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Gordimer's Country Lovers
Issues of race and gender have been considered to be popular subjects in literature and allow individuals to express how these issues have affected them and how they have affected society. "Country Lovers" (1975), by Nadine Gordimer, allows the reader to understand how issues of race and gender are universal. Gordimer also uses "Country Lovers" as a platform to show how these issues impacted her personally and the lasting effect that they have on people living in South Africa, where she was born and raised. "Country Lovers" (1975) analyzes how racial discrimination and gender influence how the story's female protagonist, Thebedi, is treated.
Despite the fact that Gordimer herself is not involved in politics, "her writings document, decade by decade, the impact of politics on personal lives and what an increasingly radical white South African woman felt, thought, and imaged during the rise and fall of apartheid" (Bazin & Gordimer, 1995, p. 571). One of the issues Gordimer writes about is apartheid, which is an underlying issue in "Country Lovers." In South Africa, racism was formally institutionalized through laws first passed in 1948. These laws "touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage between non-whites and whites" (The History of Apartheid in South Africa, n.d.). Gordimer's disdain with apartheid is evident in the subject matter of "Country Lovers" as she demonstrates how poorly Thebedi is treated when she is forced to testify against Paulus and how the judicial system favors Paulus based on the color of his skin rather than his character and the evidence.
"Country Lovers"...
Paulus and Thebedi's relationship begins in early childhood as Thebedi's family works for the Eysendyck's and lives on their land. Gordimer (1975) asserts, "The farm children play together when they are small; but once the white children go away to school they soon don't play together anymore, even in the holidays." While the farm children are not aware of any differences among themselves, differences become apparent through their intermittent separations and black children eventually learn "to call their old playmates missus and Basie -- little master" (Gordimer, 1975). Despite the fact that Paulus and Thebedi are expected to change how they live their lives after they are separated as children, they appear to defy the odds and continue to develop and strengthen their relationship. Paulus not only brings home gifts for Thebedi, such as "a painted box he had made in his wood-work class," but he also shares his experiences with her (Gordimer, 1975). Thebedi is left at a disadvantage because unlike Paulus, she is not allowed to leave the farm and pursue an education and/or socialize with people of different backgrounds. Because of this, it can be argued that Paulus begins to take advantage of Thebedi's institutionalized ignorance and introduces her to concepts, such as sex, that she would otherwise not be inclined to explore with him. However, despite the closeness Paulus and Thebedi have, they appear to subconsciously know that their relationship is prohibited because Paulus never engages in sexual activities in…
Bibliography
Bazin, N.T. And Gordimer, N. (1995). An interview with Nadine Gordimer. Contemporary Literature. 36.1 (Winter), pp. 571-587. JSTOR. Accessed 30 October 2012.
The History of Apartheid in South Africa. (n.d.) Stanford University. Accessed 30 October 2012,
from http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.hist.html
Gordimer, N. (1975). Country Lovers.
Gordimer and Walker Race and gender have been shown to be major social issues throughout the world as demonstrated through short stories written by Nadine Gordimer, who writes from a South African perspective, and Alice Walker, who writes from an American perspective. Gordimer's "Country Lovers" (1975), takes a look at South African apartheid and allows the reader insight into the discrimination that was prevalent in society. Likewise, Walker's "The Welcome Table"
Certainly this is a key theme in books by diverse authors (Malamud, Tan, etc.). It is the very institutionalization of race that causes it to continue and perpetuate when, quite easily we see that figures such as James Baldwin and others, working in the 1920s and 1930s in Harlem, could begin the long road to overcoming White supremacy. What does the "impact of modernity" mean to traditional cultures of the
Black people have to work as hired household help or as farm labor while white people own the economic resources of production. Gordimer's mother had a black maid and it is likely that this made her sensitive to the inequality between the two communities (Gordimer et al. 1990). On the other hand, What it's Like to be a Black Girl explores the psychological pressure and turmoil that a young black
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Thebedi suffers because of the same reason but her story reveals how broken a race becomes after years of repeated abuse. Thebedi lives in a culture thousands of miles away from the segregation realized in America but somehow, that mentality made its way across the ocean. The most amazing aspect of this story is the fact that it could have taken place on an American farm. The white man's
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