White skin under an African Sun : (white) women and (white) guilt in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa J.M.Coetzee writes of the "system" of guilt and shame, debt and retribution which operates throughout society. He and writers like Doris Lessing and Barbara Kingsolver tell stories which traverse and explore the paths tracked by society's quest for healing and restitution. (White) women too, Coetzee's protagonist (in Disgrace) muses, must have a place, a "niche" in this system. What is this "niche" and what role do the women in these texts play in the reparation of colonial wrong? How is their position dictated by discourses which acknowledge the agency of the (female) body in epistemologies of guilt and power? This mini-dissertation attempts to trace the figure of the white woman in three late 201h-/early 21 51-century postcolonial literary texts, in order to read the phrases of meaning that have been inscribed on her body. The novels read are J.M.Coetzee's Disgrace, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing.