Magda makes her desire for liberation known early on in the novel. Within the first five pages she expresses the following sentiment, “What automatisim is this, what liberation is it going to bring me, and without liberation what is the point of my story?” (Coetzee 4). She truly wants to find liberation and knows that if she does not her life and purpose are meaningless. However, she negates these introspections just a few sections later with “There is no act I know that will liberate me into the world” (Coetzee 10). The desire to find liberation and then the negating the statement with the claim that no liberation exists for her is exactly why Magda consistently fails at achieving liberation; she is powerless because she has no defined place or opinion, and therefore does not know how to liberate. According to Laura Wright in Displacing the Voices: South African Feminism and JM Coetzee’s Female Narrators, the constant act of declaration and negation by Magda precisely makes Magda “the symbolic manifestation of white female desire in South Africa, ignored and self-negating, complicit with and critical of apartheid, a motherless daughter in a political framework that would prefer her to be a son” (18). As Wright is implying, Magda symbolizes all white females in South Africa, who lack a finite voice in their male dominated society: she is white and therefore in the power race, but a woman, so she belongs in a lower class.
JM Coetzee uses the character of Magda to demonstrate the odds at which both sides are pulling from. Beyond that, JM Coetzee is really using Magda to express his own self-negation of the conflict between his social status and his inner self. However, in using a female voice to project these binaries and need for a, as Magda calls it, “median,” Coetzee is, himself, creating another need for a middle ground as he is a male author – one who does not ‘know’ the female ‘voice’ – who is trying to write from and/ or for the female (Coetzee 133). However, Fiona Probyn points out that “Coetzee sees himself ‘without authority’ because the type of authority associated with his position as a white male in South Africa is one whose authoritarian connotations he rejects and, throughout his novels, attempts to dismantle” (Sect. 7). Therefore, even though Coetzee is creating another binary of opposing sides that needs to seek a middle, he is acutely aware that he truly has no ‘authority’ to be the female voice, even if he may use her voice to project his own.
Works Cited
Coetzee, JM. In the Heart of the Country. United States: Penguin Books, 1982. Print.
Probyn, Robin. "J.M. Coetzee: Writing with/out authority." Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Fall 2002; 7(1): 45 Paragraphs. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.
Wright, Laura. "Displacing the Voice: South African Feminism and JM Coetzee's Female Narrators." African Studies 67.1 (2008): 11-31. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.
Your article caught my interest and it brought about more thought about the subject of powerlessness. I took special interest in your introduction where you quoted a source that said that Magda's "...'failure' to communicate, to authorise, to 'liberate', is precisely her value" because “she represents a level of powerlessness that JM Coetzee can harness in order to present a social and political critique under the guise of the female narrator”. This reminds me of a statement Madga makes, “I create myself in the words that create me” (8). Magda is aware of her powerlessness because she is limited to only what she has been told by those who “make the rules”, that of the established patriarchal order. Her powerlessness is because she has no access to the words that can reshape the narrative of her life. Although she wants liberation, her attempts to free herself from her patriarchal chains are all thwarted by her own limited ability to recompose the story of her life. Like so many who are marginalized, Magda has internalized the words she has been told which condemns her to being inferior and without agency to break away from her misery.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit on a key aspect of this novel – Magda’s desire for liberation coupled with her inability to achieve it. It is the “heart” of the novel, so to speak, and your contention that her lack of liberation is symbolic of her powerlessness in a patriarchal apartheid society is certainly apropos.
ReplyDeleteI found your quote from Laura Wright to be particularly thought-provoking: “the symbolic manifestation of white female desire in South Africa, ignored and self-negating, complicit with and critical of apartheid, a motherless daughter in a political framework that would prefer her to be a son” (18). This quote, I think, definitely illuminates the powerlessness of white women in apartheid South Africa, but it also hints at another cause of Magda’s passive nature – the fact that she is “ignored” and “self-negating.” Another part of her passiveness/inability to act, I think, stems from her father’s neglect and abuse. She says of him that he is always “teasing and berating me” (138) and that “All my life I have been left lying about, forgotten, dusty, like an old shoe” (41). As a result, she has deduced that she is worthless: “not that I have anything worth the robbing, not that I have anything worth the raping” (63). So, not only is the patriarchal society she lives in making her feel powerless from a political perspective, but also from a psychological one. As Joanne says in her posting, “Like so many who are marginalized, Magda has internalized the words she has been told which condemns her to being inferior and without agency to break away from her misery.” In other words, she has internalized the words of her father and is inflicting them upon herself via her inner voice. If the patriarchy (represented by her father) can keep the spirit of the white woman down in this way and prevent her from acting independently and decidedly, they can prevent any threat to the overthrow of patriarchal power. Is it any wonder that Magda fantasizes about murdering her father?
How very interesting that you touched upon the fact that Coetzee rejects those "authoritarian connotations". It does justify his writing as a white male author, as it also justifies the way in which he portrays Magda. However, I do wonder if Coetzee is using his authority (or rather disregard for authority in this case) to make Magda the focal point for some possibly absurd commentary. Feminists are outraged at his depiction of her and her seemingly unconscious desires, yet, one wonders what was his purpose in doing so. I truly feel that Magda's expressions and desires (that of sexual needs and possible rape) are fragments of dreams - and just as dreams are not within our control, she is not able to control the thoughts and images that we are exposed to. What does this mean? I cannot say, but it does evoke genuine thought and as well as great concern for this character. Thank you for probing this topic, I imagine it is just the beginning.
ReplyDelete-Christine van Eyck