CONTESTED DOMESTIC SPACES: ANNE LANDSMAN'S THE DEVIL'S CHIMNEY

[摘要] This dissertation interrogates Anne Landsman’s The Devil’s Chimney. The novelis narrated by the poor-white alcoholic, Connie, who imagines a story aboutBeatrice, an English colonist living on a farm in the Little Karoo. Connie, who isa product of the apartheid era, interweaves her own story with that of Beatrice’sand, in this way, comes to terms with her own memories, her abusive husband andthe new South Africa.Connie deploys the genre of magical realism to create a defamiliarised farmsetting for Beatrice’s narrative. She thus challenges the stereotypes associatedwith the traditional plaasroman and its patriarchal codes. These codes are alsosubverted in Connie’s representation of Beatrice, who contests her identity as theauthoritative Englishwoman, as constructed by colonial discourse. In addition,Beatrice’s black domestic, Nomsa, is given voice and agency: facilities denied toher counterparts in colonial and apartheid fiction. Nomsa’s relationship withBeatrice is also characterised by subversion as it blurs the boundaries betweencolonised and coloniser. In this regard, the text demands a postcolonial reading.Connie, in narrating Beatrice’s and Nomsa’s stories, reinvents their invisible livesand, by doing so, is able to rewrite herself. In this, she tentatively envisions afuture for herself and also potentially 'narrates’ the nation, thus contributing to thenew national literature.The nation is inscribed in the Cango caves, whose spaces witness the seminalepisodes in Beatrice’s narrative. In these events, the caves 'write’ the femalebody and women’s sexuality and the text thus calls for an engagement withfeminism. The caves also inscribe South African history, the Western literarycanon, the imagination and Landsman’s own voice. Hence, the caves assume thecharacteristics of a palimpsest. This, together with the metafictive elements of thenovel, invites an encounter with postmodernism.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand