Crossing spatial and temporal boundaries: Three women in search of a future

M Wenzel

doi:10.4102/lit.v21i3.493

Abstract

The past has become a focal point in contemporary South African discourse, in public debate, newspaper articles and various forms of literature. South African literature written during the eighties and nineties, in particular English and Afrikaans novels, effectively portray this climate of confrontation and reconciliation by engaging in dialogue with the past and history. This article traces the evolution of political consciousness in the female protagonists of A Sport of Nature (1987) by Nadine Gordimer, Die reise van Isobelle (1996) by Elsa Joubert and Imaginings of Sand (1997) by André Brink. All three novelists subvert the traditional stereotypes of white women: Gordimer in an ironic quasi-picaresque form, Joubert by staging a family saga that assumes a testimonial quality and Brink in a fictionalised meta-history of women interwoven with strands of magic realism. The novels all engage with history, and in particular the role of women in history, in a constructive manner and attempt to anticipate a positive scenario for the future.

Highlights

Crossing spatial and temporal boundaries: Three women in search of a future situation but, in many instances, has induced subsequent intro spection and the acknowledgement of personal as well as collective guilt. tHwoeweenvtehre, preacsot n(hciisliatotiroyn) annodt thoenlypreimsepnlite,sthea “dcioalloongiuseer”oarnidnt“ecroalcotnioisnedb”e1, and requires a process of re-orientation and the transgression of geographical, social and mental boundaries for the con struction of a positive future. It is in this re-vision of history and concomitant social debate that South African literature, and in particular the novel, plays a constructive role
Reaction to the system op oppression in South Africa was already agmnraodnuipNfeaosdft idinniesEsGindgoelrnidsthimAlefitrerikraaanatudnrsedwudruriinrteignrgsthtdheeessifigxifnttiiaeestse,dininathsthetehneowv“oSerlekssotoigff eAarlsah"n.isAtPonaridtcoranél Brink was a prominent member of this group who could be regarded as the exponents of the modernist tradition in South Africa
During the period extending from the sixties to the eighties, both English and a large section of Afrikaans novels were written in the realist tradition with history and political issues as points of orientation. This situation changed with the advent of the eighties and nineties when postcolonial writers turned to strategies of re-writing, the subversion of master narratives, and modes such as magic realism and metafiction2

Summary

Gordimer’s hybrid picara

Gordimer’s acute awareness of history and its interaction with context cannot be ignored in the interpretation of her work. Greenstein (1985:230) observes that Gordimer represents the white liberal writer’s dilemma in attempting to render (an)other point of view while Judie Newman (1985:87) perceives Gordimer’s fiction as an attempt "to free her art from Prospero’s complex" She regards the feminist cause to be part of the pinotelitriaccatlioangebnedtwa,eesnhepefrresqouneanl tlliyveusseasndfepmoalitliecaplriostsaugeosn.ists to illustrate the TsDSphpaeeoucrgtftiehvomteeflayrNl,e(apGtpruoorrovredti.daimegToehanrne,isyitm1se9pxi8nop7rl)Jto,aurnelyMt'stbahauePcreekboedapnrosleipcS(fmGoprraooltrehbdseliemmceahsrn,adrt1ah9caR8tteo2srG)aooafnrdBHdiuimlBlregeulearrrgainelrsreA’os experiences as an artist, namely, the struggle to establish a personal and social identity in a colonial, male-dominated, revolutionary society. As Martin (1986:4) astutely observes in a comparison between Coetzee and Gordimer, the role of the narrator is an attempt “to discover and understand (at least in part through the very act of narration) his or her own responsibility within that crisis” In this sense, the conclusions of the novels provide a significant insight into Gordimer’s representation of the future of the white woman in South Africa. Her daughter Annie deviates from the traditional mother image as a lesbian with an adopted black baby (Wagner, 1995:80)

Joubert’s family testimony

Conclusion