‘There's another story here’: Skewing the Frame in Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat

Abstract

When reading Marlene van Niekerk's novel, Agaat ([2004] 2006. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball), one initially takes exception to Jakkie de Wet's satire of his melancholy mothers in the frame narrative. However, I will argue that Jakkie's perspective in the frame narrative requires closer investigation as it proves to be an essential and cunning narrative tool utilised by Van Niekerk to disrupt the powerful mythologies presented in the mother-daughter story. Although we remain somewhat distanced from Jakkie by an initial allegiance to the redemptive fictional narrative, his detached ironic voice introduces a necessary caveat to the liberatory potential of Milla's fantasy of reconciliation. Furthermore, he questions the extent of Agaat's capacity for subverting Milla's dominant discourse and becoming a vitalising force for Afrikaner culture. Jakkie introduces a dialectic that questions certain founding narratives or mythologies of redemption evident in Milla's narration. As the ironic dissenter who switches positions and allegiances, his function is to break the frame of the narrative. Frank Kermode claims that master plots are comforting and are often difficult to dispute because they constitute ‘the mythological ‘structure’ of society (in Abbott. 2002. The Introduction to Narrative. 44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) It is not surprising then that Jakkie's role in the frame tends to be sidelined in critical discussions of the novel, as he unnervingly interrupts the authority of Milla's master plot of redemption. As a postmodern eir n Jakkie plays a similar role to Socrates in Plato's Dialogues and uses irony to play ‘upon his interlocutors' discourse in order to draw it out, to develop its possibilities in a dialogue destined to end in aporia’ (Lang. 1988. Irony/ Humour: Critical Paradigms. 38. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins).