Nadine Gordimer

Related Issues

Writing and politics

"Nadine Gordimer says she is not a political person; yet her writings document, decade

by decade, the impact of politics on personal lives and what an increasingly radical

white South African woman felt, thought and imagined during the rise and fall of

apartheid" (Bazin). Even though Gordimer makes no claims of being politically

motivated, every interviewer seems to quiz her on politics, and every critic seems to

consider the influence of politics in her writing. She is often criticized as not knowing enough about the situations she writes about to be able to portray them correctly. It is also pointed out, though, that "...Gordimer makes no suggestion that she possesses insider knowledge, however

achieved, of the cultural or historical contexts from which their novels arise"

(Greenstein). To Gordimer, writing is not a political act. Politics are corruption; writing is art and art should be separated from things that would limit it. "In defining the writer's imagination as a form of truth telling that can not be impeded or denied, even by the radical separation of people imposed by apartheid, Writing and Being also asserts that art must not be narrowed to the immediate, strategically or ideologically driven purposes of resistance or political action" (Greenstein). Gordimer has done nothing that would be cause to deny her abilities as a writer or to dismiss her work as unimportant. "Gordimer clear-sightedly condemns the penchant for the exotic, the corrupting fascination with the dispossessed, that manifested itself as "revolutionary tourism" on the part of opportunistic travelers in the 1980s....Despite her astringent rejection of such behavior, Gordimer will continue to be dismissed by some, especially in South Africa , as irrelevant" (Greenstein). So should writers use their gift for political reasons? Is there a social obligation that writers have to use their talent for purposes other than art? "Seeing literature as inescapably political, it replaces literary values by political ones. It is the murder of thought. Beware!" (Rushdie).

Writer and Nation

"The irony that links Gordimer and her fellow novelists is that each experiences his native land as a place of exile" (Greenstein). There is always a tricky relationship between the writer and their nation. It involves the question of politics and writing, and if the two should be mixed, amongst other things. Writers always end up writing about their surroundings, their environment. They write what they see, and when that writer is in a politically charged nation, things get tricky. To the writer, their environment is simply the way things are, and they record them as such. To this, the writer may add what they think the world ought to be like, or how it may someday be, but underneath the prose is always the undertow of their circumstances. When writers practice their craft in a nation in turmoil, people will usually read the book and see it as supporting or denying the various ideologies of the factions in charge. Everything written is compared in political terms, and writers are set up as examples of the voice of the struggle. But there are those writers who take the position gladly, and willingly claim their place as official spokesperson. "Beware the writer who sets himself or herself up as the voice of a nation" (Rushdie)."Nationalism corrupts writers, too" (Rushdie). Nadine Gordimer's work may be adopted by some, but despite her political interests, she does not claim to speak for anyone but herself. The writer/ nation relationship becomes increasingly troublesome, the more turbulent and uneasy the nation is.

"But Gordimer discovered that it precisely when the writer is dedicated to opposing or over throwing a tyrannical government that other kinds of freedom-imaginative, artistic , existential-may be lost. And she has insisted that it is only the writer, never the state who can preserve, or annihilate, those freedoms" (Linfeld).

Feminism and the State

Colonialism has a large effect on the relationship between women and the state. Gordimer points out about one of her characters: "This is, I think, a typically colonial attitude-that the white woman has a man who looks after her. In the classic colonial situation she wouldn't even have worked" (Bazin). A colonial system is one where everyone has their place, and are expected to stay there. It is also largely patriarchal. When any system sees one person as lesser than another, problems arise. "For too long represented as national symbols rather than citizens, women have an ambiguous relationship to nationality" (Gardiner). Gordimer was often criticized for dismissing feminism in its early days. Now, a few decades later, she notes that "It's interesting. I can't see any vestiges now of that trivial feminism that I was talking about so disparagingly in the early times..." (Lazar). The feminism she scoffed at so long ago was unlike the current brand. (If there is such a monster...) The battle modern feminism fights is usually with the media: the most problematic issue is how women are portrayed. "But, you know, that is the women's magazine culture: to be a beauty queen is the ultimate ambition. It's rather interesting that women have to be consciously feminist in order to reject the whole beauty