Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

" / h e itrirer I \ 01 rrri.ice 10 mat~kit~d orllr' i r~so f~r (1.5 the writer rr\e.\ (he u,or~l el*e11 agai~lst his or her loyalties, tr~r.vrc. the .s~oie of h 1 1 us it i s rei.eu/ed, lo hold someulhere it1 11s cor~?[~lexit~

fil~rme~rr.s qjlhe cord of trtrth, able 10 hi11d together, here otld rhtw I r trrrs/.* /he state of heit1,q lo yield someu~here , fru,imer~/aq.

phrc1.se.s o f truth . . . . "

- Nadine Gordimer!

Considering the role that society assigns to

literature in Africa, the shcrt story becomes a

thoroughly efficient tool for the presentation of modern

life -- or for the social statement on contemporary life.

The decline and fall of the liberal ideal and the

difficulty of producing adequate forms of moral and

social order in the vacuum left by their collapse,

provlded the intellectual setting for the :ihpreqriared

'sociel' ambiance in African literature.

Colonialism was a brutal and exploitative enterprise

that it brought great destruction on Africa and African

social organizations. Despite this tidal invasion of an --- - --

I "Writing And Being" Nobel Lecture, 7 December 1991. Published in Georaia Review, 283.

alien culture, that was politically dominating the

natives, the African cultural heritage was not completely

wiped out. African women, and the Oral literary

traditions of the African life, had a vital role in

preserving the identity of Africa to some extend. In the

oral traditions the voice of women has never been

silent. Neil Lazarus in his presentation on "Women's

Literary Traditi0ns:Regional Essays", affirms the vital

role played by the story-telling aspect of oral

traditions, in preserving the historical consciousness of

the society:

Typically though by no means always, this voice

has never been silent. As singers of praise

songs, dancers, community poets, and story-

tellers, African women have characteristically

assumed a plural voice, speaking collectively

as mothers, daughters, lovers, wives,

cultivators, house-keepers. Occasionally .... women have taken upon themselves the task of

speaking on behalf of their communities at

large, expressing their society's historical

consciousness in its totality(Lonaman Antholoav

of the World Literature bv Woman, 1062).

Later, when the medium of story-telling changed into

prose form [short story], it continued to maintain its

significant social role. To the present day, in the

context of African literature, the Short story -- with its ability to capture complex emotions, or sensory

experiences, in flashes of thoughts -- retains the power to reach out to the masses and effect a revolution. The

short story is inherently suited to deal with any number

uL topics and the collective aspect of individual stories

can be suggestive of a panoramic elaboration of the

history of a people. Short stories are comparable to

building blocks that have a binary identity: as a unit of

a whole, as well as a whole in itself. Pictures that

emerge from short stories are sharp and quick, that

Valerie shaw compares it with the art of photography:

In some respects, the short story belongs more

and more lastingly with the photography -- in particular snap shot photography .... Because the short story often depicts one phase of a

process or action, the complete time-structure

and experience of duration offered by film can

be telescoped into a single striking image in

which drama is inherent (The Short Sto-

criticalIntroduction, 15).

These photographic images,"self-sufficient illuminations"

do not require any elaboration, rather they expand in the

reader's mind (15). In the African society, where freedom

is denied and writers are subjected to severe censorship

regulations, the suggestive feature of short story,

enables the intellectuals to overcome the restrictions.

In this political climate of South African

literature, Nadine Gordimer, emerges as major influence

during the historic period of her country's political

revolution for freedom from colonial rule. Kenneth Parker

in his essay "Nadine Gordimer and the Pitfalls of

Liberalism," explains the essential political climate in

novels of South Africa. He focalizes on the extend of

Gordimer's "conscious awareness of and pronouncements on

the positions of writer in South Africa" (The South

African Novel In Enaljsh, 115). Her literary career has

procured for her a commitment to the social and political

issues in her society: it has been both a source of her

inspiration and the raw material for her creativity.

Nadine Gordimer was born in the province of

Transvaal on 2 0 ~ of November 1923 in Springs. She started

her literary career with publication of the short story,

"Come Again Tomorrow" in one of the local magazines, at

the age of sixteen. Selected as the Nobel Laureate of

literature in 1991, Gordimer received the recognition she

deserved, for the aesthetic excellence of her creativity,

her social commitment as a liberalist, and the effective

manner in which she reconcile* the 'dual' aspect of her

inner and outer self. Gordimer herself has confided on

the creative outcome of the conflict between the personal

and the public within a writer in her wIntroductionv to

Selected Stories: "The tension between standing apart

and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer. "

( S S . 12).

As a writer in the midst of political upheavals, her

theme resonates the political invasion on the private and

personal life in the society of South Africa. Gordimer

has confessed that she has "written from the starting

point of other people's lives," but her narrative

represents alternatives towards a progressive change. For

her, "fiction is a way of exploring possibilities,

present but undreamt of in the living of a single

lif e"(SS, 12). And Gordimer is endlessly exploring the

venues for a revolutionary change in the political and

social life of her people. Politics and society, captures

her attention, rather than love themes. Even though a

woman writer, Gordimer considers herself an

"intellectual" and an "androgynous" being, and steers

away from the typical female perspectives (%,13). Having

grown up in a small town "walled up among the mine dumps,

born exiled from the European world of ideas, ignorant

that such a world existed among the Africans," her only

access to the social world was through her

"femaleness"(l31. Yet ~t is surprising to note that

Gordlmer relies on the political and the social sector,

for the theme of the majority of her creative writings.

lo her credit there are about ten novels, over

fourteen collections of short stories, and severaL

presentations on cultural criticism. Stephen Clingman, in

his book-length study on Gordimer's novels sums up her

contribution to the literary world:

A qreat drama unfolds in the novels of Nadine

Gordimer, but it is not the expected one of

what her work observes in the world it depicts;

rather- it is the drama of the novels

themselves, in their own development from one

world to another, one culture to another in the

making, from one historical life to the next

. . . Gordimer has moved from political ignorance

to a profound politicality, from aspects of a

racist mental world to one approachinq a

revolutionary alignmenr;" (Historv From T&

Inside, 223).

The 'evolution' of a writer can be traced effectively in

her novels. The wide space and the mobility accorded for

the genre allows her to stretch the limits of her

potential. And within the extended horizons, Gordimer has

depicted a "dramatic ideological shiftu which works into

"depths of historical unconscious" (224).

Gordimer's short fiction, conversely has a different

texture and goal. They are snap shots, revealing a

terrible moment of truth. It has a swiftness which

enables it to pierce the target with remarkable

precision. Her short stories are creations of

unbelievable aesthetic perfection that, it achieves a

singular effect. Her collection of short stories are

often a reshuffle of the already printed ones with the

addition of few virgin materials. The choice of short

stories in itself, is an index of change or evolution

according to Gordimer:

If I were to make a choice of my stories in

five years time, I might choose a different

selection, in the light of what I might have

learnt about these things by then.(=,

Introduction, 10)

Gordimer being subjected to the historical changes

in the society was being conditioned by history. She

herself admits: " I am acting upon my society and in the

manner of my apprehension, all the time history is acting

upon me" ( l o ) .

In this sense she is "selected" by her subject --

her subject being the consciousness of her era (SS,15).

In Gordimer's writings short stories occupy a prominent

position, due to the fact that they provide the i.deal

medium for her exploration of a vast number of

situations. Gordimer in her introduction to Selected

Stories, has confirmed the particular attraction it held

for the author:

A short story is a piece of fiction short

enough to be read at one sitting? No, that will

satisfy no one, least myself. But for me,

certainly there is a clue there, to the choice

of short story by the writers, as a form:

whether or not it has a narrative in the

external or internal sense, whether it sprawls

or neatly bites its own tail, a short story is

a concept that the writer can 'holdf, fully

realized in his imagination at one time. A

novel is by comparison staked out and must be

taken possession of stage by stage; it is

impossible to contain all at once the

proliferation of concepts it ultimately may

use ...(=, 15).

The compact and concentrated nature of short story

as a genre, makes it the best literary form to represent

the splattering fast moments of a society experimenting

with a revolutionary change. The fleeting glimpses of

the ambiguous emotions -- the oscillation between the

personal ego and the public responsibility, or, the

conflict between the individual and the society -- all the flickering sparks are observed accurately and

eternalized aesthetically, by Gordimer in a collective

sense within her short stories. The instantaneous feature

of short story held tremendous fascination for writers

who endeavor to picture the 'present moment,' in their

fiction. Gordimer also, has admitted the focalized trait

of short story:

A short story occurs in the imaginative sense.

To write one, is to express from a situation in

the exterior or interior world the life-giving

drop -- sweat, tear semen, saliva -- that will spread an intensity on the page; burn a hole in

it(%, 15).

The multiplicity of situations that resulted from

the political and social evil in the society, often made

Gordimer choose the medium of short stories. It enabled

her to create sharp and focused illustrations of the

society, with the deftness of her detached, scientific

prose style. Short story had several other features that

made it the most advantageous literary form in the

present century. The concentrated form of the short story

lingers in the memory, in its entirety.

And the 'free form' of the short story gave it the

right blend of aloofness and singularity to move swiftly

within the fragmentary structure of the present

consciousness. Bates rightly comments on the

effectiveness of short stories:

The short story's flexibility . . . and its

brevity make it as perfectly suitable to the

expression and mood of this age as the heroic

couplet was to the age of Pope (Introduction to

Countrv Tales, 10).

It was the very "fragmentariness of the genre which gave

it a unique and distinctive role" in the contemporary

literature according to Valerie Shaw (me short storv,

228). Gordimer is also relying on the "splintering

frame'' to reflect the fragmented, flexible nature of

South African society, she represents in her Short

Stories. She is a very natural artist who makes use of

varied structures in her stories to air her message. She

has gathered fragments by the handful then rearranges

them until they begin to reveal their hidden coherence,

and unity. In the South African mosaic that she portrays

in her stories, she is actually rebuilding a natj.onrs

awareness of its history and culture. Gordimer has

rightly chosen short story as a genre for the effective

portrayal of this collective fragmentation.

Subjective to the tumultuous political issues of

South Africa, she attempts to combine in her narrative

the dual graph of politics and art. Participating in the

history of a nation struggling to come into being,

Gordimer was aware of the role of 'a cultural worker.'

She elected to be a cultural worker -- a recorder of the truth of a society confused by the onslaught of

colonialism. She has affirmed that nothing she has said

would be "as truthful as her fiction'' (Georaia Review,

279). In a politically saturated environment Gordimer

acts as a reporter of events and situations and seeks

primarily to mirror the world around objectively. Her

novels and short stories are responses to the political I historical, but she also draws the relations between

those and the individual.

Gordimer is an accurate recorder of the sclerotic

effects of white domination but also a pre-eminent

chronicler of the white section of the society. She

believes that a writer could present history as no

historian ever could. The 'reality' in a work of art, can

be more authentic than a historical representation. In a

country, riddled with apartheid rules and stifled with

censorship laws, the artists and the intellectuals had

the responsibility to capture the truth of the lives of

their fellow men. Being a witness to the political and

social revof ution, or more accurately the cultural

re-awakening of her nation, Gordimer w a s aware of the

overshadowing nature of politics in the life af South

A f r i c a . I n her essay "A Writer in South A f r i c a , '@ Gordimer

has expressed the inter-linking aspect of politics and

society in the South African context:

Whites among themselves are shaped by their

peculiar position, just as black people are

shaped by theirs. I write about their private

selves: o f t e n , in the most private situations

they are what they are because their lives are

regulated and their mores formed by the

political situation. You see, in South Africa

society is the political situation. To

paraphrase, one might say . . . politics is

character in South Africa (London Magazine,64).

It is this "political engagement, which becomes the

nexus of her fictional world. Gordimer in her essay

"African Writers and the Twenty-First Century,'' discusses

the meaning of "political engagement in African

l i terature1*:

l'Engagementlt doesn't preclude the beauty of the

language, the complexity of human emotions. On

the contrary, such literature must be able to

use all these in order to be tru ly engaged with

l i f e , when the overwhelming factor in that life

is political struggle (-a the Paae, 1).

The invasion of politics into the everyday life has

managed to cement over the African cultural essence.

Politics contrives a preconceived dominance stagnating

the normal cycle of life in the society. Gordimer bewails

the sterility that has crept into the "African music,

dance, myth, philosophy, religious beliefs and secular

rituals; the very stuff an which the literary imagination

feeds" (Turning the Pase , 5).

Her commitment to the cause of her people,

instigates an active attempt to cleanse the onslaught of

corruptive politics and reschedule it into its r i g h t f u l

perspective. T h i s , i n turn would restore the organic

evolution of the cultural flow in a society that was

silenced by the illegal domination of an alien race.

L~ordimer recognized the inevitability of a wcommon

culture," in the society f o r it to thrive. According to

Raymond Williams, the existence of t h i s ltcommon

experience" is crucial for a l l communities (Culture And

Societv, 316). Blending of cultures, however brutally

begun has produced the present society of South Africa.

In such a cauldron society, the inequalities of many kind

make communication difficult or impossible. Raymond

Williams, asserts that a society "needs a common culture

not for the sake of an abstraction, but because we shall

not survive without itm (-And 316). When

the legal system in power, restricts transgression across

the color bar and segregation becomes a pattern of

society, the chances for a common culture becomes

minimal . Gordimer is fully aware of the disadvantage with

which the writers of her land, try to rebuild a nation

f r o m among the compartments of apartheid. But she accepts

the importance of creating a complete picture from the

fragments l e f t behind by the colonial regime. A common

culture is a pre-requisite for the natural development,

and evolution of the society. Apart from an area of

interaction, a nation also requires some kind of national

identity even if it is within wide parameters. In South

Africa the apartheid rules obstruct its people from being

'equalsf. A common culture does not imply an equal

culture. B u t it invokes an equality of opportunity to

move within any of its activities. In "English Language

Literature and politic^,'^ Gordimer ascertains the

problematic of 'cultural identity1 in South African

society :

Professor Harry Levin defines cultural identity

as 'nothing more or less than the mean between

selfhood and otherness, between our respect for

ourselves and our relationship with our fellow

men and women.' The dilemma of a literature in

South Africa, where the law effectively

prevents any real identification of the writer

with his society as a whole, so that ultimately

he can identify only with his color, distorts

this mean irreparably. And cultural identity is

the ground on which the exploration of self in

the imaginative writer makes a national

literature(~st3ects Of South African J , i t e r a t u w ,

119).

In the process of restructuring the social codes and

overthrowing the prevalent political morality, the

writers sensed the need for a cultural identity. The

question of individual freedom is closely associated with

the notion of identity at the individual and national

level. Ngugi, Achebe, Lessing, Gordimer and several

others, try to capture the dilemma of identity crisis in

their fiction. Their narratives explore the harshness of

this basic predicament. The fact remains that none of

them could experience the society as a whole due to the

color bar. Yet between their works, considered

collectively they have managed t-o re-construct a complete

picture of their society. Gordimer's role, which she

herself asserts is to open the eyes of the whites who

have still n o t come to terms with the revolutionary

changes, long over due. Her fiction a l s o joins the main-

stream of South African literature, which could be read

as a voyage of discovery, towards self-awareness,

recognition of responsibility, and guilt complicity

without compromising the aesthetic sensibility.

The intellectuals of t he nation take up the

obligation to re-schedule the existing power structure by

a more contemporary and progressive distribution of

authority. Achebe writes about the impact of the colonial

past -upon the present, thereby simultaneously exposing

the social injustice and seeking to restore the pride of

African people in themselves. Afr ican literature in

general has been an answer to the impact of colonialism,

wars of resistance, and struggle for independence, and

even the reactions to all these. In his presentation "The

Role of Writer In A New Nation," Achebe, declares that

l r i n Africa, it is impossible to explore the human

conditions without a proper sense of history" (8fricm

Writers on African Writinq, 8). Ngugi, contributes

towards the progressive change in society, when he tries

to de-colonize the African mind, and cleanse the society

of the white influence not just in the political arena

but also in t h e social and cultural sphere. After the

Second World War the struggle for equality and political

freedom took the form of an extra parliamentary nature in

South Africa. T h e writers arbitrated a l i t e r a r y

denunciation of apartheid with the hope of effecting or

accelerating a political change. Olivia Schreiner, Alan

Paton, Gordimer and the other writers on the White

section of the society, joined the crusade along with

their black counter-parts. The \guiltJ felt by the

liberal English-speaking writer in the South African

scene, arises from intense and probably unrealized

anxieties. Gordimer has affirmed that the predominant

emotion for t h e white liberal is "guilt," while that of

h i s black contemporary remains "resentmentu:

The black writer is extremely limited in h i s

presentation of white characters -- witness the

frequency with which h i s are no more than

cardboard or caricature. What he cannot know

about the white man's life because of those

large areas of the white experience, he is

excluded from by law, he supplies out of a

fantasy distorted by resentment - . . In t h e

work of the white writers, you often get the

same gap in experience between black and white

lives compensated for by the projection of

emotions a b u t blacks into t h e creation of a

black topology. Guilt is the prevailing emotion

there: often it produces cardboard and

unconscious caricatures jus t as resentment does

( W e c t s Of S o u t b r i c a n u t e r a t u r e , 119).

The approach of tackling the problem of quiltlresentrnent

was individually determined, by, the black and white

writers. Whatever the political and public pronouncements

of Alan Paton may have been, h i s novels are 'romantic;'

in them he articulates the view that it is still possible

to "offer the blacks a 'square dealt by way of a

magnanimous change of hear t " (The South Africm Novel In

~ s h , 11). Gordimer is mare of a realist than a

romantic in her attitudes. In her navels and short

stories the relentless accuracy of detail is almost

invariably tied to an emotional reaction: a sense of

loss, of impotence, and very rarely of vitality and

courage. In her capacity, as the eminent portraitist of

the middle-class English speaking section of the society,

Gordimer delves deep into their lives and experiences,

but maintains a scientific detachment and aloofness.

Gordimer explores the question of "Where Do Whites Fit

In?," otwithout self-pity for the whites or sentiment

about the blacksH , 3 3 ) . And she tries to raise the

consciousness of the white sector towards the need for a

radical change of power/authority from the European

center to an African context.

~ordimer accepts post-colonialism as an 'acceptance

of the difference' on equal terms, with no shame or

glamour attributed to either colors. And she advocates a

policy of cultural syncrenity, rather than a policy of

national purity. The European, ~ s i a n and Jewish influence

that has come to bear upon the society, cannot be denied.

It has entered the social patterns and practice of the

present day South Africa. With merciless accuracy and

verbal dexterity she portrays the cross-section of

African society 'as it really is. The harshness and

truthf,ulness of the social reality in her fiction, makes

it a war cry for political and social change. Even

though, her writings can be read as an attempt to 'raise

the mass consciousness,' her commitment to a r t remains

untarnished.

Political themes are customary to Nadine Gordimer,

but they enr ich , not mould her fiction. Gordirner's

impressions as expressed in her writings, become a

chronicle of a section of the people in the world in the

present century. The project attempts a close reading of

the short stories of Nadine Gordimer to analyze not just

what happens i n Gordimerls fictional world, but to

explore how it is related to the historical consciousness

of her people.

Gordimer, being a N~bel Laureate and one Of the

eminent spokesperson of the third world conditions, her

fiction has interested a whole range of critics. Critical

attention mostly centered on her novels owing to their

ability to embrace the complex and syncretic nature of

the post-colonial world within the expansive spaces of a

wide canvas. Clingman has explored the '*historical

consciousnesstm in Gordimer's novels and has analyzed the

lrdouble graph of history,'' that determines the nexus of

her creativity (ustarv from the Inside, x x v ) . He relates

the deep history of Nadine Gordimer's novels in relation

to the history of South Africa:

Yet, if all the writers are to varying degrees

'engagedf with history either deliberately or

by necessity, there is surely no other South

~fwican writer who has engaged with it so

directly as Nadine ~ordimer, and whose work has

so sharply defined and attuned a 'sense of

history' (Riatorv From the m i d e , 7 ) .

To a great extend this historical consciousness can be

traced in her short fiction a l so . B u t in her short

fiction Gordimer aims to achieve a single concentrate

impression. She found the slice-of-life kind of short

story more appropriate than the integrated and highly

organized form of the novel far her social and political

purpose. Gordimer not only pictures reality as it is, but

she adds her own vision of it. This representational

history that she weaves, helps her in conditioning the

social consciousness and social situation from the

perspective of a white South African. Being a woman

writer, probably, she envisages the private lives of

actual individuals along with the public matters of the

society. Gordimer's writing is closely involved with

politics yet seldom explicitly political. In the short

stories she frequently builds a personal tale around a

fleeting but sharply focused moment of revelation or

insight. Each story presents "a different shard with no

pretense of wholeness beyond ittv (me Short S t o r v ; A

Critical Introduction, 2 2 8 ) . In her presentation at "The

International Symposium on the Short Story," Gordimer

comments on the intricate nature of Short Story a s a

genre:

The short s t o r y is a fragmented and restless

form, a matter of h i t or miss and it is for

this same reason that it is better suited for

the modern consciousness -- which is best

expressed as flashes of i n s i g h t alternating

with near-hypnotic states of indifference (The

. . rt Story: A C r i t l a Introduction, 229).

The short story form in her artful hands becomes an

effective medium to picture the complexity of social and

historical pressures on every single and simple incident.

Born as the daughter of rich parents w i t h white

s k i n Gordimer hardly had any reason to be different from

the mainstream of South African white population, But she

chose to be the minority within t h e minority, who dared

to open themselves to the reality of the aggressive

nature of the colonizer, in t h e black world. In her essay

"The Novel And the Nation," Gordimer points out that

"the greatest single factor in the making of our mores

in South Africa was and is and will be the color

question'' ( B f r i c a n Writers on African wrltln- . . , 3 7 ) . In

this essay, which w a s written as early as 1973, she had

fixed the focus of her entire explorations, as the

black/white relationship and its variant shades of

meanings. And that w a s her major concern all through o u t

her writings. Gordimer elaborates on the extensive tenure

of the color problem:

Whether it is the old question of what the

whites are going to do about the blacks or the

new question of what the blacks are going to do

about the whites, or the hopeful question of

how to set about letting the whole thing go and

living together, it still is t h e question ( 3 7 ) .

Gordirner has analyzed the social reality of

black/white confrontation or coexistence in her writings.

Her realism is the ''realism of po~sibility'~ according to

Judith Kitchen. I n the essay , "Nadine Gordimer :The

Realism Of Possibility, * I Judith refers to the personal

factor in t h e social reality in ~ordimer's writings.

Judith explains the \realism1 in connection with

Gordimerts comment in one of her interviews in 1986, on

the role of literature in recording the history of a

society:

Books make South Africans see themselves as

they cannot from inside themselves. They get a

kind of mirror image with which to compare

their own feelings and motives (Ge~raia Review,

285).

Judith adds her own comment to the above words of

Gordimer and modifies it a s : '\Gordimercs m i r r o r is not

quite, the mirror in the roadway of nineteenth century

realism; hers is tilted to take in not only the road

itself and the terrain already covered, but t he future

that may lie just ahead" (-a Review XLIV 1,285).

Gordimer * s \ \ tilted mirror, not only reflects the

present, but glorifies the past and dreams of an ideal

future. Gordimer, in choosing how to represent the

speech, thought, and the consciousness of her characters,

makes a crucial choice. These choices have a determining

effect on t h e mood, and t h e tone of the story in

question and they situate the reader in a particular way

. . . with regard to the moral and human point of view.

It could be then argued that Gordimer p ic tu r e s only that

which c o n s t r u c t s her political ideology.

Carefully choosing the politically saturated

subjects and placing them, in every-day life situations,

a comprehensive picture of South Africa unravels before

our mind's e y e s . In everything t h a t a writer writes he

or she is trying to "build the pattern of h i s own

perception out of chaosf' (s, 10 ) . Gordimer has portrayed

o n l y one story: "that story in which everything, novels,

stories, the false starts the half-completed, the

abandoned, has its meaningful place, will be completed

w i t h t h e last sentence written before she dies or

imagination atrophies" (%,10). Gordimerts sho r t stories

have given a wide spectrum of situations events and

characters, without burdening them with elaboration.

Gordimer has often picked up fragmentary moments of life

and illustrated them. But like a mosaic it -- Gordimer's fiction -- gathers truth and humanity when taken as a

whale.

The project attempts an exploration of the

oscillation of an artist who is at the same time

experiencing and observing the making of her nation. Even

though Gordimer refuses to take sides with any political

party, in South Africa, her writings have an undertone of

politics. As s h e delves deeper into the personal drama of

her people she becomes more and more political in her

conclusions, Gordimer explains the private/public

overlapping in the matter of politics, in her essay

"English Language Literature and Politicsf1:

There is no country in the western world, where

the creative imagination, whatever it seizes

upon, finds the focus of even the m o s t private

event set in the overall social determination

Of of racial laws ( h ~ e c t s South A f r i w

Literature, 100).

Gordimer in focusing on the corrupt political system

that governs the private lives of people is actually

awakening the white consciousness towards the need to

change. Being part of the white community, ~ordimer works

to create a 'guilty conscience' in the complacent

apartheid government. She believes that \\the white

writers task as 'cultural worker' is to raise the

consciousness of white people, who unlike himself has

not woken up" , 2 9 3 ) . From the inside, Gordimer

deconstructs the falsehood and the injustice of the white

colonial myth. Thus she endeavors to bring some

"influence to bear upon t h e whites . . . who are already

coming to, bewildered o u t of the trip of power, and those

who gain courage from reading the open expression of

their own suppressed rebellionff(294), In a l l her

writings [novels and short stories], Gordimer has managed

to keep Ither allegiance free" from radical extremists and

the bourgeois colonialist. H e r s was a singular devotion

to truth.

The thesis attempts to define the author's stance,

both as a writer and as a South African i n terms of

opposition to apartheid and the ideological disruption it

consummated in the soc ie ty . It is a textual analysis of

the sho r t stories, to trace the political ideology

embedded in them and to outline the social consciousness.

The first chapter evaluates the political coloring in her

'subjects* or characters; scrutinizes t h e political

reasons in the choice of her situations and appraises the

personal drama in her fiction t h a t reconstructs t h e

political history of the land. Ideology being a

problematic subject, a clarification of the proposed

meaning accredited in the study is required. Terry

Eagleton in his xdeoloav: An Introduction, explains the

different perspectives of the term 'ideology.' He

acknowledges the "different conceptual strands of

meaning' of the term ideology, and denies the need to

"forcibly merge them into s o m e grand global theory1' (1).

In t h e political scene, ideology determines t h e

legitimacy of the authority. Eagleton explains the means

of distinguishing politics and ideology:

Politics refers to the power processes by which

social orders are sustained or challenged;

whereas ideology denotes the ways in which

these power processes get caught up in a realm

of signification (11).

The entire concept of power/authority is built on

the frame-work of ideology. Further, there is Ira third

way between thinking of ideology as disembodied ideas on

t h e one hand and as nothing but a matter of certain

behavior patterns on the other. This is to regard

ideology as a discursive or semiotic phenomenon1' ( 194 ) . Here, Eagleton is concentrating on the ideological

capacity of literature. In the studies of Roselind Coward

and J o h n ~llis, yet another definition of ideology can be

traced. They affirm that, l l ideolagical practice . . . works to fix the subject in certain positions in relation

to certain fixities of discoursemt ( 197) . Eagleton

clarifies that when ideologies try to naturalize the

social reality, the "semiotic contribution" in the matter

of percolating the ideology in the society, gets

illuminated.

But, this study has assumed the definition of

ideology that has been ventilated by Wole Soyinka:

Ideologies are very much systems of thought or

speculative goals considered desirable for the

health of existing institutions (society,

ecology, economic life. . . ) which are regarded

as ends in themselves (Bvt.h, T,iterature and the

A f r i c a n World, 62).

Gordimer is far more preoccupied with visionary

projection of society than with the speculative theories

on the concept of ideology. And her visions resonate the

desirable changes in the society of South Africa -- in

the transactions across the color bar. Ideology

Althrusser claims, ''expresses a will, a hope or a

nostalgia, rather than describing a reality . . . it is

fundamentally a matter of fearing and denouncing,

reverencing and reviling all of which then sometimes get

coded into a discourse which looks as though it is

describing the way things actually a r e t f (For M a , 2 3 4 ) .

I n Gordimer's narrative, ideology surfaces in her attempt

to re-scribe the social consciousness of the black and

white sector of the society. The ideological-struggle in

her text becomes part of the class-struggle. And it

could be a study as the ways in which the "unkillable

word" (EG,243) enumerates the power-play in a

class-ridden society. Subjects are introduced into the

text as quasi-real hallucinatory individuals to denote

her vision of a corrupt social order.

The elaboration of Gordimerls social vision, is

undertaken in the project to avail a better understanding

of the political statement embedded in the text.

Gordimer's political ideology is studied as "the ways in

which meaning o r signification) serves to sustain

relations of dominationw (Studies in the Tneorv of

Jdeoloqy, 4 ) . Within her text, ideology valorizes in her

depiction of the social reality. The transactions across

t h e color bar, are analyzed with microscopic details, in

several everyday situations. And the subtext evolves into

an in-depth study of the colonial canstructs and its

psychological impairments on the society at large. In the

kaleidoscope of varying skin colors, Eordimer unravels a

'social reality,' which suggests 'what is seen' as

opposed to 'what is. Black and white voices are

manipulated with increased sophistication by an authorial

consciousness, which can be read as the ideology in the

t e x t . Ideology and its infiltration into the social

vision, is studied as the twin faces of the same figment.

Soyinka explains the concept of literary ideology in the

context of naturalization of new revolutionary ideas, and

links it w i t h the commitment of a writer towards h i s

society and a r t :

Literary ideology does occasionally achieve

coincidence -- and a value expansion -- with a

'social vision. From merely turning the

mechanics of creativity into a wilful self -

regulatory domain, irrespective of t h e burden

of the statement , it elevates its sights to a

regenerative social goal which makes continuing

demands on the nature of that ideological

medium and prevents its smug stagnation (H~th

Literature and the African Warld, 62).

Gordimer is part of the intelligentsia that

relentlessly worked to bring out into the world how

things really were in the society of South Africa. She

has emerged as an arbitrator of t r u t h , and j u s t i c e into

a corrupt colonial empire -- a writer whose primary

loyalty was to her fellow men. In her own words she has

defined her role in the society:

In a country of total repression like South

Africa where literature is nevertheless, only

half-suppressed because the greater part of

that black majority is k e p t semiliterate and

cannot be affected by books there is -- just -- the possibility for a writer to be 'onlyf a

writer. in terms of activity and yet "more than

a writer" in terms of fulfilling the demands of

h i s society. An honourable category has been

found for him. As a 'cultural workerJ in the

race/class struggle he still may be seen to

serve, even if he won't march towards tear gas

and bullets (E, 2 9 2 ) .

Gordimer in her role as a 'cultural worker'

presents , situation and characters so as to bring out the

interplay of varied forces of power/authority in the

class-ridden society. The relationship across the color

bar is analyzed in varying contexts. The transactions are

further systematically scrutinized as man/woman,

slave/master, radical/liberalist. The predominant emotion

in Gordimer's subjects, being 'fear1, its cause and

character when analyzed, gives a deeper insight into the

social codes in Gordimer's world of fiction. Gordimer has

effectively portrayed the variant shades of fear -- ranging from simple physical reaction, to that of a deep

r a c i a l unconscious.

The third chapter makes a comprehensive study of the

social reality that ~ordimer has portrayed in her

narratives, which in turn becomes her political statement

on the racial c~nsciousness of the society. Placed among

the other African philosophers, Gordimer can also be seen

to reconstruct an honorable past for the ~frican way of

life. In her attempt to de-colonize the minds of people,

suppressed for not less than three centuries by an alien

culture, her narrative reinstates honor into the black

race. The third chapter directly involves w i t h t he social

realism in Gordimerls stories and its v i t a l role in

re-structuring the value-system in the t e x t . The various

goals and reasons in arbitrating such a comprehensive

picture of South African society, in Gordimer's fiction

is analyzed. In re-creating the social history of her

people Gordimer tries to obtain legitimacy for the black

cause. The power structure within the various strata of

society is dramatized in her several stories. The

hierarchy of power between t h e blacks and the

East European immigrants, juxtaposed against the

transactions between t h e E a s t European immigrants and the

whites, spells out, a new meaning to the inter-racial

dialogue in the society of South Africa. ~ardimer

explores a whole range of \badt and 'good' whites and

Blacks in her stories. The variety poses a comprehensive

picture of the 'realityf beneath the superfluous. She has

covered every sector of the society, namely the 'good

slaves, ' the problem slaves, the 'goodr masters and the

evil masters and a whole range of characters in between.

She has included the Asians, Jews, and the East European

Immigrants in the choice of her subjects. Gordimer has

offered a kaleidoscope of 'colors,' and has presented a

cross-section of the society in her writings. Gordimer

builds a structure of social hierarchy, by carefully

chosen 'subjects* and explores the political implications

in their personal situations. Several 'quasi real

individuals' appear as her subjects in selective

situations, so as to illuminate the corrupt social order.

Tony Bennett's explanations on the purpose of \subjectsr

in an ideological structure can be applied to the

'subjectivity' and 'subjects' of GordimerOs fiction. When

'subjects' are created for an ideological construct, they

are conditioned suitably to vehicle that particular

ideology. Such a character, would facilitate the

nconstruction of those subjects which unites a broader

alliance of social farces in opp~sition to the power bloc

count politically by winning for it a cultural weight and

influence which prevails above otherst1 (po~ular Culture

understood only by a dissection of the narrative

techniques employed in t h e t e x t . Irony enters the

narrative, to reflect the inconsistency in the society.

The final chapter examines the narrative tools Gordimer

uses to propagate her political ideology in an artistic

manner. The novelist has skillfully employed 'narrative

shift,' and 'plurality of voices' without endowing

dominance to any particular voice making her short

stories excellent literary vehicles to carry her message

of political ideology.

Gordimer being a keen observer of human behavior,

her writings reflect the universal human attitudes:

strengths and weaknesses. As a participant of the third

world struggle for independence and acceptance, her

writings are of singular signification in the

understanding of the contemporary social ethics. Her

contributions in awakening the conscience of a nation and

the world at large towards South Africa, was recognized

in the award of Nobel Prize. Gordimer is a shimmering

l i g h t i n the confusion of value-systems, racial

prejudices and neocolonialistic tendencies in the present

world. In her art she has coupled, the responsibility of

a fellow human being with her commitment towards

aesthetic sensibilities.

Works Cited

Arkin, Marian and Shollar, Barhana, ed. LQncrraans

W Anthaloay of orLdAlteratuse hv Wornen writers. N e w

York: Longman Inc., 1989.

Bates, H. E . The Mndern Short Story. London: Evensford

Publications Ltd., 1941.

Bennett, Tony. Outside J , i t w a w . London and New ~ork:

Routledge, 1990.

Clingman, Stephen, The Novels of ~ a d i n e Gordimer: ~istarv

from the Insis&. UK: Bloomsbury, 1993.

Eagleton, Terry. Idealoav: An Introduction. London:

Verso, 1991.

Gordimer, Nadine. "Writing and Being," Georaia Review,

XLIX, 1. Athens: University of Georgia (spring,

1995).

- - - '\A Writer in South Africa," London maazine, May

1965.

- - - . "African Writers and the Twenty-first Century,"

Turnina t h e m (ed. Christopher Machehose),

Harvill: Harper Collins Publ., 1993.

- - - "The International Symposium on t h e Short

Stories," Penvan Review, 1968.

- - - \\The Novel and the ati ion in South ~frica, " (ed.

G. D. Killam). African Writers on African Wrltlnq. . . London: Heinemann, 1973.

Kenneth Parker, ed*

London: Macmillan P , 1978 .

Kitchen, Judith. \ \Nadine Gordimer: The Realism of

Possibility,** Georgia Review, XLIX, I (Spring,

1995).

Shaw, Valerie. The S h o r t Storv: A critical Introductian.

London: Longman, 1983.

Soyinka, Wole. Myth, Literature and The ~ f r i c a n World.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976.

Thornson, John B. Studies i n the Theory.-_of Ideolow.

cambridge: CUP, 1984.

-1ogarth Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society. UK: Tb,

P , 1993.