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Thesis (DLitt (Afrikaans and Dutch))--University of Stellenbosch, 2004. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Since the 1980s the narrative prose of male writers in Afrikaans has been characterised by an intensive questioning of consolidated masculine subjectivity with the (political) father as its primary manifestation. The growing influence of postmodernism and the greater freedom enjoyed by women and gay authors to write about gender issues, facilitated the process of paternal emancipation in Afrikaans narrative. This dissertation is a study of the representation of masculine subjectivity in Afrikaans prose writing from 1980 to 2000 concentrating on the diverse expressions of masculine subjectivity in literary texts with reference to the work of Luce Irigaray (1980 and 1985) on subjectivity, and the theory of R.W. Connell (1995) on the plurality of masculinities. The position of the father in conveying political values to the son within the Oedipal context is examined in a number of texts with specific emphasis on the contrasting processes regulating the hegemonic masculinity of the white father (Alexander Strachan 1984 and Mark Behr 1993) and the marginalised masculinity of the coloured father during apartheid (Benjamin 1997). The work of Alexander Strachan (1994), Piet van Rooyen (1997) and Johann Botha (1997) are examples of texts that display resemblance to the literature of the “School of Virility” identified by Peter Schwenger (1984: 13). Unlike the male protagonists in colonial texts, the masculine subjects in the work of Van Rooyen and Botha can no longer escape the political and historical turmoil of civilisation by finding refuge in “pristine” and unpoliticised hunting fields. Since 1994 the loss of political power, which for so long conditioned the masculine subjectivity of Afrikaner men, has also reached the hunting fields of postcolonial southern Africa. Through the influence postmodernism, a productive tension in literature and theory has developed between the autonomous, consolidated masculine subject, and the decentered masculine subject. Breyten Breytenbach’s representation of the fragmented masculine subject opens up the possibility of a move away from the historical imperatives of the totalising, and often violent, masculine subject. However, Breytenbach (1998) suggests that, in some instances, the fragmented masculine subject may be co-opted by the historically persistent discourse of the autonomous (and violent) masculine subject. Gay writers Koos Prinsloo (1992) and Johann de Lange (1996 and 2000), and to a lesser extent Hennie Aucamp (1981), devote themselves to a sceptical interrogation of identity and subjectivity as categories that are based on heterosexist values. Prinsloo and De Lange employ sexuality as a way to give expression to their antihumanist critique of the subject. The tension between consolidated masculine subjectivity and decentered masculine subjectivity is also present in the autobiography of Joseph Marble (1999). In Marble’s life history the discontinuity between the youthful “I” as protagonist and the adult “I” as narrator contributes to the multiplicity that ultimately characterises Marble as a masculine subject in the text. Finally, this dissertation presents a view of masculine subjectivity in Afrikaans narrative that emphasises diversity. Yet, it is noticeable that nearly all the texts under discussion maintain a certain relationship with hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, it is only in the work of a small number of writers such as Breytenbach, Prinsloo and De Lange that the interrogation of masculine subjectivity leads to an exploration of modes of being that may transcend the historically persistent discourse of masculine domination. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Sedert die jare tagtig van die twintigste eeu word die prosa van manlike skrywers in Afrikaans gekenmerk deur ’n intensiewe bevraagtekening van gekonsolideerde manlike subjektiwiteit soos veral beliggaam deur die (politieke) vader. Hierdie proses van ontvoogding in die Afrikaanse prosa is gefasiliteer deur die groeiende invloed van die postmodernisme en die groter vryheid wat vroueskrywers en gay skrywers geniet het om oor geslagtelike kwessies te skryf. Hierdie proefskrif is ’n studie van die representasie van manlike subjektiwiteit in die prosa van 1980 tot 2000 en bestudeer die uiteenlopende verskyningsvorms van manlike subjektiwiteit in literêre prosatekste met verwysing na onder andere die werk van Luce Irigaray (1980 en 1985) oor subjektiwiteit en die teorie van R.W. Connell (1995) oor manlikheid as ’n meervoudige verskynsel. Die posisie van die vader in die oordrag van politieke waardes na die seun word in enkele tekste ondersoek binne die Oidipale familiedrama met aandag vir die kontrasterende prosesse wat ’n rol speel by die hegemoniese manlikheid van die blanke vader (Alexander Strachan 1984 en Mark Behr 1993) en die gemarginaliseerde manlikheid van die gekleurde vader tydens apartheid (S.P. Benjamin 1997). Strachan (1994) se prosa word verder saam met die werk van Piet van Rooyen (1997) en Johann Botha (1997) bestudeer as voorbeelde van tekste wat toegespits is op viriele manlikheid. By Van Rooyen en Botha kan die manlike subjek nie meer soos in die koloniale prosa die vermoeiende politiek en geskiedenis van die beskawing agterlaat deur hom tot die “ongeskonde” en ongepolitiseerde jagveld te wend nie. Die verlies van politieke mag, wat vir lank die manlike subjektiwiteit van die Afrikanerman bepaal het, is na 1994 ook ’n werklikheid op jagvelde van die postkoloniale Suider-Afrika. ’n Produktiewe spanning in beskouings van manlike subjektiwiteit bestaan sedert die postmodernisme tussen die outonome, gekonsolideerde subjek en die gedesentreerde subjek. Breyten Breytenbach (1998) se representasie van die gefragmenteerde manlike subjek bied op die oog af die potensiaal om manlike subjektiwiteit los te maak van die geweld en dominasie wat die patriargale orde kenmerk. By Breytenbach blyk dit egter dat die gefragmenteerde manlike subjek in sommige gevalle gekaap kan word deur die histories standhoudende diskoers van die outonome (en gewelddadige) manlike subjek. Die gay skrywers Koos Prinsloo (1992) en Johann de Lange (1996 en 2000), en in ’n mindere mate Hennie Aucamp (1981), is in hulle werk betrokke by ’n skeptiese vraagstelling oor identiteit en subjektiwiteit as kategorieë wat gegrond is op heteroseksistiese waardes. Prinsloo en De Lange gryp gay seksualiteit aan as ’n medium om uiting te gee aan hulle antihumanistiese kritiek teen die subjek. Die spanning tussen gekonsolideerde manlike subjektiwiteit en gedesentreerde manlike subjektiwiteit is ook aanwesig in Joseph Marble (1999) se outobiografie. In Marble se lewensverhaal dra die diskontinuïteit tussen die jeugdige “ek” as protagonis en die volwasse “ek” as verteller by tot die uiteindelike meervoudige beeld wat van Marble as manlike subjek na vore tree. Hierdie proefskrif bied uiteindelik ’n beeld van manlike subjektiwiteit in die Afrikaanse prosa wat diversiteit vooropstel, maar dit is nietemin opvallend dat feitlik elke besproke teks ’n sekere verhouding handhaaf met hegemoniese manlikheid. Dit is verder net by enkele skrywers soos Breytenbach, Prinsloo en De Lange dat die bevraagtekening van manlike subjektiwiteit lei tot ’n verkenning van synsvorme wat moontlik die histories deurlopende diskoers van manlike dominasie sou kon oorskry.

This research expresses female character portrayal in various drama works written by males. Chapter one is a general introduction that gives the key to this study, the motivation that leads to the selection of this topic; a literary review on the portrayal of female characters in literary works written by males; the scope of study, the basic composition of the ensuing chapters and the definitions of terms that are of paramount importance for this research. Various literary theories are used in Chapter two for the analysis of the research texts. These literary theories include womanism, gender and feminism which expose the social effects caused by the negative perception of females in social life and the negative portrayal of female characters in male dramatic writings. Other literary theories include onomastics as a literary theory, which exposes the relationship between the name giver of a person and the power the name gives to its bearer, as well as psychoanalysis as a theory which proved to be unavoidable, since this study analyses the personal behaviour of the individual characters within their literary environment. Chapter three depicts the general victimization of female characters in male drama works and exposes the various effects of the attitudes of male writers towards female characters in terms of gender role. Chapter four shows a general stereotypical portrayal of female characters in male written drama texts. This chapter shows the impact of stereotyping on female characters from drama works that puts them in a vulnerable position, showing that it is risky to become a victim of ill-treatment in their communities and the literary world. Chapter five deals with the psychological literary review of female characters, showing them as being suicidal and murderers who easily take their own lives and those of other people. Chapter six is a general conclusion of the works which includes observer remarks from other literary researchers of the literature.

This thesis provides a theory of exceptional sex through close readings of contemporary novels by male British and American writers. I take as my overriding methodological approach Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception, which is a juridico-political state in which the law has been suspended and the difference between rule and transgression is indistinguishable. Within this state, the spatiotemporal markers inside and outside also become indeterminable, making it impossible to tell whether one is inside or outside time and space. Using this framework, I work through narratives of sexual interaction – On Chesil Beach, Gertrude and Claudius, Sabbath’s Theater, and The Act of Love – to conceptualise categories of sexual exceptionality. My study is not a survey, and the texts have been chosen as they focus on different sexual behaviours, thereby opening up a variety of sexual exceptionalities. I concentrate on male writers and narratives of heterosexual sex as most work on sex, time and space is comprised of feminist readings of literature by women and queer work on gay, lesbian or trans writers and narratives. However, in the Coda I expand my argument by turning to Emma Donoghue’s Room, which, as the protagonist has been trapped for the first five years of his life, provides a tabula rasa’s perspective of exceptionality. Through my analysis of exceptionality, I provide spatiotemporal readings of the hymen, incest, adultery, sexual listening and the arranged affair. I also conceptualise textual exceptionalities – the incestuous prequel, auricular reading and the positionality of the narrator, the reader and literary characters. Exceptional sex challenges the assumption in recent queer theory that to be out of time is ‘queer’ and to be in time is ‘straight’. Furthermore, exceptionality complicates the concepts of perversion and transgression as the norm and its transgression become indistinct in the state of exception. In contrast, exceptionality offers a new, more determinate way to analyse narratives of sex.

Focusing on four early works, then three from his middle period and three from the 1890s, this dissertation explores Meredith’s role as a novelist in the unfolding of a social and literary paradox, namely, that with the death of George Eliot in 1880, the dominant writers of fiction were male, and this remained the case until the advent of Virginia Woolf, while at the same time the woman’s movement for emancipation in all spheres of life—domestic, commercial, professional and political—was gathering in strength and conviction. None of the late nineteenth-century male novelists—James, Hardy, Moore and Gissing, as well as Meredith—was ideologically committed to the feminist cause; in fact the very term ‘feminist’ did not begin to become current in England until the mid-1890s. But they were all interested in one aspect or another of the ‘Woman Question’, even if James was ambivalent about female emancipation, and Gissing, on the whole, was somewhat hostile. Of all these novelists, it was Meredith whose work, especially in its last two decades, most copiously reveals a profound sympathy for women and their struggles to realize their desires and ambitions, both inside and outside the home, in a patriarchal world. The dissertation therefore concentrates on his presentation of his heroines in their relationships with the men who, in one way or another, dominate them, and with whom they must negotiate, within the social and sexual conventions of the time, a modus vivendi—a procedure that will entail, especially in the later work, some transgression of those conventions. Chapter 1 sketches more than two centuries of development in female consciousness of severe social disadvantage, from literary observations in the mid-seventeenth century to the intensifying of political representations in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the rise of the woman’s movement in the course of the Victorian century. The chapter includes an account of the impact on Meredith of John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869), and an examination of some of his female friendships by way of illuminating the experiential component of his insights into the ‘Woman Question’ as reflected in his fiction and letters. His unhappy first marriage is reserved for consideration in Chapter 2, as background to the discussion of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859). This early novel, Meredith’s first in the realist mode, is widely accepted as being of high quality, and is given extended treatment, together with briefer accounts of three other early works, The Shaving of Shagpat (1855), Evan Harrington (1861), and Rhoda Fleming (1865), and one from Meredith’s middle period, Beauchamp’s Career (1876). Two more novels of this period, The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885), are generally considered to be among his best works, and their heroines are given chapters to themselves (3 and 4). Chapter 5 provides further contextualization for the changing socio-political circumstances of the 1880s and 1890s, with particular reference to that heightening of feminist consciousness represented by the short-lived ‘New Woman’ phenomenon, to which Diana of the Crossways had been considered by some to be a contribution. Brief discussion of some other ‘New Woman’ novels of the 80s and 90s follows, giving literary context to the heroines of Meredith’s three late candidates in the genre, One of Our Conquerors (1891), Lord Ormont and His Aminta (1894), and The Amazing Marriage (1895). The dissertation concludes with a glance at Meredith’s influence on a few early twentieth-century novelists.