Graduate Program
English
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Semester of Degree Completion
2012
Thesis Director
David Carpenter
Thesis Committee Member
Dagni Bredesen
Thesis Committee Member
Jad Smith
Abstract
J.M. Coetzee's most recent works of fiction have become increasingly experimental with form (e.g., metafiction, diary, fictionalized memoir). These various forms illuminate the subject-object split present in Coetzee's recent work and its transcendence of race and gender. Indeed, the gender and racial tensions present in his novels seem to be mere representations of the subject-object split at work - the split that exists between those with power and those without. Thus, I believe Coetzee is attempting to make a more universal, even spiritual statement regarding the body and soul ( our corporeal selves representing the objective self and our soul representing the subjective self) and the various roles, prescribed or not, we perform in the temporal realm. This thesis examines five of Coetzee's recent texts - Disgrace (1999), Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005), Diary of a Bad Year (2007), and Summertime (2009).
In Disgrace, Coetzee foregrounds the significant link between motherhood and subjectivity. Going against the critical consensus, I maintain Lucy, a white lesbian woman who becomes pregnant as a result of being gang raped by three black men, and Soraya, a prostitute David visits regularly at the beginning of the novel, use their motherhood as a means to gain authority in the novel. In Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man, l show Coetzee's use of metafiction sets up a power struggle for authority between Elizabeth Costello (author) and Paul Rayment (character). In Diary of a Bad Year, I examine the ways in which Coetzee, by inserting himself into his novels, seems increasingly to lose subjective authority in direct proportion to his characters asserting themselves and becoming subjective authorities, even autonomous.
Recommended Citation
O'Malley, Brigid Erin, ""I am not minor": Characters' apparent autonomy in J.M. Coetzee's fiction" (2012). Masters Theses. 823.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/823
