Olive Schreiner's 'The story of an African farm': Lyndall as transnational and transracial feminist

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Periodical article

Title:	Olive Schreiner's 'The story of an African farm': Lyndall as transnational and transracial feminist
Author:	Barends, Heidi
Year:	2015
Periodical:	The English Academy Review (ISSN 1753-5360)
Volume:	32
Issue:	2
Pages:	101-114
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	novels feminism
About person:	Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner (1855-1920)
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2015.1086161
Abstract:	Olive Schreiner's 'The story of an African farm' is well known for its feminist aspirations, particularly epitomized through its main female protagonist, Lyndall. Despite the novel's arguably ground-breaking and revolutionary feminist politics, Schreiner's first full-length work has often been criticized for explicit racism and exclusionary tactics. Using Lyndall as a springboard, the author counteracts these claims. Analysing Lyndall's own engagements with feminist discourses in the novel - love and marriage, motherhood, empire and processes of racialization - this article argues that the novel's feminism is both transracially and transnationally applicable. Such a reading is furthermore indicative of a need to expand Schreiner scholarship beyond the traditional placement of her work within First Wave feminist discourse, and to situate 'The story of an African farm' within a broader, on-going debate on transnational and transracial female politics, already evident at the end of the nineteenth century. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]