Narrating (her)story : South African women's life writing (1854-1948)

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Seeking to explore modes of self-representation in women's life writing and the ways inwhich these subjects manipulate the autobiographical 'I' to write about gender, the body, raceand ethnic related issues, this thesis interrogates the autobiographies of three renegade womenwhose works were birthed out of the de/colonial South African context between 1854-1948.The chosen texts are: Marina King's Sunrise to Evening Star: My Seventy Years in SouthAfrica (1935), Melina Rorke's Melina Rorke: Her Amazing Experiences in the StormyNineties of South-African History (1938), and two memoirs by Petronella vanHeerden, Kerssnuitsels (1962) and Die 16de Koppie (1965). My analysis is underpinned byrelevant life writing and feminist criticism, such as the notion of female autobiographical'embodiment (239) and the 'I's reliance on 'relationality (248) as discussed in the work ofSidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Reading Autobiography). I further draw on Judith Butler'sconcept of 'performativity (Bodies that Matter 234) in my analysis in order to suggest thatthere is a performative aspect to the female 'I' in these texts. The aim of this thesis is toillustrate how these self-representations of women can be read as counter-conventional,speaking out against stereotypical perceptions and conventions of their time and in literatures(fiction and criticism) which cast women as tractable, compliant pertaining to patriarchaloversight, as narrow-minded and apathetic regarding achieving notoriety and prominencebeyond their ascribed position in their separate societies. I argue that these works arerepresentative of alternative female subjectivities and are examples of South African women'slife writing which lie 'dusty' and forgotten in archives; voices that are worthy of furtherscholarly research which would draw the stories of women's lives back into the literaryconsciousness.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University