Confronting Gender inequality in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace

Abstract

J.M. Coetzee's seminal work Disgrace earned him the second Booker Prize of his career. Isolation is the most poignant theme of Coetzee's most acclaimed and controversial worktill date. The present paper argues that Coetzee's love of presenting isolated characters extend to female protagonists also. In the paper, it is described that how women feel isolated socially, physically and psychologically and therefore feel severe identity crisis even in the modern society. The male characters in the story isolate the females after using them for their advantage whereas the female characters-Lucy, Melanie and Soraya and Bev Shaw are all silent women who succumb to isolation after losing their identity in a patriarchal society. The paper therefore aims to investigate Coetzee's work in terms of locating females as isolated subjects. A theoretical approach is adopted which suggest that isolation is existential in nature and sometimes provides an opportunity to carve out a new identity for oneself.