STRANGER IN YOUR MIDST A Study of South African Women's Poetry in English by Cecily Joan Lockett Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of English University of Natal DURBAN 1993 I was a stranger in your midst, hardly, even though I tried, understanding your tongue. Not of your tribe assuredly, Oh not of your kind indeed! Mary Morison Webster. 1. ABSTRACT This thesis represents the first extended study of South African poetry in English from a gender perspective. It is conceived in two parts: firstly, a de constructive analysis of the dominant tradition of South African English poetry in order to reveal its masculine or androcentric base; and secondly, the reconstruction of an alternative gynocentric tradition that gives primacy to women and the feminine in poetry. The first section consists of an examination of the ways in which the feminine has been. excluded' from the poetic tradition in historical terms by means of social and economic constraints on women. The study begins with a brief reference to the beginnings of cultural gender discrimination in British poetry, from which South African English poetry derives, and then moves to a more extended consideration of the ways in which this discrimination has manifested itself in the South African context in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is followed by an analysis of the - "poetics of exclusion", the ways in which the tradition genders itself as masculine by defining its central speaking position or subjectivity as male and masculine, and so excludes women and the feminine. The second section commences with the reconstruction or recovery of a gynocentric tradition of women's poetry in English in South Africa by means of a gynocritical- "map" or survey, followed by a discussion of the nature of the feminine discourse or "poetics" required to provide the critical context for this poetry. The preliminary "map" is given greater detail by in-depth discussion of the women poets considered to be major contributors to the gynocentric tradition: Mary Morison Webster, Elisabeth Eybers, Tania van Zyl, Adele Naude, Ruth Miller, Ingrid Jonker and Eva Bezwoda. The study ends with an examination of the work of contemporary women poets in South Africa, especially the black women poets of the 1970s and '80s, and the poets - both black women and white women - who wrote from exile in the 1980s. 11. DECLARATION This study represents original work by the author and has not been submitted in any form to another university. Where use was made of the work of others it has been duly acknowledged in the text. C. J. Lockett CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Women's Poetry in South Mrica 1 CHAPTER 2: RE·READING POETRY: A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE (i) Women and Poetry in South Mrica: A Socio-Political Feminist Reading 6 (ii) The Gender Politics of Identity in South Mrican English Poetry 30 CHAPTER 3: BREAKING THE SILENCE: (RE)COVERING WOMEN'S POETRY IN SOUTH AFRICA 53 (i) The Voices that were Lost 53 (ii) The Gynocentric Tradition of South African Women's Poetry 55 (iii) Searching for Words: Towards a Gynocritical Model for the Study of South Mrican Women's Poetry 78 CHAPTER 4: THE STRANGERS IN OUR MIDST 1 100 (i) Mary Morison Webster: Subverting the Discourse of Romantic Love 102 (ii) Elisabeth Eybers: Introducing the Discourse of Motherhood 126 (iii) Tania van Zyl: Allegories of the (Eco)Feminine 142 (iv) Adele Naude: Time, Process and the Feminine Consciousness 171 CHAPTER 5: THE STRANGERS IN OUR MIDST 2 189 (i) Daughter of the Pale Mother: Ruth Miller as Woman Poet 190 (ii) The Look of Nothingness: Ingrid Jonker and the Poetry of Alienation 224 (iii) The Journey Inwards: Eva Bezwoda and the Poetry of Psychological Process 252 CHAPTER 6: CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S POETRY IN SOUTH AFRICA 271 (i) Race, Class, and Gender: The Black Woman as Object/Subject 272 (ii) Myths of (Dis)Possession: Home and Exile in Recent Women's Poetry 309 CONCLUSION 342 BIBLIOGRAPHY 344 (i) Individual Collections by South Mrican Women Poets 344 (ii) Anthologies 350 (iii) General Reference 353 CHAP1ERONE INTRODUCTION WOMEN'S POETRY IN SOUTH AFRICA 1. In the field of South African writing in English, poetry has become a site of struggle in recent years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s much intellectual energy has been expended by academics and poets in defining and defending aesthetic and cultural values.1 It is perhaps surprising that such a seemingly marginal activity in the larger world - that of poetry writing and reading - should produce so much heated emotion. But it is because of poetry's centrality to the embattled concept of "Great Literature" that poets and critics in South Africa who cherish traditional standards of literary value have felt the need to defend their activity so strongly against those with different agendas. Poetry has been, until very recently, the preserve of white middle-class men who have determined its form and set its standards in their own image. Challenges have been posed by poets of colour, mostly male, who have appropriated the cultural mode of poetry for their own purposes, often political and communal rather than aesthetic. This co-option has been perceived as a threat by traditionalists, who have seen values of "complexity" and "difficulty" being swept aside by writers with more pressing and immediate concerns, and indeed, with very different political agendas. It may be argued that the Feminist criticism of recent years also poses a challenge to traditional ways of thinking about poetry. In this study the very nature of what is meant by "poetry" will be problematised; I will argue that what is accepted in South Africa as "poetry" or "good poetry" has been defined within a tradition created for and by men. The focus of this study will be on the nature of the challenge offered by Feminist scholarship to this histori~ally male-dominated field. The study itself is based on two conceptual premises: Firstly, that there are two predominant sets of norms and values to be found in writing and culture which may be termed "masculine" and "feminine". The "masculine" is associated with the dominant values of western patriarchal society and particularly with patriarchal definitions of women's roles in society. The "feminine" describes values that are marginal and often oppositional to these dominant values and which seek to redefine the roles of women in our society. In this study the terms "masculine'! and "feminine" will be used in this way, and will refer to social gender identity, while the terms "male" and "female" will be used to indicate biological identity. I also distinguish between patriarchal definitions of the feminine in poetry which locate this voice within narrow and essentialist parameters of the "emotional" and the "sensitive", and the oppositional feminine which focuses on resistance, anger, defiance and subversion. The second premise of this work is drawn from historical materialism and foregrounds the concern of this study with cultural politics. It will be argued that texts 2. (and poems) are cultural artefacts produced and consumed within a cultural economy. As such they are also the bearers of a particular ideology that will either legitimate or undermine the status quo. The poems that are taken up by the dominant groups, the makers of literary traditions in this country, are those which are acceptable to them in terms of their own particular hegemonic discourses about the nature of poetry. Those that are refused, suppressed and silenced, are those which undermine and challenge this hegemony. It will be argued in the first part of this study that the very concept of "poetry" is highly politicised in South Africa, and that categories of definition and evaluation are equally politicised. In other words, poetry, its production and reception, is part of a larger process of cultural politics, and is subject to social and economic forces. "Aesthetics" is not a neutral concept, but is part of a politicised discourse - political in terms of race and gender. It will further be argued in this study that South African women's poetry has been marginalised and suppressed within this cultural economy, and that alternative discourse to the formal one of "aesthetics" needs to be formulated in order to recuperate women's poetry within the South African literary context. The theoretical approach adopted in this thesis may be termed Feminist in its . broadest sense. I have chosen to work with several different kinds of Feminist discourse. For example, I use the poststructuralist concepts of "self' and "other" to demonstrate how the master discourse of poetry in South Africa constitutes itself as masculine and renders the feminine as other. This activity of centring and marginalisation takes place within the larger historical context of literary exchanges and literary hegemony, a concept that derives from historical materialist criticism. I have also found it useful to employ some of the paradigms set up in the "gynocritical" writing of Feminists such as Elaine Showalter in order to categorise and define the poetry of South African women. In formulating a theoretical approach to the study of the body of South African women's poetry I have used Showalter's work as well as that of Ellen Messer-Davidow. In the studies of individual women poets I have used a variety of approaches, ranging from formalist analysis to psychoanalytical gender analysis. This eclectic method has enabled me to employ several perspectives in deconstructing the dominant masculine tradition and reconstructing an alternative feminine tradition in South African English poetry. In South Africa the masculine nature of the tradition of English poetry has permeated the way in which critics and readers think of poetry.