Rape and reconciliation: a comparison of Karen Jayes’ For the Mercy of Water and Emma Ruby-Sachs’ The Water Man’s Daughter

Abstract

To address the pressing issue of sexual violence against women in South Africa, and work toward a process of justice and cultural transformation, the implications of representations of sexual violence in post-Apartheid narratives must be considered. Karen Jayes’ For the Mercy of Water (2012), and Emma Ruby-Sachs’ The Water Man’s Daughter (2011) are two novels that center on the issue of water privatization in post-Apartheid South Africa while simultaneously depicting the trauma of male–female rape. Despite their similarities, however, the texts’ thematic concerns with rape and reconciliation work in very different ways. Employing Wendy Hesford’s concept of “rape scripts,” this paper argues that For the Mercy of Water, in questioning and rewriting prevailing patriarchal rape scripts, serves as a conscientious and responsible narrative that addresses the issue of rape while envisioning possibilities for social transformation, while The Water Man’s Daughter dangerously partakes in these scripts’ material and ideological reproductions.