Graduate Program

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2006

Thesis Director

Dagni Bredesen

Thesis Committee Member

Dana Ringuette

Thesis Committee Member

Tim Engles

Abstract

In post-apartheid South Africa, writers continue to use political allegory to critique the democratic transition, racial tensions, and the reconcilation process. This use of allegory, although effective at times, often includes the sexual violation of the female body, further inhibiting gender equality as women continue to exist as secondclass citizens both in fiction and reality. This thesis analyzes three post-apartheid texts - Zakes Mda's The Madonna of Excelsior (2002), J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999), and Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf (1994, translated into English 1999) - and moves beyond the allegorical representation of the figure of the raped woman to a critique of patriarchy that, I argue, lies at the root of the violation.

Zakes Mda's The Madonna of Excelsior ends with a sunny forecast of the "New" South Africa, despite the lack of agency for Niki, a poor, uneducated black woman, whose role as a sexual toy for two white men results in the birth of her coloured daughter, an allegorical representation political change and racial equality. Similarly, in Coetzee's Disgrace the final images of Lucy, a white lesbian woman pregnant with a coloured child, the result of her violent gang rape by three black men, run contrary to her earlier independent lifestyle. This child and its mother's determination to stay on the land, despite fears of continual violation, represent white reparation for apartheid, but, as with the first novel, Disgrace manipulates the body of a young woman to serve its allegorical purposes. Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf, however, looks beyond the images of the sacrificial mother to allegorically critique Afrikaner insularity, while at the same time gives Mol, a woman who suffers a lifetime of incestuous sexual abuse, the mental and emotional escape she needs to endure her violation. In the end, Mol continues to keep her battered family together as she can finally take control of her own body and home. What makes the sexual violation of Niki, Lucy, and Mol significant is that these women are expected to sacrifice for the welfare of their families, but yet remain voiceless after their violation. The only exception to this is that Mol is able to escape mentally during and after the abuse. My analysis of the women in these novels focuses on the lack of recognition of gender inequalities that continue to pervade the "New" South Africa and the dangers that exist when women's sexual violation and their subsequent silence becomes an acceptable means of critiquing racial inequality.

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