Nature Bound by the Body: Humans and Nature in Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm

Authors

  • Erin Pelletreau

Keywords:

The Story of an African Farm, Olive Schreiner, Nature, Society, Gender, Colonialism, Landscape

Abstract

In my paper I am trying to answer the question: does Lyndall have to die in Schreiner’s novel Story of an African Farm in order to achieve unity with nature? I argue that the definition of nature that Hannah Freeman introduces leaves the heroine, Lyndall, with only one option: death. I draw on Raymond Williams to define “nature” as a complex idea with varied definitions. I then use Karl Marx and Jason Moore to discuss how some critics may disagree with Freeman and argue instead that nature and humans are already unified. I suggest that the moon in the novel complicates their version of “the web” by equalizing nature and human-made objects, but favoring some humans over others. In opposition to Freeman's argument that humans are not together with nature, I suggest that it is not that humans themselves are unnatural. Rather, the restrictions humans impose on each othern limit a person’s ability to connect with nature and even other people.

References

Freeman, Hannah. Dissolution and Landscape in Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm. English Studies in Africa, 52.2, 2009. pp. 18-34, DOI:10.1080/00138390903444123.

Marx, Karl. “Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” The Marx-Eagle Reader. 2nd Edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton, 1978, pp. 70-81.

Moore, W. Jason. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. New York: Verso, 2015, pp. 1-30.

Schreiner, Olive. The Story of an African Farm. Ed. Patricia O'Neill. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003.

William, Raymond. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana, 1976. pp. 219-224.

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Published

2017-06-02

Issue

Section

Environmental and Social Activism: Wordsworth, Morris, Bronte, Schreiner