Rewriting the South African Pastoral: Pitfalls of the Plaasroman in Craig Higginson’s The Dream House

Abstract

This paper will consider Craig Higginson’s The Dream House (2015) as a powerful, albeit problematic rewriting of the South African pastoral. Staging his narrative against the backdrop of a farm currently undergoing redevelopment into a residential complex, his Midlands KwaZulu-Natal setting allows the novel to contemplate the land as an ongoing symbol of belonging and dispossession, precarious labour and anxiety, late capitalism and power in the South African ecological vocabulary. Within the specific context of this narrative, the land itself, the unproductive farm, and the animals bred on it, work collectively as a motif for the perpetuation of environmental racism. The climactic confrontation between white landowner and her black protégé stages a reflection of their failed dialogue over the years and resounds with archetypal significance. Their fraught exchange centres around their, respectively, incommensurate memories of the contested farm – offering Looksmart the opportunity to challenge Patricia’s colonial paternalism towards him and the other black employees. Their conversation in tracking their memories and experiences works to reflect political, racial and environmental change in the postcolony. Taking its cue from the work of J.M. Coetzee (White Writing 1988), this paper will consider the degree to which Higginson’s novel presents a meaningful challenge to the plaasroman as a ‘literature of failure’ and what alternatives it opens up in dealing with relationships between possessors and dispossessed in the South African rural economy.