Nadine Gordimer's July's People

Pertanika J. Soc. Sci. & Hum. 20 (1): 23 - 32 (2012)

ISSN: 0128-7702 © Universiti Putra Malaysia Press

Interregnum in Colonial Space: Subversion of Power and Dispossession of Metropolitan Home Materials in Gordimer’s July’s People
Ali Khoshnood Department of English Language and Translation, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas branch, University boulevard, Nakhle Nakhoda intersection, Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan Province, Iran E-mail: [e-mail] ABSTRACT
Nadine Gordimer’s recurrent theme has been raising awareness about the unjust and discriminatory policy of Apartheid in South Africa. In one of her later novels, July’s People, she depicts the impact of an impromptu journey of a white family into their black servant’s hinterland. Apartheid atrocities and discriminations of the white government of South Africa cause black insurgency and the displacement of the Smales family. This dislocation into the primitive settlement of July disrupts the former exercise of power hierarchy between the Smales family members and July. The Smales family is also deprived of familiar home equipment and city facilities. Although July shelters them from city riots, he takes advantage of the Smales’s predicament and appropriates new power in the new environment. The burden of this study was to examine July’s treatment of the Smales family when they are emasculated from their former privileges. This study also attempted to show how this sojourn dispossesses all major characters from their city life styles and powers. Both linguistic and physical subversions of power relations cause a change in the conjugal relationships of the Smales family and confuse July with an in-between identity and attitude towards his master’s family and his village community. This study examined the new relationships and life style changes in the light of post-colonial theoretical assumption. Keywords: Colonial Zone, dispossession, power

INTRODUCTION Nadine Gordimer was born on 20 November 1923 in

References: Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2001). Postcolonial studies: the key concepts. New York: Routledge. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge. Bodenheimer, R. (1993). The interregnum of ownership in July’s people. In B. King (Ed.), The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer (pp.108 - 120). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Press. Erritouni, A. (2004). Nation-states, intellectuals, and utopias in postcolonial fiction. (Published Doctoral Dissertation), Retrieved from ProQuest. Florida: University of Miami. Folks, J. J. (1998). “Artist in the interregnum: Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People ”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Heldref Publications, 39(2). Accessed May 29, 2009. From http:// www.highbeam.com/. Gordimer, N. (1981). July’s People. New York: Penguin. Green, R. (1988). The lying days to July’s People: the novels of Nadine Gordimer. Journal of Modern Literature, 14(4), (Spring), 543-563, Indiana UP. Retrieved September 18, 2008 from http://www. jstor.org/stable/383156 King, B. (Ed.). (1993). The later fiction of Nadine Gordimer. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Press. Lock, H. (2002). Women in the interregnum, Safundi, 3(2), 1-10, University of Louisiana at Monroe. Retrieved May 14, 2009 from http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/17533170200303203. Madden, M. (2007). Planting the seeds of a non-racial society: white women as agents of change in ‘july’s people’, ‘disgrace’, and ‘a blade of grass’. (Published Doctoral Dissertation), Retrieved from ProQuest. Halifax: Dalhousie University. Newman, J. (1988). Nadine Gordimer. London: Routledge. Rich, P. (1984). Apartheid and the decline of the civilization idea: an essay on Nadine Gordimer’s “July’s people” and J. M. Coetzee’s “waiting for the barbarians”. Research in African Literatures, 15(3) (Autumn), 365-393. Retrieved on August 4, 2010 from Indiana University Press Stable http://www.jstor.org/stable/3819663 Roberts, S. (1993). Sites of paranoia and taboo: Lessing’s ‘the grass is singing’ and Gordimer’s July’s people. Research in African Literatures, 24(3), (Autumn), 73-85, Indiana UP. Retrieved September 18, 2008 from http://www.jstor.org/ stable/3820114 Treiber, J. (1983). The construction of identity and representation of gender in four african novels. (Published Doctoral Dissertation), Retrieved from ProQuest. California: University of California. Williamson, N. B. (1999). Reinscribing genres and representing South African realities in Nadine Gordimer’s later novels (1919-1994). (Published Doctoral Dissertation), Retrieved from ProQuest. Boston: Boston University. 32 Pertanika J. Soc. Sci. & Hum. Vol. 20 (1) 2012