The Politics of Space in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
Much has been said about J.M. Coetzee’s discomfort at being branded as a South African novelist and not just a novelist. Much has also been said about his “impatience” with history defining and dominating literature. While one notices this trend in most of Coetzee’s writings, Disgrace works differently. In fact, it deals with history in the most upfront manner. I would like to argue that the changing settings of the narrative work as an enveloping device encasing the concerns Coetzee tries to communicate to his readers.
I
The novel works around two major well defined spaces, namely Cape Town and Lucy’s smallholding in the Eastern Cape. At first glance, there are stark, and predictable differences between these two spaces. Cape Town is typified by the University which allows regular interaction among different races, by the supermarket and the sophisticated and ‘discreet’ escort service. The smallholding, on the other hand, appears, at first, to be a contemporary pastoral space. In Coetzee’s words, “(the) smallholding is at the end of a winding dirt track some miles outside the town: five hectares of land, most of it arable, a wind-pump, stables and outbuildings, and a low sprawling farmhouse painted yellow with a galvanized-iron roof and a covered stoep. The front boundary is marked by a wire fence and clumps of nasturtiums and geraniums; the rest of the front is dust and gravel.” Coetzee takes great pains to present an ideal picture of the countryside in this description, only to shatter that image completely later. While one can see the obvious distinctions between these two descriptions, they undergo visible changes once parallels are drawn between Lurie’s sexual encounter with Melanie in Cape Town and Lucy’s rape at the smallholding. In both cases there is sexual intercourse between people of two different races and in either case, it is not consensual on the woman’s part. A further parallel is highlighted by Gareth Cornwell when he says that Lucy’s determination to not report the rape rests on the argument that what happened to her was a “purely private matter.” This statement ironically mirrors Lurie’s explanation to Lucy regarding his response to the enquiry against him where he said, “Private life is public business. They wanted a spectacle: breast beating, remorse, tears if possible. A TV show, in fact. I wouldn’t oblige.”[1]
Therefore, as Rita Barnard suggests, “the distinctions between the city and the country are effaced. The erosion of the old pastoral opposition of country and city, is but one aspect of a general erasure of boundaries in the world of the novel.”
Taking off from the question of Lurie’s encounters with Melanie and Lucy’s rape, one can say that another parallel between the two spaces is that of sexual subjugation of women which is supplemented by racial discrimination. To highlight Lurie’s contribution in this Cornwell brings attention to a statement made in the novel by Farodia Rasool, a member of the enquiry committee. She says, “Yes, he says, he is guilty; but when we try to get specificity, all of a sudden it is not abuse of a young woman he is confessing to, just an impulse he could not resist, with no mention of the pain he has caused, no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part.”[2] This situation is ironically inverted in the context of Lucy’s rape, for there it is the exploitation of a white woman by black men. Yet, the history of exploitation from the period of apartheid continues. In both cases, space plays an important part. Let us first consider the Lurie-Melanie case: each time there is a breach of appropriate space that takes place. First, Lurie invites Melanie, his student to his house for a drink, an act that, in layman’s language, can safely be called ‘unprofessional’. Next, he almost forces himself into her flat despite her clear protests. Not only is that a breach of professional conduct, it is a clear refusal on his part to adhere to her wishes and a violation of her space. Lastly, when Melanie comes to stay with him, his initial thoughts are: “Now here she is in his house, trailing complications behind her.” But soon he thinks, “Every night she will be here; every night he can slip into her bed like this, slip into her.”
Coming now to Lucy’s rape: the way in which she understands it is reflected in her statement to Lurie when she says, “What if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves.” Secondly, the role of Petrus in Lucy’s rape: he was clearly aware of it, and therefore made sure he was away at the time. The way in which he benefited from it was in terms of land. He knew that once Lucy was ‘warned’ by the attack, she would either ultimately be persuaded by her father and leave the farm for him, or have no choice but to accept his ‘protection’ which would come at the price of letting go of her mastery over the farm. And that is exactly what happens. Lucy accepts his supremacy, and gives up all the land except the house and the kennels. It is interesting to note that Petrus is a name borrowed from Gordimer’s story, ‘Six Feet of the Country’, in which Petrus is a helpless black peasant who is refused land for the burial of his family member.[3] It is therefore no coincidence that here Petrus becomes the master of a large plot of land, some of it acquired, (almost by force) from a white woman. Rita Barnard sees Disgrace as a “striking response to the post-apartheid moment, or the ‘new South Africa’…where Coetzee seems to have relinquished this earlier dream of a maternal and deconstructive pastoral mode. In the ‘new South Africa’ of the novel, the urge to stake one’s claim, to own, to procreate is forcefully present.”[4] This can be seen not only in Petrus but also in Lurie who tries to appropriate Melanie’s identity by twisting around the pronunciation of her name to Meláni, the dark one, who he can dominate.
The entire discourse of the female body as a site for declaring mastery, political and social, comes into play in this situation, but since that is another tangent altogether, I will not go further into it.
Much has been said about J.M. Coetzee’s discomfort at being branded as a South African novelist and not just a novelist. Much has also been said about his “impatience” with history defining and dominating literature. While one notices this trend in most of Coetzee’s writings, Disgrace works differently. In fact, it deals with history in the most upfront manner. I would like to argue that the changing settings of the narrative work as an enveloping device encasing the concerns Coetzee tries to communicate to his readers.
I
The novel works around two major well defined spaces, namely Cape Town and Lucy’s smallholding in the Eastern Cape. At first glance, there are stark, and predictable differences between these two spaces. Cape Town is typified by the University which allows regular interaction among different races, by the supermarket and the sophisticated and ‘discreet’ escort service. The smallholding, on the other hand, appears, at first, to be a contemporary pastoral space. In Coetzee’s words, “(the) smallholding is at the end of a winding dirt track some miles outside the town: five hectares of land, most of it arable, a wind-pump, stables and outbuildings, and a low sprawling farmhouse painted yellow with a galvanized-iron roof and a covered stoep. The front boundary is marked by a wire fence and clumps of nasturtiums and geraniums; the rest of the front is dust and gravel.” Coetzee takes great pains to present an ideal picture of the countryside in this description, only to shatter that image completely later. While one can see the obvious distinctions between these two descriptions, they undergo visible changes once parallels are drawn between Lurie’s sexual encounter with Melanie in Cape Town and Lucy’s rape at the smallholding. In both cases there is sexual intercourse between people of two different races and in either case, it is not consensual on the woman’s part. A further parallel is highlighted by Gareth Cornwell when he says that Lucy’s determination to not report the rape rests on the argument that what happened to her was a “purely private matter.” This statement ironically mirrors Lurie’s explanation to Lucy regarding his response to the enquiry against him where he said, “Private life is public business. They wanted a spectacle: breast beating, remorse, tears if possible. A TV show, in fact. I wouldn’t oblige.”[1]
Therefore, as Rita Barnard suggests, “the distinctions between the city and the country are effaced. The erosion of the old pastoral opposition of country and city, is but one aspect of a general erasure of boundaries in the world of the novel.”
Taking off from the question of Lurie’s encounters with Melanie and Lucy’s rape, one can say that another parallel between the two spaces is that of sexual subjugation of women which is supplemented by racial discrimination. To highlight Lurie’s contribution in this Cornwell brings attention to a statement made in the novel by Farodia Rasool, a member of the enquiry committee. She says, “Yes, he says, he is guilty; but when we try to get specificity, all of a sudden it is not abuse of a young woman he is confessing to, just an impulse he could not resist, with no mention of the pain he has caused, no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part.”[2] This situation is ironically inverted in the context of Lucy’s rape, for there it is the exploitation of a white woman by black men. Yet, the history of exploitation from the period of apartheid continues. In both cases, space plays an important part. Let us first consider the Lurie-Melanie case: each time there is a breach of appropriate space that takes place. First, Lurie invites Melanie, his student to his house for a drink, an act that, in layman’s language, can safely be called ‘unprofessional’. Next, he almost forces himself into her flat despite her clear protests. Not only is that a breach of professional conduct, it is a clear refusal on his part to adhere to her wishes and a violation of her space. Lastly, when Melanie comes to stay with him, his initial thoughts are: “Now here she is in his house, trailing complications behind her.” But soon he thinks, “Every night she will be here; every night he can slip into her bed like this, slip into her.”
Coming now to Lucy’s rape: the way in which she understands it is reflected in her statement to Lurie when she says, “What if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves.” Secondly, the role of Petrus in Lucy’s rape: he was clearly aware of it, and therefore made sure he was away at the time. The way in which he benefited from it was in terms of land. He knew that once Lucy was ‘warned’ by the attack, she would either ultimately be persuaded by her father and leave the farm for him, or have no choice but to accept his ‘protection’ which would come at the price of letting go of her mastery over the farm. And that is exactly what happens. Lucy accepts his supremacy, and gives up all the land except the house and the kennels. It is interesting to note that Petrus is a name borrowed from Gordimer’s story, ‘Six Feet of the Country’, in which Petrus is a helpless black peasant who is refused land for the burial of his family member.[3] It is therefore no coincidence that here Petrus becomes the master of a large plot of land, some of it acquired, (almost by force) from a white woman. Rita Barnard sees Disgrace as a “striking response to the post-apartheid moment, or the ‘new South Africa’…where Coetzee seems to have relinquished this earlier dream of a maternal and deconstructive pastoral mode. In the ‘new South Africa’ of the novel, the urge to stake one’s claim, to own, to procreate is forcefully present.”[4] This can be seen not only in Petrus but also in Lurie who tries to appropriate Melanie’s identity by twisting around the pronunciation of her name to Meláni, the dark one, who he can dominate.
The entire discourse of the female body as a site for declaring mastery, political and social, comes into play in this situation, but since that is another tangent altogether, I will not go further into it.
II
In Lucy’s relationship with the farm we can see, at an allegorical level, the changes South African society was undergoing post apartheid. When we first see Lucy, she stands sturdily on her patch of land, “(her) toes gripping the red earth, leaving clear prints”, the meaning of this hardly needs to be glossed. From this, it moves on to the stage where according to Cornwell, Lucy’s reading of the rape as her debt or tax is a deluded attempt of a traumatized woman to make logical sense of what has happened to her, to make her experience meaningful by construing it in some sense as necessary or deserved.[5] From here, we move on to Lucy’s statement which is, “Yes, the road I am following may be the wrong one. But if I leave the farm now I will leave defeated, and will taste that defeat for the rest of my life.” There seems to be a hint of indignation in her tone. This determination undergoes complete transformation when she accepts Petrus’ mastery over her and by extension over her land. The farm is her identity, this is where she came when she gave up life like her ‘city folk, intellectual’ parents and pursued her alternative identity as a woman, a lesbian who runs a farm. She had, in all ways, proven that she did not need male support, instead she was paying Petrus and had given him space to stay in the old stables on her land, and then gave shelter to her father when he needed to get away from Cape Town. In a violent turn of events, this feminist ideal was shattered, leaving her in her pregnant (reasserting her ‘womanhood’ and forcibly resituating her in the ‘feminine ideal’ as the bearer of children) after the rape, her father looks after her, advises her and ultimately Petrus will become her husband, in order to be the male presence that would protect her. Towards the close of the novel, Lucy is barely left as a master of her house, and is instead fixed in the romantic pastoral feminine ideal: “Lucy is at work among the flowers…she is wearing a pale summer dress, boots and a wide straw hat... the wind drops. There is a moment of utter stillness he would wish prolonged for ever: the gentle sun, the stillness of mid-afternoon, bees busy in a field of flowers: and at the centre of the picture a young woman. A scene ready made for a Sargent or a Bonnard.” Lucy has been stuck in the ambit of the ideal female. The untranslated German phrase means, the eternal feminine, it is borrowed from Goethe’s Faust, holding the idea of redemption. According to Barnard, Lurie’s desire to prolong this beautiful moment goes hand in hand with a desire to view the present as a recurrence of the past. His gaze and discourse remain masculine, European, traditional, a matter of received ideas of rural life…[6]
It would be extremely reductive, almost incorrect to view this as an attempt on Coetzee’s part to indicate that only the whites in South Africa had to undergo adjustments and that he was forwarding the post apartheid white paranoia that they were being driven out of South Africa. It is on the other hand, an inverted gaze at the history of exploitation and subjugation and a self conscious realization of the ever-present burden of history.
III
After the attack on Lucy, Lurie becomes more actively involved in two activities that have hitherto been ignored or attempted half heartedly by him: the animal hospital and the chamber opera based on the life of Byron in Italy. In his involvement in both these activities one can see a visible change in Lurie.
The animal hospital run by Bev Shaw seems to be a value neutral space since neither of the two ‘crimes’ that are central events of the novel, took place here. Lurie’s work at the hospital can be seen as a redemptive exercise, for something as seemingly trivial as giving the dead dogs an honorable funeral becomes a driving force for him. The identification with the dogs and there space started in the early stages of his arrival at the smallholding when he began his ‘interaction’ with Katy with the words, “abandoned, are we?” and the identification becomes complete when he shares Katy’s kennel and sleeps there peacefully. The way he was locked up and unable to save his daughter, so was Katy, the abandoned dog. Coming back to the hospital, he seems to understand the peace the animals feel when they are under Bev Shaw’s care at the hospital. Therefore, his services seem to work as an attempt to redeem himself of his own sense of disgrace. While he appears to be reduced to this activity from the position of a professor at an esteemed university, one can certainly feel a higher sense of his self worth by the time the novel closes.
The chamber opera that he has been planning for years does not move forward till much after the attack on Lucy. After the incident, however, it changes tracks completely, from an opera about Byron’s life in Italy with borrowed music, to one about his mistress Teresa and his abandoned daughter Allegra. And this time around, he ‘composes’ the music himself even if it is the simple ‘plink plunk plonk’ of the strings of a banjo. So far Lurie’s image has been linked to Byron, the seducer, but now, according to critic Kimberly Segall, he shifts his narrative into the space of the violated woman exemplified by the ghostly girl he sees in his dream, Teresa and Allegra. The figure of Allegra critiques the self absorption and trend of tragedy in Byron and by extension in Lurie. This shift suggests Lurie’s shift from emotional detachment to an emergent recognition of female suffering.[7]
Therefore we can say that, the hospital and the chamber opera serve as Lurie’s alternative spaces.
Through the figures of Lurie, Lucy, Petrus etc. Coetzee showcases the changes that are taking place in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid, and the role played by history in contemporary social conditions and social relations. The reason why space is a factor in this novel is because it works around the tenets of apartheid which were based on a physical segregation of the South African people. Coetzee is among the few white writers who confronts and accepts the equal presence of black South Africans and he does this in Disgrace by situating them in an actual physical space. In Disgrace, he challenges the comfort zone of the whites where the unsaid rule is, “If people are starving, let them starve far away in the bush, where their thin bodies will not be a reproach. If they have no work, if they migrate to the cities, let there be roadblocks, let there be curfews, let there be laws against vagrancy, begging, and squatting, and let offenders be locked away so that no one has to hear or see them.”[8] It is Coetzee’s attempt as a white person, to realize what he repeatedly asserts throughout the novel, that, “this place is South Africa”.
[1] ‘Realism, Rape and J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Gareth Cornwell, Studies in Contemporary Literature, Rhodes University, 2002
[2] ‘Realism, Rape and J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Gareth Cornwell, Studies in Contemporary Literature, Rhodes University, 2002
[3]Coetzee’s Disgrace and the South African Pastoral – Rita Barnard, Contemporary Literature, Volume 44, No.2, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 (From JSTOR.org)
[4] Coetzee’s Disgrace and the South African Pastoral – Rita Barnard, Contemporary Literature, Volume 44, No.2, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 (From JSTOR.org)
[5] ‘Realism, Rape and J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Gareth Cornwell, Studies in Contemporary Literature, Rhodes University, 2002
[6] Coetzee’s Disgrace and the South African Pastoral – Rita Barnard, Contemporary Literature, Volume 44, No.2, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 (From JSTOR.org)
[7] ‘Pursuing Ghosts: The Traumatic Sublime in J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Kimberly Wedeven Segall, Research in African Literatures, Indiana University Press, 2005
[8] ‘Dream Topographies: J.M Coetzee and the South African Pastoral’ – Rita Barnard, South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 93, No.1, 1994
In Lucy’s relationship with the farm we can see, at an allegorical level, the changes South African society was undergoing post apartheid. When we first see Lucy, she stands sturdily on her patch of land, “(her) toes gripping the red earth, leaving clear prints”, the meaning of this hardly needs to be glossed. From this, it moves on to the stage where according to Cornwell, Lucy’s reading of the rape as her debt or tax is a deluded attempt of a traumatized woman to make logical sense of what has happened to her, to make her experience meaningful by construing it in some sense as necessary or deserved.[5] From here, we move on to Lucy’s statement which is, “Yes, the road I am following may be the wrong one. But if I leave the farm now I will leave defeated, and will taste that defeat for the rest of my life.” There seems to be a hint of indignation in her tone. This determination undergoes complete transformation when she accepts Petrus’ mastery over her and by extension over her land. The farm is her identity, this is where she came when she gave up life like her ‘city folk, intellectual’ parents and pursued her alternative identity as a woman, a lesbian who runs a farm. She had, in all ways, proven that she did not need male support, instead she was paying Petrus and had given him space to stay in the old stables on her land, and then gave shelter to her father when he needed to get away from Cape Town. In a violent turn of events, this feminist ideal was shattered, leaving her in her pregnant (reasserting her ‘womanhood’ and forcibly resituating her in the ‘feminine ideal’ as the bearer of children) after the rape, her father looks after her, advises her and ultimately Petrus will become her husband, in order to be the male presence that would protect her. Towards the close of the novel, Lucy is barely left as a master of her house, and is instead fixed in the romantic pastoral feminine ideal: “Lucy is at work among the flowers…she is wearing a pale summer dress, boots and a wide straw hat... the wind drops. There is a moment of utter stillness he would wish prolonged for ever: the gentle sun, the stillness of mid-afternoon, bees busy in a field of flowers: and at the centre of the picture a young woman. A scene ready made for a Sargent or a Bonnard.” Lucy has been stuck in the ambit of the ideal female. The untranslated German phrase means, the eternal feminine, it is borrowed from Goethe’s Faust, holding the idea of redemption. According to Barnard, Lurie’s desire to prolong this beautiful moment goes hand in hand with a desire to view the present as a recurrence of the past. His gaze and discourse remain masculine, European, traditional, a matter of received ideas of rural life…[6]
It would be extremely reductive, almost incorrect to view this as an attempt on Coetzee’s part to indicate that only the whites in South Africa had to undergo adjustments and that he was forwarding the post apartheid white paranoia that they were being driven out of South Africa. It is on the other hand, an inverted gaze at the history of exploitation and subjugation and a self conscious realization of the ever-present burden of history.
III
After the attack on Lucy, Lurie becomes more actively involved in two activities that have hitherto been ignored or attempted half heartedly by him: the animal hospital and the chamber opera based on the life of Byron in Italy. In his involvement in both these activities one can see a visible change in Lurie.
The animal hospital run by Bev Shaw seems to be a value neutral space since neither of the two ‘crimes’ that are central events of the novel, took place here. Lurie’s work at the hospital can be seen as a redemptive exercise, for something as seemingly trivial as giving the dead dogs an honorable funeral becomes a driving force for him. The identification with the dogs and there space started in the early stages of his arrival at the smallholding when he began his ‘interaction’ with Katy with the words, “abandoned, are we?” and the identification becomes complete when he shares Katy’s kennel and sleeps there peacefully. The way he was locked up and unable to save his daughter, so was Katy, the abandoned dog. Coming back to the hospital, he seems to understand the peace the animals feel when they are under Bev Shaw’s care at the hospital. Therefore, his services seem to work as an attempt to redeem himself of his own sense of disgrace. While he appears to be reduced to this activity from the position of a professor at an esteemed university, one can certainly feel a higher sense of his self worth by the time the novel closes.
The chamber opera that he has been planning for years does not move forward till much after the attack on Lucy. After the incident, however, it changes tracks completely, from an opera about Byron’s life in Italy with borrowed music, to one about his mistress Teresa and his abandoned daughter Allegra. And this time around, he ‘composes’ the music himself even if it is the simple ‘plink plunk plonk’ of the strings of a banjo. So far Lurie’s image has been linked to Byron, the seducer, but now, according to critic Kimberly Segall, he shifts his narrative into the space of the violated woman exemplified by the ghostly girl he sees in his dream, Teresa and Allegra. The figure of Allegra critiques the self absorption and trend of tragedy in Byron and by extension in Lurie. This shift suggests Lurie’s shift from emotional detachment to an emergent recognition of female suffering.[7]
Therefore we can say that, the hospital and the chamber opera serve as Lurie’s alternative spaces.
Through the figures of Lurie, Lucy, Petrus etc. Coetzee showcases the changes that are taking place in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid, and the role played by history in contemporary social conditions and social relations. The reason why space is a factor in this novel is because it works around the tenets of apartheid which were based on a physical segregation of the South African people. Coetzee is among the few white writers who confronts and accepts the equal presence of black South Africans and he does this in Disgrace by situating them in an actual physical space. In Disgrace, he challenges the comfort zone of the whites where the unsaid rule is, “If people are starving, let them starve far away in the bush, where their thin bodies will not be a reproach. If they have no work, if they migrate to the cities, let there be roadblocks, let there be curfews, let there be laws against vagrancy, begging, and squatting, and let offenders be locked away so that no one has to hear or see them.”[8] It is Coetzee’s attempt as a white person, to realize what he repeatedly asserts throughout the novel, that, “this place is South Africa”.
[1] ‘Realism, Rape and J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Gareth Cornwell, Studies in Contemporary Literature, Rhodes University, 2002
[2] ‘Realism, Rape and J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Gareth Cornwell, Studies in Contemporary Literature, Rhodes University, 2002
[3]Coetzee’s Disgrace and the South African Pastoral – Rita Barnard, Contemporary Literature, Volume 44, No.2, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 (From JSTOR.org)
[4] Coetzee’s Disgrace and the South African Pastoral – Rita Barnard, Contemporary Literature, Volume 44, No.2, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 (From JSTOR.org)
[5] ‘Realism, Rape and J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Gareth Cornwell, Studies in Contemporary Literature, Rhodes University, 2002
[6] Coetzee’s Disgrace and the South African Pastoral – Rita Barnard, Contemporary Literature, Volume 44, No.2, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 (From JSTOR.org)
[7] ‘Pursuing Ghosts: The Traumatic Sublime in J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace’ – Kimberly Wedeven Segall, Research in African Literatures, Indiana University Press, 2005
[8] ‘Dream Topographies: J.M Coetzee and the South African Pastoral’ – Rita Barnard, South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 93, No.1, 1994
4 comments:
GREAT Kuhu! Such heavy duty stuff!Havent read them, will read after I read the novels and now it seems I have to read them to read your blog ..
This is a very thought provoking essay. I must admit that I ahd never thought that deeply about Disgrace before. I just thought the novel had a nice touch of irony --- the professor sleeps wiht his student --- the black man rapes his employer, to indicate black or white, rich or poor, victims and victimisers, everything is blurred in the "new" South Africa. But now I will go back and read one of my favourite novels with "new' eyes. Thanks
Hey nice stuff.
Well said.
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