Status
Checked out
Genres
Publication
New York : Schocken Books, 1976.
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: The Story of an African Farm is the story of three children who grow up on a farm in South Africa, and their journey into adulthood. The narrative is complex, with fluid chronology and narrative point of view. The novel was a bestseller when it was first published, though it was also controversial, dealing with themes of feminism, pre-marital sex, free thought and transvestitism..
User reviews
LibraryThing member rainpebble
"The Story of an African Farm" by Olive Schreiner:
My thoughts and comments:
I found it to be more of an essay than a story for the most part. I loved it. It speaks to the very heart and soul of mankind.
The story takes place in South Africa on a sheep farm. The main characters are three children, two
Here is just one quote out of the very, very many I would love to share:
"They say that in the world to come time is not measured out by months and years. Neither is it here. The soul's life has seasons of it's own; periods not found in any calendar, times that years and months will not scan, but which are as deftly and sharply cut off from one another as the smoothly arranged years which the earth's motion yields us.
To stranger eyes these divisions are not evident; but each, looking back at the little track his consciousness illuminates, sees it cut into distinct portions, whose boundaries are the termination of mental states.
As man differs from man, so differ these souls' years. The most material life is not devoid of them; the story of the most spiritual is told in them. And it may chance that some, looking back, see the past cut out after this fashion"
I was quite drawn in to this little novel and I am sure that it will not be long before I read this one again.
My thoughts and comments:
I found it to be more of an essay than a story for the most part. I loved it. It speaks to the very heart and soul of mankind.
The story takes place in South Africa on a sheep farm. The main characters are three children, two
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young girls and one young boy, the overseer and the Boer owner of the farm. There are interactions, of course amongst the characters and the little boy I especially warmed up to. But most of the prose is the thought processes of these characters and a lot of it is very soul searching with a lot of depth.Here is just one quote out of the very, very many I would love to share:
"They say that in the world to come time is not measured out by months and years. Neither is it here. The soul's life has seasons of it's own; periods not found in any calendar, times that years and months will not scan, but which are as deftly and sharply cut off from one another as the smoothly arranged years which the earth's motion yields us.
To stranger eyes these divisions are not evident; but each, looking back at the little track his consciousness illuminates, sees it cut into distinct portions, whose boundaries are the termination of mental states.
As man differs from man, so differ these souls' years. The most material life is not devoid of them; the story of the most spiritual is told in them. And it may chance that some, looking back, see the past cut out after this fashion"
I was quite drawn in to this little novel and I am sure that it will not be long before I read this one again.
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LibraryThing member ifjuly
someone who really saw me in my writing, all of my hidden concerns nestled, recommended this to me out of the blue. she was spot on. this book, oh this book. millions of papers could be written about this book. in another life i would love to write a dissertation on it, frankly. there's a TON going
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on here, and it's all hot buzz worthy topics right now i confess--colonialism, gender, property issues...all wrapped in the far away language of childhood and growing up into awareness. fascinating, to use a cliche term. Show Less
LibraryThing member bookwoman247
Originally published in 1883, this is the story of Lyndall, a young girl growing up on a farm in South Africa. Lyndall sees the limited options available to her, and dares to want more. She leaves in order to obtain an education, but the education that was available to women at that time fails to
I liked The Story of an African Farm, but was not overwhelmed.
One thing that bothered me was that the themes seemed to be written with a certain amount of bluntness. They were big themes, with great ideas, but I felt that they could have been expressed with a bit more subtlety. You know the old addage; "Show, don't tell.".
I could not help but be struck by the irony of the author's seemingly strong stance against limiting the potential of women while at the same time she uses the "N" word, or the word kaffir, which is just about as bad, to refer to black people. I know it was a different time and place, but I would have hoped that someone who was so sensitive to her own limited role in society might be able to expand her views to include all groups of oppressed people.
Overall, because of the big themes and because I liked the way the characters were written, I definitely enjoyed the book. I just didn't find it anything to get too excited about.
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satisfy her need for independence and self-determination. Her longing for autonomy, and her observation of loveless marriages make her detremined to avoid marriage. She ends up running away with a lover after refusing to marry him. Eventually, she is discovered to be alone and critically ill. Another devoted suitor disguises himself as a female nurse in order to care for her.I liked The Story of an African Farm, but was not overwhelmed.
One thing that bothered me was that the themes seemed to be written with a certain amount of bluntness. They were big themes, with great ideas, but I felt that they could have been expressed with a bit more subtlety. You know the old addage; "Show, don't tell.".
I could not help but be struck by the irony of the author's seemingly strong stance against limiting the potential of women while at the same time she uses the "N" word, or the word kaffir, which is just about as bad, to refer to black people. I know it was a different time and place, but I would have hoped that someone who was so sensitive to her own limited role in society might be able to expand her views to include all groups of oppressed people.
Overall, because of the big themes and because I liked the way the characters were written, I definitely enjoyed the book. I just didn't find it anything to get too excited about.
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LibraryThing member mbmackay
I bought this book on a trip to Africa and was led to believe, by the title and blurb, that it was a conventional Victorian novel set in Africa. Wrong. The title is a total misdirection. While the beauty of the bleak desert landscape is a regular backdrop in the book, this is most definitely not
The mid-section of the book heads off in a totally different style with an analysis of the development of a personal philosophy, starting from received religious dogma, and ending with a free-thinking atheism. This is followed by the narrative (or as close to narrative as Schriener gets) of the tragic ends for the key characters.
This is one of the most memorable books I have read in years. I can't believe that it is not better known.
Read July 2015.
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the story of an African farm. It is hardly a story. It is a wonderful book of ideas, seemingly 100 years too modern for its era. The book starts reasonably conventionally, introducing the main characters and the farm as backdrop. There is some beautiful writing here and I was immediately hooked. But the characters are not standard Victorian era characters, and the issues that concern them - atheism, feminism, mental development, are not the standard Victorian era issues. The mid-section of the book heads off in a totally different style with an analysis of the development of a personal philosophy, starting from received religious dogma, and ending with a free-thinking atheism. This is followed by the narrative (or as close to narrative as Schriener gets) of the tragic ends for the key characters.
This is one of the most memorable books I have read in years. I can't believe that it is not better known.
Read July 2015.
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LibraryThing member Stevil2001
I was a bit surprised at this novel: it's published in 1883, so the same year Wilkie Collins finished Heart and Science, and the year after Thomas Hardy wrote Two on a Tower. Yet its much more prescient of modernism than either of those late Victorian works, reminding me more of early James Joyce
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or E. M. Forster than Schreiner's actual contemporaries. It has a fragmented, difficult style, but one appropriate to its subject matters, about the difficulties of coping with massive complex systems like religion and patriarchy while living on the fringe of the massive complex system that is empire-- though Schreiner is seemingly way less interested in interrogating its complications than she is those of gender and religion. I liked it, but I wanted to love it; I frequently enjoyed the detached narrative voice, but sometimes found it more difficult than I felt was necessary. There was some engrossing stuff (the horrific victimization of children by Bonaparte Blenkins), some funny stuff (Bonaparte's more comedic escapades) some great stuff (Bonaparte's final comeuppance), some intriguing stuff (young Waldo's adventures in the world), some startling stuff ("'Waldo,' she said, 'Lyndall is dead'" is such a powerful sentence), and some weird and offputting stuff (most of the last couple chapters). Probably worth another read someday, and I would certainly teach it; I don't think I've read another book quite like it. Show Less
LibraryThing member whangdoodle
I just this minute learned that Olive Schreiner is a pseudonym for Ralph Iron. Or could it be the other way around? I'm going to have to search around for the answer. I loved this book -- found it riveting and haunting.
LibraryThing member MariaAlhambra
An extremely irregular book, fascinating at times and excruciatingly poor at others. It follows the tragic unfulfilled lives of four young people in colonial South Africa, two cousins (Em, homely and domestic; and Lyndall, eternally unsatified , full of lofty ideals she cannot live up to) and the
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two farm labourers in love with them. The male characters are the most intriguing and well developed, especially Waldo, the dreamy orphan in perpetual self-questioning. The book's major weaknesses are its lyrical,oneiric passages and its sometimes preachy tone(as well as a ridiculous cross-dressing episode) ;although there are excellent descriptions of the African landscape, some lovely comedy asides and an interesting elyptical narrative structure. Show Less
LibraryThing member amydross
I found this book... confusing. Unbearable in parts, intriguing in others. In some sense, it is clearly a book about ideas, primarily feminism and atheism, and I am generally sympathetic to both of those things. But the arguments for atheism as presented are hopelessly juvenile. The feminist
All that said, there were a few sections of the book that stepped away from the main storyline to relay fable-like stories about time and the search for truth and whatnot, and I did find those very affecting.
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arguments are more convincing, and yet they come from the mouth of a woman so impeccably beautiful that all men fall hopelessly and instantly in love with her. I want to believe that fact is intended satirically, but it doesn't really feel all that satirical to me. Plus, all the characters are monstrous caricatures, which again, can work in a satirical novel, but they all just seemed boring and foolish and one-dimensional. All that said, there were a few sections of the book that stepped away from the main storyline to relay fable-like stories about time and the search for truth and whatnot, and I did find those very affecting.
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LibraryThing member HenriMoreaux
Written in the 1800s and set in circa 1860 Karoo, South Africa; The Story of an African Farm is certainly a product of it's time - the author displays attitudes of the time towards the native people of Africa referring to such as Hottentots, Kaffirs and children as niggers, terms which the reader
The opening is quite depressing with an man coming to the farm who is abusive bordering on sadistic to the children and in particular young Waldo. The man is also a liar and con artist who takes advantage of the dutch woman who owns the farm and her workers, in particular the German man Otto.
As the book unfolds in then lurches into a section called Times and Seasons which is rather rambly before continuing once again with the story as it is with the children now having grown into adults. The layout of the book is a bit of a mess and I wouldn't particularly say the title accurately reflects the nature of the book. Whilst yes, it does take place on the farm it isn't really a story of the farm but rather a story of the coming of age of the children on the farm - Em, Lyndall & Waldo.
Overall I found the book to be saddening, especially the opening part and the middle part doesn't really have any material that lifts your spirits before it wraps up on a sad note once again.
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of this review will note are now considered to be offensive. On the other side of the coin the book does contain a rather picturesque portray of life in Dutch South Africa.The opening is quite depressing with an man coming to the farm who is abusive bordering on sadistic to the children and in particular young Waldo. The man is also a liar and con artist who takes advantage of the dutch woman who owns the farm and her workers, in particular the German man Otto.
As the book unfolds in then lurches into a section called Times and Seasons which is rather rambly before continuing once again with the story as it is with the children now having grown into adults. The layout of the book is a bit of a mess and I wouldn't particularly say the title accurately reflects the nature of the book. Whilst yes, it does take place on the farm it isn't really a story of the farm but rather a story of the coming of age of the children on the farm - Em, Lyndall & Waldo.
Overall I found the book to be saddening, especially the opening part and the middle part doesn't really have any material that lifts your spirits before it wraps up on a sad note once again.
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LibraryThing member thorold
Elaine Showalter sums up Schreiner as "A freethinker marked to the marrow of her bones with the Calvinism of her missionary parents; a disciple of Darwin, Mill and Spencer who floated in a sea of sentimentality; a dedicated writer who could never finish a book; a feminist who hated being a woman; a
This is really exactly the kind of book you would expect from a complicated, clever young person who grew up in the arch-conservative back of beyond in a time seething with exciting new ideas. It's about a couple of sisters, the wild and progressive Lyndall and the placid and domesticated Em, growing up on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape together with young Waldo, the overseer's son, working as a farmhand but looking as though he is going to turn into a brilliant engineer, or possibly a poet, or a sculptor, or none of the above. Throw in an Afrikaans stepmother, an Irish con-man, a cross-dressing farm-manager, and a trunk full of our late father's radical books, and tragedy is just about inevitable.
There are glorious chapter-long feminist rants, endless agonising about what it really means to live in a world where you can't seriously believe in God any more, more symbolism than you can shake an elaborately-carved stick at, lots of lovely African scenery and weather, a bizarrely complicated series of emotional and sexual entanglements, and a large supporting cast of nameless black people treated with a curious mixture of late-Victorian "scientific" racism and semi-enlightened humanity. A book so hopelessly messy that you can pull just about anything you like out of it, but a great account of growing up in confusing times, all the same.
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maternal spirit who never became a mother — everything about her life is a paradox." Not totally straightforward then!This is really exactly the kind of book you would expect from a complicated, clever young person who grew up in the arch-conservative back of beyond in a time seething with exciting new ideas. It's about a couple of sisters, the wild and progressive Lyndall and the placid and domesticated Em, growing up on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape together with young Waldo, the overseer's son, working as a farmhand but looking as though he is going to turn into a brilliant engineer, or possibly a poet, or a sculptor, or none of the above. Throw in an Afrikaans stepmother, an Irish con-man, a cross-dressing farm-manager, and a trunk full of our late father's radical books, and tragedy is just about inevitable.
There are glorious chapter-long feminist rants, endless agonising about what it really means to live in a world where you can't seriously believe in God any more, more symbolism than you can shake an elaborately-carved stick at, lots of lovely African scenery and weather, a bizarrely complicated series of emotional and sexual entanglements, and a large supporting cast of nameless black people treated with a curious mixture of late-Victorian "scientific" racism and semi-enlightened humanity. A book so hopelessly messy that you can pull just about anything you like out of it, but a great account of growing up in confusing times, all the same.
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LibraryThing member wbell539
For those people that are less gifted at reading literature — which definitely includes me — this book is very heavy weather. I read it because it was mentioned in a biography I've just read of Eleanor Marx and nothing about the experience was enlightening.
LibraryThing member yarb
Anyone reading this in hopes of learning something about 19th century colonial agronomy will be sorely disappointed: apart from the occasional mention of goats and sheep, this book is a farming-free zone. Maybe crops are being grown off-stage by indentured natives (or "woolly Kaffers" to use the
The story, such as it is, concerns the growing-up of Waldo, Em and Lyndall. Em, nice but dim, is the stepdaughter of the twice-widowed but still ebullient farm proprietress Tant Sannie (or "the Boer woman" as the text prefers to call her). The precocious Lyndall, also an orphan, is Em's cousin. Waldo, a spiritual seeker, is the son of the German overseer. In part one their lives, hardly blissful to begin with, take a turn for the worse when one of the most preposterous baddies in all of literature shows up in the form of Bonaparte Blenkins, a sadistic conman who makes your average Dickens villain look like a Proustian character study. He wheedles his way into Tant Sannie's affections and proceeds to be utterly beastly to the kids, while Waldo grapples with the contradictions of religion and Lyndall with her awakening feminism.
Finally Blenkins comes unstuck and Tant Sannie kicks him out. Then it's time for Schreiner to lay it on thick with a section called "Times and Seasons", a rudely interpolated Ted Talk on the stages of (Waldo's, but also every thinking man's) religious development. There's an even more nauseating excursus a bit later, when a stranger passes through the farm and narrates a Bunyanesque allegory to Waldo ("then the hunter took from his breast the shuttle of Imagination, and wound on it the thread of his Wishes; and all night he sat and wove a net.") I think the phrase "show, don't tell" is very overused, but every writer should keep it in mind to avoid producing deadly stuff like this.
I suppose this is why people read the book today, for its atheist and feminist themes (the feminism comes later as we see what became of Lyndall). Fair enough, but I found it torturous. Schreiner's prose, not what you'd call subtle, veers wildly between mawkish (any description of Lyndall), archaic (three uses of "ever and anon", "Em needed not to send for him", "next morning the Bible we kiss") and unintentionally hilarious ("the hypocrite is rare as icebergs in the tropics"). Sometimes she comes up with glutinous gems like "he fixed his seething eyes upon her" and "the beautiful eyes looked into the depths of her soul".
There was one scene that I didn't have to force myself through like a wagon driver lashing his oxen up a muddy kopje: Tant Sannie eventually remarries and we're treated to a Boer wedding. Of course, being a Boer wedding it's not as much fun as a Greek wedding for example or an Armenian or a Hindu one. But there is still dancing, and a better spread than the usual roaster-cakes and mealies, and some people at least (go Em) enjoy themselves. The other incident that piqued my interest was when Gregory (another random who shows up at the farm later on and falls in love with first Em and then Lyndall) suddenly puts on womenswear and seems quite pleased with himself. But it turns out his transvestism is only the act of a lovesick mooncalf: by disguising himself as a woman, he hopes to get closer to little Lyndall and her little head, face, lips, hands, fingers...
This brings me to my last point. Schreiner's feminism is powerfully and clearly expressed through the character of Lyndall. But in proportion as she draws Lyndall's personality as independent, rational, and generally by contemporary standards unwomanly, she seems to feel the need to describe her physically as dainty, delicate, the image of womanly weakness. Perhaps this is ironic or a spoonful of treacle to help her controversial message go down. But she isn't terribly creative in how she does it. I did some textual analysis and it turns out the word "little" appears 508 times in The Story of an African Farm, accounting for one in every 200 words — five times its frequency in English as a whole. By my count 74 of these usages are in reference to Lyndall. They break down as follows:
Lyndall generally — 18
Parts of Lyndall — 56:
Hand(s) — 12
Foot/feet/footmarks — 11
Face — 5
Mouth — 4
Finger(s) — 4
Lip(s) — 3
Laugh — 3
Head — 3 (of which 1 indirect)
Chin — 2
Body — 2
Limbs, fingernail, arms, cheek, teeth, neck, life, toe, elbows, voice, soul — 1 each
That is, the only parts of Lyndall that aren't little are her nose, ears, eyes, jaw, tongue, shoulders, hips, knees, calves, ankles. We are told that she is "beautiful" three times, and that her eyes are "beautiful" no fewer than eight times. It's absolutely mad. Someone please enroll Olive in a creative writing class or just buy her a bloody thesaurus!
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author's terminology), but the Karoo farmstead where Schreiner lays her scene is a venue for delvings and harrowings of the philosophical rather than the agricultural sort.The story, such as it is, concerns the growing-up of Waldo, Em and Lyndall. Em, nice but dim, is the stepdaughter of the twice-widowed but still ebullient farm proprietress Tant Sannie (or "the Boer woman" as the text prefers to call her). The precocious Lyndall, also an orphan, is Em's cousin. Waldo, a spiritual seeker, is the son of the German overseer. In part one their lives, hardly blissful to begin with, take a turn for the worse when one of the most preposterous baddies in all of literature shows up in the form of Bonaparte Blenkins, a sadistic conman who makes your average Dickens villain look like a Proustian character study. He wheedles his way into Tant Sannie's affections and proceeds to be utterly beastly to the kids, while Waldo grapples with the contradictions of religion and Lyndall with her awakening feminism.
Finally Blenkins comes unstuck and Tant Sannie kicks him out. Then it's time for Schreiner to lay it on thick with a section called "Times and Seasons", a rudely interpolated Ted Talk on the stages of (Waldo's, but also every thinking man's) religious development. There's an even more nauseating excursus a bit later, when a stranger passes through the farm and narrates a Bunyanesque allegory to Waldo ("then the hunter took from his breast the shuttle of Imagination, and wound on it the thread of his Wishes; and all night he sat and wove a net.") I think the phrase "show, don't tell" is very overused, but every writer should keep it in mind to avoid producing deadly stuff like this.
I suppose this is why people read the book today, for its atheist and feminist themes (the feminism comes later as we see what became of Lyndall). Fair enough, but I found it torturous. Schreiner's prose, not what you'd call subtle, veers wildly between mawkish (any description of Lyndall), archaic (three uses of "ever and anon", "Em needed not to send for him", "next morning the Bible we kiss") and unintentionally hilarious ("the hypocrite is rare as icebergs in the tropics"). Sometimes she comes up with glutinous gems like "he fixed his seething eyes upon her" and "the beautiful eyes looked into the depths of her soul".
There was one scene that I didn't have to force myself through like a wagon driver lashing his oxen up a muddy kopje: Tant Sannie eventually remarries and we're treated to a Boer wedding. Of course, being a Boer wedding it's not as much fun as a Greek wedding for example or an Armenian or a Hindu one. But there is still dancing, and a better spread than the usual roaster-cakes and mealies, and some people at least (go Em) enjoy themselves. The other incident that piqued my interest was when Gregory (another random who shows up at the farm later on and falls in love with first Em and then Lyndall) suddenly puts on womenswear and seems quite pleased with himself. But it turns out his transvestism is only the act of a lovesick mooncalf: by disguising himself as a woman, he hopes to get closer to little Lyndall and her little head, face, lips, hands, fingers...
This brings me to my last point. Schreiner's feminism is powerfully and clearly expressed through the character of Lyndall. But in proportion as she draws Lyndall's personality as independent, rational, and generally by contemporary standards unwomanly, she seems to feel the need to describe her physically as dainty, delicate, the image of womanly weakness. Perhaps this is ironic or a spoonful of treacle to help her controversial message go down. But she isn't terribly creative in how she does it. I did some textual analysis and it turns out the word "little" appears 508 times in The Story of an African Farm, accounting for one in every 200 words — five times its frequency in English as a whole. By my count 74 of these usages are in reference to Lyndall. They break down as follows:
Lyndall generally — 18
Parts of Lyndall — 56:
Hand(s) — 12
Foot/feet/footmarks — 11
Face — 5
Mouth — 4
Finger(s) — 4
Lip(s) — 3
Laugh — 3
Head — 3 (of which 1 indirect)
Chin — 2
Body — 2
Limbs, fingernail, arms, cheek, teeth, neck, life, toe, elbows, voice, soul — 1 each
That is, the only parts of Lyndall that aren't little are her nose, ears, eyes, jaw, tongue, shoulders, hips, knees, calves, ankles. We are told that she is "beautiful" three times, and that her eyes are "beautiful" no fewer than eight times. It's absolutely mad. Someone please enroll Olive in a creative writing class or just buy her a bloody thesaurus!
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LibraryThing member burritapal
Very beautiful writing, and empathic treatment of the characters, delving into their hearts and souls.
Still, it's hard to care so much for those characters, being European and descendent's of those who committed genocide on true Africans. The author also seems to be a sizist, making "good women"
I did like the treatment of how we feel when death steals a beloved, and our struggles to try to believe in the hereafter, because we can't bear the thought of never seeing that dear one again, in whatever form.
Still, it's hard to care so much for those characters, being European and descendent's of those who committed genocide on true Africans. The author also seems to be a sizist, making "good women"
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tiny, and much emphasis put on "tiny hands, tiny feet."I did like the treatment of how we feel when death steals a beloved, and our struggles to try to believe in the hereafter, because we can't bear the thought of never seeing that dear one again, in whatever form.
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LibraryThing member apomonis
Worth slogging through for the greatest parable of all time (near the end).
Language
Original publication date
1883
Physical description
x, 287 p.; 21 cm
ISBN
0805205470 / 9780805205473