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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Moms and moral midgets: South African feminisms and characterisation in novels in English by white women
Author:Hunter, EvaISNI
Year:1999
Periodical:Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
Volume:11
Issue:1
Pages:36-53
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:images
women
literature
English language
Abstract:This article examines the stereotyping of women in novels in English by white South African women. While not presuming to equate black women's suffering with the experiences of women who were privileged by South Africa's socioeconomic structures, it analyses how apartheid also hobbled writing by white women. A starting point for this discussion is the characterization in Elleke Boehmer's two novels, published in 1990 and 1993, the closing days of National Party power. These novels, like earlier novels by white South African female writers, depict women as lacking agency and, if aware of the evils of apartheid, paralysed by guilt. Most novels by white English-speaking women published during the 1990s have continued to inscribe lack of agency, and so have not fostered the maturing of feminist politics. By way of conclusion, the author discusses a few exceptions: novels featuring women who move beyond the stifling world of lack of agency into a world that suggests a variety of 'ways of being'. Bibliogr., ref.
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