The two ends of Apartheid: Lessing and Coetzee - Farming, postcolonialism and psychoanalysis

In my dissertation I propose an in-depth analysis of two novels that deal with South Africa, both written by well known, prize-winner authors, namely The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing and Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. Since the former was published in 1950 and the latter in 1999, these two novels can be considered as milestones, each one marking a different historical period, respectively, the beginning and the end of the Apartheid system. In particular, my aim is that of combining different literary approaches and points of view, i.e. historical, post colonial and psychoanalytical, in order to provide a thorough and diversified study of both novels. The first chapter deals with the history of South Africa, starting from its colonisation in the 17th century by Dutch settlers to the country's transition towards democracy in the last years of the 20th century. The main source for this section is R. Ross' A Concise History of South Africa, which was published in 1999 by Cambridge University Press. In the second and third chapters I give a closer look at each of the novels' main themes. The Grass Is Singing is analysed through a comparison with a part of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, quoted in the novel's epigraph. After that, the main character Mary Turner and her condition as a South African white woman are analysed. As far as Disgrace is concerned, a narratological approach is used to study the nature of the main character's narration and his sexist views on women. Finally, the themes of art and animal care as possible ways of redemption are discussed, drawing on Derek Attridge's J. M. Coetzee & the ethics of reading: literature in the event (2004, University of Chicago Press). In the fourth chapter I address the topic of farming; in order to explain the characteristics of farms in literature J. M. Coetzee's critical essay Farm Novel and Plaasroman in South Africa is taken into consideration, alongside Annalisa Oboe's Fiction, history and nation in South Africa. Then I move on to analysing the way the farm is depicted in each novel. In the fifth chapter I adopt a post-colonial approach to examine the way in which Lessing and Coetzee have dealt with specific topics, such as the representation of the 'other', the issue of language and the breaking of taboos. What I argue in this section is that even if Lessing's novel had been written before postcolonialism became a field and a concept in literature, it can be considered as a postcolonial literary work too. Finally, the last chapter aims at giving a further key to the interpretation of both texts through a psychoanalytical approach. The chapter called ¿Psychoanalytic criticism¿ in Barry's Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory is used as a starting point. Then, the theories of some of the best-known psychologists, such as Erik Erikson, Melanie Klein, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are used to interpret and explain the behaviour of each novel's main character, the origins of their troubled relationships with the external world, and possible causes of some of the events that take place in their lives.