never

doubted.

Magda, however, experiences the farm as being God-forsaken. She concludes that

"there are, it seems, no angels in this part of the sky, no God in this part. of

the world" (p.108.

flying machines states:

God loves no one ••• and hates no one, for God is free from passions and feels no pleasure or pain. Therefore one who loves God cannot endeavour to bring it about that God should love him in return; for in desiring this, he would desire that God should not be God. God is hidden, and every religion that does not affirm that God is hidden is not true. (p.134)

This indifference on the part of God has been implied earlier in the novel, and

reminds one of the indifferent sky in The Story of an African Farm, as Waldo pleads

for fire from heaven. Instead of committing suicide by drowning herself, as Magda

intended to do, she suddenly experiences a strong desire to live. Her plea to be

saved, however, is not addressed to God, but to "the absent, to all the absent,

92 who congregate now in the sky in a whirlwind of absence, removed, sightless " (pp.13-l4). Coetzee notes about the scene in The Story of an African Farm: "we are in the midst ••• of one of the topoi of South African literature: the veld as the site of wholesale absence, in this case the absence above all of a personal

God" ("White Writing, p.64). Magda's perception of God is not only in terms of

absence, however, but an absence that plays perverse jokes on people: her plea

to the absent is "to call off the dogs, to call off the joke ••• "(p.l4). The existence of God is not denied, but his involvement with those living "in the heart of the country" is questioned. Magda feels that

God has forgotten us and we have forgotten God. There is no love from us towards God nor any wish that God should turn his mind to us. The flow has ceased. We are the castaways of God as we are the castaways of history. (p.l3S)

terrifying:

And who would attend my childbed? My father, scowling, with a whip? The brown folk, cowed servitors, kneeling to offer a trussed lamb, first fruits, wild honey, sniggering at the miracle of the virgin birth? Out of his hole he pokes his snout, son of the father, Antichrist of the desert come to lead his dancing hordes to the promised land. (p.lO)

Magda speaks of a virgin birth, yet she visualizes the conception of her child as

an assault, anything but 'immaculate, , and mockingly alludes to the The Three

Little Pigs rather than the Trinity:

What huffing and puffing there would have to be before my house could be blown down! Who could wake my slumbering eggs? (p.lO)

The child born has no Christ-like, redemptive qualities: it is the Antichrist.

According to the pastoral myth that is associated with the South African farm,

the farm is always fertile. In the straightforward displacement of the myth the farm is seen as potentially fertile, in spite of evidences of drought. Agterplaas, on the other hand, is described by Magda as a "de&~x_t;.~ __jp.}ll,_~L~tdeadplace.~~ .

(p.IO) and a "pet~~!~~

93 beetle with dummy wings who lays no eggs" (p.l8). She claims, "it would not astonish me if I were barren" (p.42) and even if she were able to have children, they would be "a litter of ratlike runty girls" (p.42).

In instances such as the above, where some kind of fertility is suggested, the words used to depict it evoke negative emotions such as disgust:

They sweat and strain, the farmhouse creaks through the night. Already the seed must have been planted, soon she will be sprawling about in her mindless heat, swelling and ripening, waiting for her little pink pig to knock. (p.lO)

The terms in this passage that suggest fertility - seed, planted, swelling, and

ripening - are subverted by phrases which evoke a sense of bestiality: "sprawling about", "mindless heat"~ " "waiting for her little pink pig to knock". The

juxtaposition of conventional farm terms with phrases that evoke disgust, has the

farm novel. Magda perceives the link between fertile earth and her stepmother as being degrading; the conventional farm novel idealizes the link between man and farm. According to the pastoral myth, the farmer has a total identification with his farm. This bond between farm and farmer has been suggested in popular novels such as The Secret Bird and Breath of the Karoo, as well as in The Beadle. Nature, according to the myth, both echoes or reflects the mood of the farmer, and can be

'read' or interpreted by the farmer.

Magda comments ironically on this ability to 'read' nature when she says:

Why these glorious sunsets, I ask myself, if nature does not speak to us with tongues of fire? (I am unconvinced by talk about suspended dust particles). (p.l4)

This apparently sincere belief in the meaning contained within nature is ironically undercut by the scientific information expressed within the parenthesis. Magda later explicitly denies the belief that nature signifies something beyond itself:

the last of the dawn mauve has been scorched away, we are in for yet another fine day, I would say that the sky is pitiless if I did not know that

94 the sky is merely clear, the earth merely dry, the rocks merely hard. What purgatory to live in this insentient universe where everything but me is merely itself. (p.67)

The repetition of "merely" emphasizes the fact that no meaning other than "clear",

"dry", "hard", can be read into nature. There is no sentimentalizing, no emotional

"colonization" of the landscape, as one so often finds in popular farm novels.

There is no sense of an emotional bond between Magda and the farm; her willingness to let the farm go to ruin demonstrates her lack of care for Agterplaas. In this context, the name of the farm reflects Magda's readiness to neglect farm duties in favour of the articulation of her consciousness.

The lack of a bond between Magda and the farm implies the absence of the

Antaeus-myth in connection with Agterplaas. There is, in fact, no evidence that

Magda experiences the farm as life-giving (except perhaps as far as insects are concerned). In the same way, farm life does not have a wholesome effect on Magda, as it has on Andrina or Henry Nind or Jantje, for example. In most popular novels, plumpness in a woman is described as a sign of good health in women (at least as far as the Boers are concerned), while Magda's bony frame accentuates her lack of health (or 'plaasgesondheid', as it is called in some of Van den Heever's novels) both in a physical and in a spiritual sense.

The whole novel shows a lack of 'plaasgesondheid'. In fact, not only is Magda's father ill or dead through most of the novel, but his illness is also described in the most disgusting terms: "I raise the bed clothes and look. He is lying in a sea of blood and shit that has already begun to cake" (p.77).

Magda mentions 'boerekos' and its reputation for being both wholesome and natural.

On her, however, it has a completely different effect. She calls the food "dull food cooked by dull hands" (p.) and states that:

Even decades of mutton and pumpkin and potatoes have failed to coax from me the jowls, the bust, the hips of a true country food wife ••

95 (p.2l)

The only effect that thas :'wholesome' food has had on her was to "send (her) meagre buttocks sagging down the backs of (her) legs" (p.2l) - thereby confirming her physical undesirability in terms of farm values.

The undisplaced pastoral myth asserts that a simple life-style is both natural and beneficial. This aspect of farm life is ideally reflected in the farmers, who should be spiritually pure, natural, and childlike in their simplicity. Both old Otto and Andrina are close to this ideal. Even in those popular farm novels that present a high degree of myth displacement, a simple life-style is still regarded as advantageous. Magda questions the belief in the beneficial effects of a simple life-style: "Does an elementary life burn people down to elementary states, to pure anger, pure gluttony, pure sloth?" (p.12). Coetzee's choice of the word 'elementary' instead of 'simple' suggests that the essence of humanity consists of anger, gluttony, and sloth. While the pastoral myth insists on the essential 'goodness' of man that is brought out by a simple farm-life, the ironic displacement foregrounds the undesirable aspects of human nature, and thus reveals the gap between the pastoral ideal and 'reality'. The irony of Magda's question lies in the juxtaposition of 'pure' with three of the 'seven deadly sins': anger, gluttony, and sloth. The terms "burn" and "pure" evoke the purifying fires of purgatory. Life on Agterplaas, however, has no redemptive qualities and only the undesirable side of human nature is revealed.

The mythical farm is not only associated with naturalness and simplicity, but also very strongly with peace. The ironic displacement of the pastoral myth in this novel inverts the concept of peace. From the first the reader is aware that conflict and not peace prevails on Agterplaas. After having introduced some of the main characters in the novel, Magda concludes: "These are the antagonists"

(p.l, my emphasis). Further events on the farm confirm this statement. Magda

96 herself describes the lack of peacefulness on the farm:

In this bare land it is hard to keep secrets. We live naked beneath each other's hawkeyes, but live so under protest. Our resentment of each other, though buried in our breasts, sometimes rises to choke us and we take long walks, digging our fingernails into our palms ••• We search for objects for our anger, and when we find them, rage immoderately. (pp.32-33)

Magda perceives this rage as arising from conditions on the farm itself. The

effect of this passage is to foreground emotions which might conceivably arise

from the restrictive quality of 'plaaslewe': rage and resentment instead of the

love that the pastoral myth insists on.

The descriptions of farm activities and the beauty of the farm that are

occasionally found in In the Heart of the Country remind the reader that this is

a farm novel, and serve to heighten the contrast between the popular farm novel

(or The Beadle) and this novel. The following passage demonstrates the contrast

between straightforward displacement and ironic displacement of the pastoral myth:

The yard is awash with silver-blue light. The whitewashed walls of the storehouse and wagonhouse shine with a ghostly pallor. Far away in the lands the blades of the windmill glint. The groan and thud of the piston reaches me faint but clear on the night breeze. The beauty of the world I live in takes my breath away. Similarly, one reads, the scales falloff the eyes of condemned men as they walk to he gallows or the block. (p.60)

The beautiful description in the first part of this passage is characteristic of

a popular farm novel in which the beauty of the farm is emphasized. It also

recalls the opening of Schreiner's African Farm in which the moonlight reveals only

the beauty of the scene, and hides the defects. Whereas in African Farm sunlight succeeds moonlight and reveals a harsher world, the irony of the above passage lies

in the linking of the beauty of the farm with punitive systems and horror. The

first part of the passage is sharply contrasted with the image of the condemned men. "Groan and thud" foreshadows the final images by reproducing the sounds made

in executing the condemned men either by hanging or by decapitation. Coetzee links

the two parts of the passage deliberately by insisting on their complementary

97 nature in the word "similarly". This has the effect of 'demonstrating that beauty and horror can exist side by side on the farm. Except for occasional passages such as the above, describing the beauty of Agterplaas, Coetzee foregrounds the horror.

Seen in the context of the situation, there is another irony in the first part of

the above passage. Magda reflects on the beauty of the world around her while she

is standing with a gun in her hand, the knowledge of her father's seduction of

Klein- Anna in her mind. The peaceful sounds of the farm are interrupted by the drunken crying of Hendrik, who has been bribed with brandy to prostitute his wife.

In contrast to the perverse sexuality in Coetzee's novel, prelapsarian innocence

is a quality strongly associated with both Paradise and the pastoral world. The innocence of Andrina reminds one of Eve, who also had no "saving sense of sin" until she was tempted by the Snake. Unlike the innocent Andrina, there is a strong awareness of sexuality in Magda. In section 27 Magda ~~~gin~s a_p~~~~~~~ lesbian relationship with her stepmother, she tries to eavesdrop on Hendrik and

Klein-Anna's love-making, and she tries to visualize the sexual acts of others.

She also implies the possibility of an incestuous relationship with her father.

Nor can I believe that he does not know how he enters my dreams, in what capacities, committing what acts. The long passage that links the two wings of the house, with his bedroom in one wing and mine in the other, teems with nocturnal spectres, he and I among t hem. They are not my creatures nor are they his: they are ours together. Through them we possess and are possessed by each other. (p.34)

In the popular farm novel, as well as in The Beadle and The Story of an African

Farm, the threats to the farm come from the outside: economic depression, drought, limits to the land, the advance of industrialization. The threat to the patriarchal order which comes from within - female sexuality - is seldom treated, and remains therefore only on implied threat. In The Beadle Andrina moves within the patriarchal order to establish a relationship with her father; Lyndall in The

Story of an African Farm cannot break away from the patriarchal system on the farm in spite of her rebellious affair with the 'stranger'. In his novel, Coetzee focusses on this gap or silence in the South African farm novel, and shows how

98 repressed female sexuality within the patriarchal order of the farm manifests itself in perverse forms such as voyeurism and sado-masochism.

Coetzee's farm is therefore everything that is undesirable, and this undesirable quality of the farm is reflected in the images of witches, vampires, spiders, bats, prisons, and other evidence of gothic horror stories.

Coetzee not only inverts the South African pastoral myth in his representation of

the farm. but he also undercuts the justificatory myths~~--" ,~""""_"that,,,,,,.,,,~,_~,w,·",,the Afrikaner··.~~~",,_- _~-,."',, has ____- _""_, __ ."_ .. .' ---_._-_.,- .built around himself to rationalize his possession of the land. the enslavement - ~.• ·"·_·...... '"""'· __;" ...... r. ~_.,.'_M.·_"·..~_'.-"_.~~~..'"'....._.~.,-."""""",_._" ....__.'""'.~"..,..,.C"_. "'-.,_...•~ '-'"'-,•.,o.... _."'.•.,.,...... _,,__~. '"'".. ,_.~_..... of the native.~2-_~~~--E~~_~:~_~E.~e~!.. ?~_wom~n. By undercutting these myths, In the Heart of the Country becomes a critique of racism. patriarchy, and a dubious claim to the land.

The myth of the chosen people that the Voortrekker applied to himself. is the first of these justificatory myths that Coetzee subverts in his novel. 42 Although

Pauline Smith is subtly critical of the belief that God has given the land to the

Boer - and at the same time provided the Boer with slaves in the form of natives

- her criticism does not destroy the farm's potential to be an earthly paradise.

In Coetzee's novel. however, the undesir.able_aspects..-oLc.Qloniz.atiolL_are. foregrounded and the basis of the South African pastoral myth - that the land is

God- given - is undercut. In her "speculative history" Magda focusses on the negative side of the historical colonization of the interior:

Hendrik's (the coloured servant's) forebearsdin the olden days crisscrossed the desert with their flocks and their chatt~s.Then one day fences began to go uP. I speculate of course. men on horseback rode up and from shadowed faces issued invitations to stop and settle that might also have been orders and might have been threats. one does not know, and so one became a herdsman, and one's children after one, and one's women took in washing. (pp.18-19)

42 It is interesting to note that Smith's upholding or endorsement of this myth is Coetzee's chief criticism of The Beadle. See his article, "Pauline Smith and the Afrikaans language" in Dorothy Driver's Pauline Smith pp.198-205.

99 The gap between the ideal and 'reality' is emphasized: in order to obtain this 'God-given' land, its original inhabitants had to be subjugated and absorbed into the white community as slaves. This is an aspect of the 'Israel' myth that was only been touched on in both The Beadle and The Story of an African Farm. Magda's insistent speculation completely undercuts the myth of a God-given foundation for the possession of the land, as well as the enslavement of the natives, by foregrounding the undesirable aspects of colonization.

Linked to the belief that the land is God-given, is a reverence for the

Voortrekkers and their descendants who, as the myth states, strengthened their claim to the land through blood, sweat, and hard work. Coetzee states that in the Afrikaans 'plaasroman', such as those written by C. M. Van den Heever, one finds "efforts to buttress Afrikaner patriarchalism in order that a heightened significance should be attached to the acts of the founding fathers. to maintaining their legacy and perpetuating their values" (White Writing, p.83). Some of these values he identifies as strength. courage, faith, industry, and the p~rpetuation of lineages. Although the writer of the English farm novel has no need of such a justificatory myth, many of them, - as I have pointed out - admired the

Voortrekker for the abovementioned qualities. There was, of course, also the convention that nature rewards the industrious farmer with strength and life-giving rain. Pauline Smith, certainly, admired the Afrikaner Boer, in spite of her criticisms of him.

The myth of the heroic qualities of the Voortrekker is reversed when Magda asks herself:

Is there something in me that loves the gloomy, the hideous, the doomridden, that sniffs out its nest and snuggles down in a dark corner among rats, droppings and chicken-bones rather than resign itself to decency? And if there is, where does it come from? From the monotony of my surroundings? From all these years in the heart of nature •••• ? (p.23)

100 Not only does she wonder if the farm itself is responsible for her love of the anti-pastoral, but she also considers the possibility that she inherited these

"dark desires" from her ancestors:

Original sin, degeneracy of the line: there are two fine, bold hypotheses for my ugly face and my dark desires ••• (p.23)

Instead of upholding the mythical belief in the essential 'goodness' of the ancestors, Magda links her ancestors - to correspond with the ironical displacement - with the undesirable: original sin and incest.

The Calvinist religion of the Boers upholds the virtue of industry, and the myth states that the Voortrekkers strengthened their claim to the land through industry.

A further convention is that nature rewards the diligent Boer. In the Heart of t.!!.~..,CO~!.!"y both ass!rts and subverts the virtue. ~~.?-ndustry. Magda's father comes home in the evening "hot and dusty after a day's work" (p.9) and Magda has an apparent admiration for the industrious Hendrik:

This, after all, is how people smell in the country who have laboured honestly, sweating under the hot sun, cooking the food they have tilled or killed over the fire they have made with their own hands. (p.86)

Seen in the context of Magda's own feelings about the farm, and especially her willingness to let the farm go to ruin, to "give up the fiction of farming"

(p.l16), this statement is highly ironical. The Boer in most popular farm novels

- except the stereotypical fat and lazy Boer - starts his day before sunrise.

Magda, instead of admiring this, regards it as "icy asceticism;' a joyless and futile routine:

I am able so relentlessly to leave my warm bed at five in the morning to light the....stove, my feet blue with cold, my fingers cleaving to the frozen ironware (p.23, my emphasis)

101 This unsentimental and unidealized representation of the Boer, and farm life, is linked to the feminist aspect of the novel. The patriarchal system that formed

the basis of Afrikaner farm society is part of the myth of old Israel - the

Patriarchs - with which the Afrikaner identified. Neither upholding the

patriarchal ideal, nor attempting to find a compromise between feminist thought

and patriarchy, Magda experiences patriarchy as undesirable, the presence of her

father at times as terrifying:

He is turning me into a child again! The boots, the thud of the boots, the black brow, the black eyeholes, the black hole of the mouth from which roars the great NO, iron, cold, thunderous, that blasts me and buries me and locks me up.I am a child again, an infant, a grub, a white, shapeless life with no arms, no legs, nothing even to grip the earth with, a sucker, a claw; I squirm, again the boot is raised over me, the mouth-hole opens, and the great wind blows, chilling me to my pulpy heart•••• I am afraid, there is no mercy for me, I will be punished and never consoled afterwards. (p.S1)

In this passage the father is both reminiscent of the Old Testament God of wrath as well as Sylvia Plath's "Daddy", a poem in which the father is seen as the ultimate phallocratic oppressor: the Nazi/Fascist.

I have always been scared of you, with your luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo and your neat moustache and your Aryan eye, bright blue Panzer-man, panzer-man, 0 you Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. (From "Daddy")

Magda's submission to the punitiye mal_e is"_~~~e_I!:~_~n her vision of _IIl.

(pp.10-11) •

102 The perpetuation of lineages to ensure that the farm stays in. the family - a patriarchal ideal - has undesirable consequences in In the Heart of the Country. The patriarchal desire for male progeny leads to the death of Magda's mother:

Her husband never forgave her for failing to bear him a son. His relentless sexual demands led to her death in childbirth. She was too frail and gentle to give birth to the rough rude boy-heir my father wanted, therefore she died. (p.2)

The desire to "start a line" is ironically given to Hendrik - a servant on the

only legaCLh~_~~~~:!Y~Jlischildren, Magda's articulation of Hendrik's ideals is

Hendrik wishes to start a line, a humble line of his own in parallel to the line of my grandfather and my father, to speak only of them. (p.24)

However uncertain the reader may be whether Magda does indeed commit murder, or only imagines it, the fact remains that she is driven to it by jealousy and repression caused by the _OllPxeS$j,ve _P.~~_r:i~K~hal system, as well as her own "dark desires". She 'murders'her father and her new step-mother, and later she plans to frighten her father and his concubine by shooting at them - and accidently wounds her father. A Freudian interpretation of this 'accident' may reveal that she unconsciously wanted to kill her fathe~, thereby removing both the object of .- her frustrated sexual desire, as well as the patriarchal oppressor. The irony is that this act of hers gives the coloured servant, Hendrik, power over her, and the patriarch that she is finally willing to 'slave' for is another of the oppressed in a white patriarchal farm society - the native. 43

In the popular farm novel, as well as in the two novels by Schreiner and Smith, the position of the dispossessed black person's place in the pastoral idyll is

43 Patriarchy seems to override the inversion of the racial power structure, and Magda is seen to have internalized her humiliated role as a woman, and perpetuates it in her relationship with Hendrik.

103 problematic. Black labour is seldom shown to be oppressed: the servants are usually treated very 'fairly' by their white masters.

According to the South African pastoral myth, the black person's life on the farm is idyllic. The popular farm novel follows this comforting myth fairly closely. 44

In the first part of In the Heart of the Country Coetzee also seems to subscribe

to this myth. In section 45 Magda gives an almost idyllic description of Hendrik's

life on the farm. but there are ironic overtones. Magda's words, "(Hendrik) has his own vegetable patch. He is clothed in my father's good castoffs" (p.24~reveal

a patronizing attitude towards the native which is underlined by the fact that

out for him in the graveyard" (p.24).

The subjugation of the native is foregrounded in Coetzee's novel, in contrast to "~~.~ ._._._- .,-_..••-. - .•.. - •• -.-.-----."~ - •• _·_•• _._,·._·.__ ·_·~· p .J the other two novels in which the native is almost a fixture of the landscape.

Ma_gda"~_1?~~. h~I."_~Cl!I!,,:r a:.~ th~_"rul i!1~ . caste" (p.70 ~::>_~!e..~n-An~~.c!m~_~.~~. _~~ie_~_ is die mies" (p.30). ~agda describes the.~~sence of being a servant as an

"intimacy with his master's dirt" (p.14). which is an ironical corrnnent on the apparent goodwill that exists between master and servant. From the natives

44 The position of the black man in The story of an African Farm and The Beadle is somewhat more complicated. Some events on both farms are indicative of a racist attitude. The herdsman's wife and her baby are thrown off the farm in African Farm because the herdsman is suspected of having stolen a few sheep.A rather comical dialogue between Tant' Sannie and her prospective husband also highlights a racist attitude existing on the farm: 'She was such a good wife, aunt. I've known her breaking a churnstick over a maid's head for only letting dust come on a milk cloth. , Tant' Sannie felt a twinge of jealousy. She had never broken a churnstick on a maid's head. (p .190 ) In the The Beadle the two indentured ch,ildren's prayers are not only indicative of an adherence to the white man's idyll, but a possible fear of punishment. In neither of these two novels is the issue of racism directly treated, however.

104 themselves come bitter statements about .theirpo~~E!.e~_~I1_es_s. While Hendrik is in bed with Magda. she asks him if he would mind if Klein-Anna found out about it.

Hendrik replies: "Nee..'{at kansy maak._J~ruinmensJ~.~n mos niks maak" (p .112),

from Magda who claims: "I offend no one. for there is no one to offend but the -_._-_.._._-_ ,-~_.,~-"-._~--_._------,._~ ._"' ._-,_.,_."- ,~."_.-.-

servants and the dead" (p.16. my emphasis)~

In the second Rart_..QJ~t-he ..novel. an ironic reversal of the master-slave

r~J!ltionsl1ip.!!~~!!:rp~Wl1~ILth~pat.r.i.arch, who .. '.' traditionallyhasthe responsibility

He lies with her and rocks with her in an act which I know enough about to know that it too breaks codes. (p.36 my emphasis)

--:MClgc:la.forese.e~._a similar code-breakmx reversal of roles when she sees herself

... _...l>ecoming a servant to Klein-Anna.

In a month's time. I can see it. I will be bringing my father and my maid breakfast in bed while Hendrik lounges in the kitchen eating biscuits. flicking his claspknife into the table-top. pinching my bottom as I pass. My father will buy new dresses for her while I wash out her soiled underwear. (p.49)

The actual consequences of this role-reversal are even more subversive than she

imagined. The familiarity between Magda and the servants grows after her father's

death. Ma~da .:!J1yites Hendrik andI

confusion about the rol~s.eCl~1!__..of~heIlUl1!1s t jlJa.Y.1:>~comes evident: __ ~-----_."---'" ... _._ .•..,--~._."--~~ - --' -

We three cannot find our true paths in this house. I cannot say whether Hendrik and Anna are guests or invaders or prisoners ••• We still work together in the kitchen. Beyond that. what can I expect of her? Must she be the one who keeps the house shining or must I. while she watches? Must we kneel and polish together. servitors of a domestic ideal? (p.l12 my emphasis)

way of regaining his manhood and of reasserting his power. both of which have been

105 denied him by his status as 'slav~'. Magda is right when she thinks that it is her humiliation that he wants. Her response. which is the opposite of what one

might conventionally expect from a white woman raped by a black man (see for

examp 1e Penny Rose ~ tends to suggest-.t.haj;.-Magda_be.comes_~an__

__ P(~}~~~':lt__ ~Il__ Clc;~eI»tC:lllcf:! __qJ__

There is not only a reversal of the roles people are expected to play. but also a disturbing of the rituals within the family structure. Magda makes the following

comment on her father and Klein-Anna who are sharing a meal:

It is a love-feast they are having; but there is one feast which is nobler than the love- feast. and that is the family meal. I should have been invited too. I should be seated at that table. at the foot properly. since I am mistress of the household; and she, not I. should have to fetch and carry.

(p.52)

The irony of Magda's statement lies in the fact that she contrasts a love-feast

with a family meal. This suggests that 'love' and 'family' need not necessarily

be linked - a fact which is demonstrated in this novel. Another irony is that

Magda bases her claim to sit at the foot of the table on her position as mistress

of the household and, implicitly, on the colour of her skin. Both position and

skin colour. however. are conferred by accident of birth and race. A final irony

in this statement is that the family meal itself has seldom been pleasurable for

either Magda or her father. The emptiness of such a loveless, mechanical ritual

Sundown after sundown we have faced each other over the mutton. the potatoes. the pumpkin. dull food cooked by dull hands. Is it possible that we spoke? No, we could not have spoken, we must have fronted each other in silence and chewed our way through time ••• (p.3)

In In the Heart of the Country the ~_gClPS' and 'silences' lef:tin conventional farm

novels. are explored through language. which is itself experienced in terms of

106 'gaps' and 'absences i :

I am spoken to not in words which come to me quaint and veiled, but in signs, in confirmations of face and hands, in postures of shoulders and feet, in nuances of tune and tone, in gaps and absences, whose grammar has never been recorded. Reading the brown people I grope, as they grope reading me: for they too hear my words only dully, listening for those overtones of voice, those subtleties of the eyebrows, that tell them my true meaning ••• (p.7)

In an article on Sir Isaac Newton and his use of language to convey scientific

discoveries, Coetzee writes:

Newton in fact emerges as an exemplar of how one can unconsciously project the structure of one's language out on to the stars and then believe that the resulting map is a true picture of the universe, rather a picture determined by one's own particular linguistic perspective. 4Sthan

Th;j..JL.s_~temen,t has a par.~~_<:':l~ar significance in the South African context. Magda claims that the language she speaks "the old language, the correct language" --~,-_._.- ~...~.;:~~."----,,-~._ ..__._-_ .....~.'~'------""'-".'-._-_._ .....'_.- ,,_..- (p.43), is a "language of hierarchy, of distance and perspective" (p.97). This

languageplClces the black .person in a particular social J?l:)~ition reICl.t~-"~__ t:~_.!.l!~_!:._,_

..~..~.L~J1e ~l.!!~.. p.e!:§QIJ:!...W!t~I!.._t!agdCl~s ~ath~r brea1<1:).the social,cgdes by sleeping.~~th a servant, Magda feels that the structure of language itself has been affected: ._--_ _.._._- -"'--" --_ _.- . ._.

I cannot carryon with these idiot dialogues. The language that should pass between myself and these (brown) people was subverted by my father and cannot be recovered. What passes between us now is a parody. I was born into a language of hierarchy, of distance and perspective. It was my father-tongue.

(p.97)

The irony of this statement lies partly in the last sentence "It was my

father-tongue". The language that Magda has to use had been forced on her by her

45 coetzee, "Newton and the Ideal of a Transparent Scientific language. "Journal of Semantics, April 1982, pp.3-11

107 Father - she is compelled to use the language of her oppressor to articulate her story. The language she uses not only places the black people in an inferior

positionrela~iye social_~." position relative to hers, but_;~~ places~._. ~ "_,._O,"_.~~~_..her in an ._._~.inferior ~ ~_·_· ___ ., ... ., __ , __•• ...• > .•.• _.," .•.• ;•.. ,__ __._u_u__ to that of her father. She has inherited the language of of patriarchy.

In In the Heart of the Country language is experienced as an ineffective method of communicating, nO.t....c?0ly because of the 'gaps and absences', but also because

off from the identification with nature (a pastoral ideal) by "the babble of words within me that fabricate and refabricate me as something else" (p.49). She is

harrier betw.eeRJleJ:.an

.~Ma8..da W()r.dS_.a~k_a!La_ban::ier novel __ implies tv_at .betveen..the.iexperdence c. and-the.-.-.--..:.--- u language used to describe it when she states: "Words are words. I have never ~.,__~_.w.__..._,._, __·. ~. ._..__,.,. _

Language is very much a concern of modernist and postmodernist novelists. The two sentences quoted above are reminiscent of Addie Bundren's monologue in William

Faulkner's As I lay dying:

••• c I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other, and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor felled have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.

46 William Faulkner, As I lay dying, pp.137-138.

108 The arbitrariness of language referred to in the passage from As I lay d~ is

an important concern for Coetzee. The text of In the Heart of tb~LJ;QuntIY Jl;L

fraught wi~~__~Il~~e!.:-~ain.:.~e~_>~ a~~.o:o_>_c.~!1~E~d~c_t~on~_>crea teC!>;,~~ __~!~Il~l1.age • The noveI.

shares this quality of un~~:!~i~ty__ ~tth other post-modernist_t:~:X;1:~L_ClPQutwhich

David Lodge says:

The difficulty. for the reader. of postmodernist writing is not so much a matter of obscurity... as of uncertainty. which ~ endemic, and manifests itself on the level of narrative rather than style. 7

In this context it must be remembered that 'reality' or 'experience' in this novel

depends entirely on language which is subjectively rendered. .Q!!e~_~_~>l'!~!llessages

creat~~~a wor!~~__~I!!~gS"J>~~~3_~ and Magda stat~s mo!"~_.t~~Il_()Il~~ th~~_>.'_~~~!~.~Y' •

_the fCiIJIl_ and i_~~!1!l1_apit~I!t:§.•. eXist.Qn.!}7 __1:_h>r:C?~gl1_h,~_.r::_~ords : .."J make ,it al!_,=-p_. _

in order that it shall make me up" (p.73). Another of the 'messages' that Magda ----_· ·__.._...._.._._.0. ,. __ '__,.,._ .. ,....._., <_,' ' ...~._ .• ~_~_.~. '," , .. ~_ ,., •..• _.,._~__ _, ... _' __ . __ ... __ .• _••. ~._. __~_~ "._ •. _. _._. __ ..•. _~_"

are invented by her. in an effort to break the bonds of restriction and oppression: -"- - ,,,,. - --'-- ..'-_._. -.._..-._._. --"'"""' ...... ~---,_ ...... -.•..~- ~."_.- •..--., ,

Lacking all external enemies and resistances. confined within an oppressive narrowness and regularity. man at last has no choice but to turn himself into an adventure. (p.128)

Lodge refers to this quality in postmodernist writing as "permutation" (Lodge,

p.230). in which language, being subjective, cClIl. alte~ ()Jl_~~~.__>J>eE<:~Ption o~_

'~!!_Cl.lity'. Magda gives alternative readings of the rape. of the wooing of Anna.

and the wa}7 she learns of OU-Anna's departure. for example. She often starts

succeeding sentences with "perhaps", indicating the alternatives from which she

is free to choose:

A day must have intervened here ••• It must have been a day which I passed

47 David Lodge, The modes of modern writing: Metaphore, Metonomy,and the Typology of Modern Literature, (p.226)

109 somehow. Perhaps I spent it asleep.Perhaps ••• I fetched a wet sponge and cooled my father's brow ••• Perhaps I went and stood in the passage (p.79)

This style does not simply suggest that her memory may be faulty but that different

realities are optional. depending on Language, After having described the -_._._-.. _--_. .'--- ...... ----~-_.. --,-----'=------=---== 'murder' of her father and her stepmother. Magda states: "For he does not die so

easily after all. The old days are not gone after all. He has not brought home

a new wife •••• "(pp.16-17) thus altering the 'past'. The implication is that

the traditional rendering of 'reality' in farm novels is lost.

Itbec01!!~_~.__clear' in In__ ~llE!_II~~E~c:»!._t~~_~~~try that language can no - longer be

regarded. only as a means of cC?mml!.I!!.~~!_!o_~~_. !,t,_ .. _!s__ subjective and arbitrary and Magda. who utters

her own life (p.138) and thus in fact generates the text. manipulates the events

in the novel to such an extent that the language she uses to articulate her story

Neither Schreiner nor Smith questioned the medium of language with which they

tried to render 'reality'. Yet language is a crucial element in the representation

of the farm. as Coetzee demonstrates in his novel. In foregrounding language in

his novel. Coetzee questions romantic assumptions about the ability of language

to render 'reality'. If language is an arbitrary system. subjectively rendered.

there can be no absolute 'reality' and thus the basis of the literary

representation of the farm is questioned.

110 CONCLUSION

The literary representation of -the farm in both Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm and Smith's The Beadle has the pastoral myth as an informing pattern. The Beadle is furthermore structured around the Paradise myth, which gives an added sense of form and coherence to the novel. In Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country Magda's search for a meaningful pattern to her life, a story with a beginning, middle, and end (p.43), is frustrated by her rejection of the pastoral myth as an informing pattern. She rejects the essential element of the pastoral myth by stating: "My life is not past, my art cannot be the art of memory" (p.43). The absence of God in this novel (or more specifically, Magda's awareness of this absence) precludes her from using religious myths as structuring principles in the text that she generates. The frequent allusions to myths and other works of literature in this novel underline both Magda's search for a meaningful pattern, as well as the absence of a myth that could operate as a structuring principle of Magda's story. Her allusions range from fairy tales (Cinderella, The Three Little

Pigs) to legends of vampires and other supernatural beings: "I am not interested in becoming one of those people who look into mirrors and see nothing, or walk in the sun and cast no shadow" (p23). There are allusions to Macbeth ("Light thickens" (p.93) and to Robinson Crusoe: "how many days have passed I cannot say, not having had the foresight long ago to start cutting notches in a pole or scratching marks on a wall or keeping a journal like a good castaway" (p .123).

Finally there are allusions to twentieth century works, such as Beckett's play,

Happy Days: "If I had been set down by fate in the middle of the veld in the middle of nowhere, buried to my w,aist and commanded to live a life, I could not have done it" (p.119), and Sartre's Huis Clos: "a landscape of symbol where simple passions can spin and fume around their own centres, in limitless space, in endless time, working out their own forms of damnation" (p.12). Despite the wealth of

111 allusions to literary tradition48 Magda fails to establish a personal myth. The ending shows her reaching for a new message in the ultimate twentieth century myth

- the UFO myth. In the final paragraphs she seems to revert suddenly to the pastoral mode in a series of remembrances preceded by "Do you remember•••• 7" The tone shifts from irony to nostalgia, and reflections on the past and the farm are conveyed in .lyrical and idyllic descriptions. Yet her attempt to "add up one's reckoning, tie up the loose ends" (p.l38) is pathetic and utterly unbelievable in the context of the novel. The lack of form in the novel is reflected not only in the uncertainty of the action, but also in the structure of arbitrary juxtaposition of paragraphs. The absence of myth in In the Heart of the Country is foregrounded through the subversion of the myths (and in particular the pastoral myth) which had formed the basis of farm novels in the past. Coetzee's novel is at one level a demonstration of Hollington's definiton of myth as an absence in literature.

* * '*

48 Inc1uding the Afr ikaans I pIaasroman' • See Coetzee IS article on C.M. van den Heever in White Writing, pp.82-114.

112 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. PRIMARY TEXTS

Coetzee, J.M, In the Heart of the Country (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1976) Schreiner, 0, The Story of an African Farm (Johannesburg: Donker, 1986)

Smith, P, The Beadle (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1983)

2. OTHER WORKS CONSULTED a. FICTION

A.P.B, Rochdale: A South African Story of Country Life (Beaufort West: James Bryant, 1885) Baker, A.J, The Snake Garden: A Tale of South Africa (London: John Long, 19207)

Bennett, F, Hamilton, J.L, Brenda Trevisky (London: Bennett Publishing Company, 1934) Bertram, M.S, Karoo Blossom (London: Arthur H. Stockwell, n.d.) Bevan, M, Anne of the Veld (London: Nelson, n.d.)

Brinkman, L.H, The Breath of the Karroo (London: Jenkins, 1914)

Brinkman, L.H, The Glory of the Backveld: A Novel of South Africa (London: Arthur H. Stockwell, 191-?)

Broadway, D, The Longest Way Round (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1916) Carey-Hobson, M.A, The Farm in the Karoo (London: Juta, Heelis & Co, 1883)

Clamp, H.M.E, Veldt Man (London: Hurst & Blackett, 192-7)

Close, H.C, The Rose of Rietfontein: A South African Pastoral Romance (Cape Town: W.A. Richards & Sons, 1882)

Conrad, J, Heart of Darkness (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1963) England, J, Rhodesian Farm (London: Hurst & Blackett, n.d.)

Faulkner, W, As I lay dying (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983)

Fenn, G.M, Diamond Dyke, or The Lone Farm on the Veldt (London: W.R. Chambers, 1895) Gaskell, E, Ruth (Dent, 1967)

Hardy, T, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Longman, 1988)

Hodges, R, The Settler in South Africa and other Tales (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1860) Holder, M, Rich Earth (London: Wight & Brown, 1934) Howarth, A, Katrina, a Tale of the Karoo (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1899) Israel, I, Tales of the Transvaal (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896)

Iverach, G.E, Sannie (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1928)

Johnston, W, The Kopje Farm (London: Collins, 190-7)

Mansfield, C, Gloria, a girl of the South African Veld (London: Holden & Hardingham, 1917)

Marnan, B, A Daughter of the Veldt (London: William Heineman, 1901)

Montague, C, Hans van Donder (Westminister: Archibald Constable, 1896)

Moor, Lady C, Marina de la Rey (London: Digby, Long & Co., 1903)

Muir, D, A Virtuous Woman (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929) Muir, D, The Secret Bird (London: Chatto & Windus, 1930)

Ogg, J, Piet Plessis, a Backveld Boer (London: John Long, 1915)

Page, G, Jill on a Ranch (London: Cassell & Co, 1921)

Page, G, Jill's Rhodesian Philosophy (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1910)

Patmore, C, Coventry Patmore's Poems (London: George Bell & Sons, 1906)

Prance, C.R, Tante Rebella's Saga: A Backvelder's Scrap-book (London: H.F. & G. Witherby, 1937)

Reid, M, The Bush Boys (London: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1896)

Reid, M, The Veeboers (London: George Routledge & Sons, 186-7)

Scully, W.C, Between Sun and Sand (London: Methuen & Co, 1898)

Scully, W.C, A Vendetta of the Desert (London: Methuen & Co, 1898)

Slater, F.C, The Secret Veld (London: Nash & Grayson, 1934)

Stevenson, N, African Harvest (London: John Long, 1928)

Stevenson, N, The Farmers of Lekkerbat (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1930)

Stockley, C, The Claw (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1911)

Stormberg, R.Y, With Love from Gwenno (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1920)

Stormberg, R.Y, Mrs Pieter de Bruyn (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, n.d.)

Stredder, E, Jack and his Ostrich (London: T. Nelson & sons, 1893)

Westrup, W, Furtive Farm (London: John Long, 1930)

Wood, H, East Lynne (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1984)

Young, F.E.M, Penny Rose (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1930) Young, F.E.M, The Bywonner (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1916) Young, F.E.M, The Purple Mist (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, n.d.)

Young, F.E.M, The Wine Farm (Hodder & Stoughton, 1924)

b. CRITICISM

Beeton, D.R, "Pauline Smith and South African Literature in English" Unisa English Studies, Vol. II, (March, 1973) Berkman, J.A, Olive Schreiner: Feminism on the Frontier (Vermont: Eden Press, 1979)

Buchanan-Gould, V, Not without Honour (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1948) Christie S, Hutchings G, Maclennan D, Perspectives on South African Fiction (Johannesburg: Danker, 1980)

Clayton, C, Olive Schreiner (Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983)

Clayton, C, "Olive Schreiner: Life into Fiction" English in Africa, Vol. 12 no. 1 (May, 1985) Coetzee, J .M, "Newton and the Ideal of a Transparent Scientific Language," Journal of Semantics, (April, 1982)

Coetzee, J .M, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1988)

Colby, V, The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century (London: University of London Press, 1971)

Dale, G, "Art or Artifice? Some thoughts on The Beadle" Crux: A Journal on the Teaching of English, Vol. 19 no. I, (February, 1985)

Daymond, M.J, Jacobs J.V, Lenta M, (eds.), Momentum: On Recent South African Writing (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1984)

Dovey, T, The Novels of J.M. Coetzee (Johannesburg: Danker, 1988)

Driver, D, Pauline Smith (Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983)

Driver, D, "Pauline Smith: 'A Gentler Music of her own'" Research in African Literatures, Vol. 15 no. I, (Spring, 1985)

Dyer, M, "Olive Schreiner's Liberalism," Reality, Vol. 2 no. 5, (970)

Fowler, R, (ed.), Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1978)

Frye, N, Anatomy of Criticism: four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957)

Gray, S, Southern African Literature: An Introduction (Cape Town: David Philip, 1979)

Haynes, R.D, "Elements of Romanticism in The Story of an African Farm" English· Literature in Transition, Vol. 24 no. 2, (1981) Hexham, I, "tJust like another Israel t - Calvinism and Afrikanerdom", Religion: Journal of Religion and Religions, Vol. 7, (Spring, 1977)

Heywood, C, "Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm: Protype of Lawrence's Early Novels" English Language Notes, Vol. 14, (September, 1976)

Kartiganer, D.M, The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner's Novels (Amhurst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979)

Klevansky, R, "Some insight into the Nature of Lyndall t s Idealism in The Story of an African Farm" Crux: A Journal on the Teaching of English, Vol. 19 no. 1, (February, 1985)

Krige, V, (ed.), Olive Schreiner: A Selection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)

Lenta, M, "Independance as the Creative Choice in Two South African Fictions" Ariel: A Review of International English Literature

Lodge, D, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonomy and the Typology of modern Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1977)

Marinelli, P.V, Pastoral (London: Methuen, 1971)

Monsman, G, "The idea of 'story' in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm" Texas Studies in Literature and Language: A Journal of Humanities, Vol. 27 no. 3, (fall, 1985)

Monsman, G, "Patterns of narration and characterization in Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm" English Literature in Transition, Vol. 28, no. 3, (1985)

osede , 0, "The tragic vision in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm" Kuka: Journal of Creative and Critical Writing (1980-1981)

Pechey, G, "The Story of an African Farm: Colonial History and the discontinuous Text", Critical Arts: A Journal of Media Studies, Vol. 3 no. 1, (1983)

Pereira, E, "Pauline Smith: A Centenary Tribute", English Academy Review (November, 1982)

Rive, R, "New light on Olive Schreiner", Contrast, Vol. 8 no iv, (1973)

Roberts, S, "A confined World: A Rereading of Pauline Smith", World Literature written in English, vol. 24 no. 2, (Autumn, 1984)

Sarvan, C.P, "Pauline Smith: A Gentle Rebel", World Literature Written in English, Vol. 24 no.2, (Autumn, 1984)

Schreiner, 0, Thoughts on South Africa (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923)

Voss, A.E, "A Generic Approach to the South African Novel in English", UCT Studies in English, Issue 7, (September, 1977)

Watson, S, "Colonialism and the Novels of J .M. Coetzee", Research in African Literatures, Vol. 17 no. 3, (Fall, 1986)

Wilson, E. "Pervasive Symbolism in The Story of an African Farm", English Studies in Africa, (14 January 1971) c. TRAVEL LITERATURE AND OTHER NON-FICTIONAL LITERATURE ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA, WRITTEN DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Anon •• An Account of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope with a view to the information of Emigrants (London: 1819)

Anon •• A Guide to the Cape of Good Hope (London: G. Smeeton. 1819)

Barrow. J. An Account of Travels into the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798, 2 Volumes, (London: 1801 and 1804)

Burchell. W.J. Hints on Emigration to the Cape of Good Hope (London 1820) Cole, A.W, The Cape of the Kafirs; or Notes of Five Years' Residence in South Africa (London: 1852)

Lichtenstein, H, Travels in Southern Africa in the years 1803-1806, translated by A. Plumtre (London: Henry Colburn. 1812)

MacKinnon, J, South African Traits (Edinburgh: James Gemmell, 1887)

Merriman. J.X, The Kafir, the Hottentot, and the Frontier Farmer: Passages of Missionary Life from the Journals of the Venerable Archdeacon Merriman (London: George Bell, 1854)

Moodie, J.W.D, Ten Years in South Africa, including a particular description of the wild sports of that country, 2 Volumes, (London: 1835)

Pallandt, A. van, General Remarks on the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town, 1803)

Percival, R. An Account of the Cape of Good Hope (London: Baldwin. 1804)

Philip, J, Researches in South Africa, 2 Volumes, (London: 1828)

Pringle, T, African Sketches and a Narrative of a Residence in South Africa (London: Edward Moxon, 1834)

Rose, C, Four Years in Southern Africa (London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley, 1829)

Steadman, A, Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of Southern Africa (London: 1835)

Thompson, G, Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa. 2 Volumes. (London: Henry Colburn, 1827>

Watermeyer, E.B, Three Lectures on the Cape of Good Hope under the Government of the Dutch East India Company (Cape Town, 1857)

Wilson, J, An Emigrant's Guide to the Cape of Good Hope. 1819 d. GENERAL WORKS ON SOUTH AFRICA

'Du Toit, A, "Captive to the Nationalist Paradigm: Prof. F.A. van Jaarsveld and the Historical evidence for the Afrikaner's ideas on his Calling and Mission," South African Historical Journal, no. 6, (November, 1984)

Du Toit, A, "No chosen People: The Myth of the Calvinist Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism and Racial Ideology", The American Historical Review~ no. 4, (October, 1983)

Du Toit Spies, F.J, Van ons Land Suid-Afrika (Brugge: Uitgawe Voorland, 1947) Jaarsveld, F.A. van, Wie en wat is die Afrikaner (Tafelberg, 1981) Kempff, D, Bestry en Bevestig: 1806-1900 (Wetenskaplike Bydraes van die PV (HO, 1982).

Maclennan, B, A Proper Degree of Terror: John Graham and the Cape's Eastern Frontier (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986) Patterson, S, The Last Trek (London, 1937)

Scholtz, G.D, Die Ontwikkeling van die Politieke Denke van die Afrikaner, Volumes 1-3, (Johannesburg: Voortrekker Pers, 1970) ,

Selby, J, A Short History of South Africa London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973) Streak, M, The Afrikaner as viewed by the English, 1795-1854 (Rand Afrikaans University, 1972) Thompson, L, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1985) Wilson, M, Thompson L, (eds.), A History of South Africa to 1870 (London & Camberra, n.d.)