Similar with Nawal el Saadawi in "A Modern Love Letter," Nadine Gordimer's "A Soldier's Embrace" reflects how within societies where numerous differences and dichotomies exist, it is the women sector who suffers the most, and these sufferings further escalate if, apart from being females, they also belong to other marginalized sectors in the society (e.g., the poor sector, colored people, the elderly, among others).
In her short story, Gordimer provides detailed imagery of subtle and implied oppression that a South African woman experiences in the hands of both white and colored soldiers. The story begins with this powerful imagery, narrated as follows: "There were two soldiers in front of her, blocking her off by a clumsy embrace...and the embrace opened like a door and took her in...They all gasped with delicious shock..." This momentary...
The soldiers' embrace, in effect, marks the continued oppression of women amid the freedom that colored people in South Africa had achieved from Western colonial rule. Gordimer wants to illustrate to her readers that among the oppressed sectors, it is the women who had the most oppressive history, an oppression that was not achieved by a revolution and seemed to defy historical and social changes. Hence, the continuous illustration of male dominance despite the occurrence of freedom of society from colonial rule serves ad evidence of Gordimer's view that female emancipation is still far from being successful and yet to be achieved.
