Bibliography: pages 206-219. / The master-servant relationship in South Africa is examined in the light of Melanie Klein's psychodynamic-theories. It is argued that mechanisms of defense identified by Klein, primarily denial, splitting and projection, as well as depressive guilt, operate in the master-servant relationship in this country. The first chapter clarifies the theoretical approach to i) the individual and society, ii) literature and social analysis and iii) psychoanalysis and literature. It is argued that individuals are at one and the same time both public and private entities, made by and making the society they live in. The notion that group behaviour is individual behaviour writ large is rejected and the way in which the master-servant relationship is used as a microcosm of the larger relationship between black and white in South Africa is explained. It is also argued that literature, not bound to specifics of time and place in the way statistics are, yet still rooted in the looser flow of everyday life as experienced by individuals, provides the social analyst with special access to the dynamics of a society. The value of a psychoanalytic approach to literature lies in the light psychoanalysis sheds on the function of metaphor, particularly the metaphor of the human body, and phantasy. In the explication of Klein's theories, the importance of phantasy, both on an individual and a collective level, is stressed. The way in which denial, projection, splitting and guilt operate in South African society is then examined with illustrations drawn from various sources, such as the media and the statements of politicians, but primarily from the fiction of Doris Lessing, Es'kia Mphahlele and Nadine Gordimer. Furthermore, it is pointed out how patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism can be interpreted in the light of the dynamics proposed by Klein; it is argued that South Africa is a patriarchal, capitalist and colonial society and the effects that this has on the writing of Lessing, Mphahlele and Gordimer are examined. A framework for a reading of Lessing, Mphahlele and Gordimer is then established. Colonial literature, and the literary device of irony are examined. Links are drawn between irony, the metaphor of the body, the rejection of the notion of the purely private individual, and the functioning of denial, splitting and projection. In the subsequent three chapters, each devoted to a single writer, the theme of failures in recognition is carried through. Each writer is studied to emphasize different aspects of the arguments that have been developed in the preceding chapters. The tensions of patriarchy and colonialism are most clearly seen in the work of Lessing. Gordimer subverts the popularly-accepted division between public and private and provides a historical perspective on the master-servant relationship. Mphahlele, like Gordimer, gives us many examples of how a self is fractured and warped in the domination and subordination that obtains in the domestic scene. Like Gordimer, he uses irony a great deal to make his point. These three writers from divergent backgrounds resort to similar techniques and metaphors to express a similar vision. This study interprets the link between the individual and society, and between a society and its literature in terms of a psychodynamic theory. The struggle for a sense of wholeness is an individual and a collective enterprise. The struggle for a South African literature is the struggle for a South African identity.

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Inaug.-Diss.--Heidelberg. / Vita. Bibliography: p. i-xv.

This dissertation examines a marginal group in Russian history and literature, domestic servants (dvorovye liudi)— proprietary peasants taken by their masters into the house to fulfill a variety of service roles. I consider this character group as an artistic device, an ideological signifier that draws upon a cluster of reader’s associations, and as a group deeply connected to the master class, the noblemen (dvoriane). Historically, the two were interconnected for generations, sharing domestic space, blood, history, and mutual interests. I argue that contrary to their historical prototypes, the Russian literary master and servant are interdependent, with both participants acutely aware of each other, allowing the implied author to use each to comment on the other and the wider social context of their relations. As the Emancipation (1861) approached, the literary portrayal of the shifting relations between these two groups began to signal the massive changes that shook Russian society during the long nineteenth century. These shifts were often depicted in spatial terms in literary works, with master and servant perpetually re-negotiating their mutual positions within limited spatial economies, most prominently, in the gentry house. Domestic space, where masters and servants coexist and which serves as a microcosm of Russian society, is the ideal space in which authors can navigate unstable social relationships and work out potential solutions to their conflicts. The domestic stage can stand in for the political or social one. How servants navigate space in their master’s home gives clues to the broader issues authors address in their narratives. My dissertation is structured according to the space most significant for the relationship between master and servant: the bedroom or nursery (Introduction), on the road (Chapter 1), private-public space (Chapter 2), and absence of space (Chapter 3). The Conclusion examines the increasing danger of the intimate and often inappropriate proximity of servant and master when combined with irreconcilable class differences and a steadfast resistance from those in power to the redistribution of space. I turn to works of Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Goncharov, Turgenev, Chekhov, and Bunin to examine these spaces. Embedded in historical context, my project addresses the ramifications of the Emancipation and gestures forward to the historical events of the twentieth century. When high expectations for radical redistribution of resources and status were frustrated, transgression and then violence became the means for servants’ mobility, social and spatial. Russian literature from the “long nineteenth-century” captured the instability of the renegotiations of rights and resources between masters and servants. My conclusion sees the gentry house collapse as a result of these clashes.