The Voice of the Black Female Other: A Post-Colonial Feminist Perspective in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron

Lajiman Janoory,Suadah Jasim Salih

doi:10.47405/mjssh.v5i10.524

Abstract

As a beacon in a storm, John Maxwell Coetzee has established himself through his intellectual contribution to the post-colonial feminism literature in general and South African slavery epoch in particular. Accordingly, this study has been devoted to critically reflect how Coetzee confined his pen to support the oppressed black South Africans against injustice, oppression and deprivation. Moreover, the paper reveals the South African inextricable components and haw the writer has deeply perceived both apartheid and post-apartheid history by his naked eyes. Coetzee’s Age of Iron reveals his unique ability to aptly penetrate his readers based on contradiction where pessimism is shifted to optimism and, therefore, the readers’ mindset is directly shifted from atrocity to love. The study then delves deeply to show how Coetzee provides a solution to bring two parted races, black and white South Africans, together through the role of women characters in his fiction based on both gender and racial schism. Specifically, this study critically scrutinizes Coetzee’s Age of Iron. The study applies the post-colonial feminism theory using discursive strategy based on sociological and anthropological analyses to reveal how colonization destroyed South Africans’ cultures resulting in a crisis of human segregation which is depicted through white women characters in the novel. By drawing the post-colonial black women’s treatment by the colonisers and the forms of resisting their hegemony, the findings of this study are expected to significantly contribute to the researchers whose concern is on black women in Coetzee’s fiction.

Highlights

From 1948 to early 1990s, white South Africans ruled the country through a system known as ‘apartheid', which means ‘separateness' in the Afrikaner language
Age of Iron reflects the return of Coetzee to realism where he addresses the problem and suggests that a novel is produced based on the process of opposition with historical discourse and not the ‘supplementarity.’ Head (2009) views in Coetzee’s fiction a novel “operates in terms of its own procedures and issues in its conclusions, not one that operates in terms of the procedures of history and eventuates in conclusions that are checkable by history” (p. 24)
The allegory use, either that devoted for the political aspects or the one that reveals the artistic underpinnings, supports Coetzee to represent the actual status of the South African society

Summary

Introduction

From 1948 to early 1990s, white South Africans ruled the country through a system known as ‘apartheid', which means ‘separateness' in the Afrikaner language. Age of Iron can be defined as is a literary fiction which mainly focuses on the painful influence of Apartheid on the psyche of both the oppressor and the oppressed in South Africa. It is the novel which is directly drawn to reflect the actual status of the historical period in South Africa bearing a vivid depiction of the deterioration and injustice of the Blacks life under the ruling regime. Delving deeply into Age of Iron, one can find that Coetzee uses the character of Mrs Curren to scrutinize the intersection between the classical European literary canon and apartheid South Africa. These important issues are the target of this research to be critically analysed and highlighted

Literature Review

Conclusion