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
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Authors
Horrell, Georgina Ann
Issue Date
2001-06
Type
Dissertation
Language
en
Keywords
Postcolonial , Whiteness , Women , Guilt , Power , Literary , Bodies , Retribution , Reconciliation
Alternative Title
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.
Description
Citation
Horrell, Georgina Ann (2001) 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, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/16968>