social roles in African Literature :: essays research papers

During the uprisings of the 1970s, Nadine Gordimer presented a very dreary and pessimistic prophecy to white and black second Africa in Julys People. This prophecy suggested a probable overthrow of the apartheid body which would challenge the currently existing companionable and racial subprograms of its inhabitants. Amid the chaos, traditional roles would be overturned and new ones atomic number 18 formed as the Smales accept their handmaids offer of refuge and flee to his village in the bush. Additionally, Zoe Wicomb describes the social and familiar roles that dominate Afrikaaners in You Cant perplex mazed in Cape Town. Through a series of connected myopic stories, Wicombs narrator, Frieda Shenton, grows from tikehood to womanhood in a community label as colored. These colored, people of racially mixed decent, were classified not on ethnic or cultural values, but rather based on skin color and appearance. To gain complete understanding of racial and inner roles prese nt in the southern part of Africa, one must conservatively examine both Julys People and You Cant Get Lost in Cape Town for semblances of an old social social structure as the birth of a new nation develops.In Wicombs You Cant Get Lost in Cape Town, we are presented with a young girl, Frieda, transforming into a woman in a cracker-barrel African village. Frieda is faced with the realization that apartheid has ghettoized the coloreds to live in dreadful conditions. It is by dint of the suppression of this ghetto life along with the suppression of racial and sexual stereotypes that Frieda removes herself and gains her independence. Friedas changing sexuality is important for her maturation into a woman. Wicomb presents a sexual hierarchy of women as viewed from a colored perspective. Men can correct their social appearance through education, but for a woman, she must take off married. A necessary ingredient for a successful marriage is to be pretty as suggested by Friedas mother Poor child What can a girl do without good looks? Wholl marry you? Well come to put a peg on your nose (164). Even in Friedas teenage years, she never saw herself as attractive, for she saw herself as too plump. This plumpness is a direct result from her father press her finish all her meals, as he saw skinniness unattractive. In addition, during the train ride to school, Frieda dreamt of a fairytale in which boys were regarded as princes and her role was not that of Cinderella, but rather that of the pumpkin.