Add this copy of Story of an African Farm to cart. $17.00, very good condition, Sold by Shaker Mill Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from West Stockbridge, MA, UNITED STATES, published 1976 by Peter Smith.
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Very Good. No Jacket. Book Pale green cloth boards are well-bound, slight darkening at spine. Faint foxing at textbox edge, pages clean & sharp throughout.
Add this copy of Story of an African Farm to cart. $16.50, very good condition, Sold by BingoBooks2 rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Vancouver, WA, UNITED STATES, published 1975 by U.S.A. : Peter Smith Pub Inc.
Add this copy of The Story of an African Farm to cart. $17.00, very good condition, Sold by The Unskoolbookshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brattleboro, VT, UNITED STATES, published 1971 by Peter Smith Pub Inc.
Add this copy of Story of an African Farm to cart. $48.79, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1971 by Peter Smith Pub Inc.
My study of the African American mystic and theologian Howard Thurman led me to this famous 1883 novel "The Story of an African Farm" by Olive Schreiner (1855 -- 1920). Thurman refers to Schreiner often in his writings, and in 1973 prepared an anthology, "A Track to the Water's Edge: The Olive Schreiner Reader" with an Introduction to Schreiner's work and its influence on him followed by selections from Schreiner's writings. I also was interested in Schreiner's novel from my reading many years ago of two other Victorian novels which considered feminism or, as it was then called, the "woman question": "The Bostonians" (1886) by Henry James and "The Odd Women" (1893) by George Gissing. The novels by Schreiner, James, and Gissing are fascinating separately and taken together in their differing views of feminism and other important social and intellectual issues.
Set in South Africa in the mid-1860s, Schreiner's novel tells the story of Lyndall, a "new woman", Em, a more conventional woman and Waldo, a young man and a freethinker, from their childhood through adulthood and death on a large farm owned by a Boer woman. The novel is in two parts in each of which a different man wanders into the farm and becomes a focus for events. The first part features a swindler and a rouge, Bonaparte Blenkins, while the second part features, a "new man", Gregory Rose, a dandy of shifting sexuality.
Schreiner writes in a poetical, expansive heavily idiosyncratic style influenced by her study of the Bible. While it has a story and plot, the novel is philosophical and heavily digressive. Long passages of dialogue, and entire chapters, explore important questions. The opening chapter of Part II, "Times and Seasons", for example is a lengthy philosophical meditation on religion at different stages of life. The book in fact discusses at length questions of religion and loss of religious belief. It discusses political issues through references to the works of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. And it discusses issues of the "new woman" and of feminism, including sexuality, marriage, suffrage, education, and transvestism. Thus, many ideas are raised in "The Story of an African Farm" and it should not be limited to only feminism. Ideas are woven into the stories Schreiner tells about her characters and about South Africa, beautifully if not always smoothly. I became involved in the sad, varied lives of the three main protagonists.
I was more interested in Schreiner's thoughts on religion than in her discussion of feminism, even though the book is mostly remembered as a work of "first wave" feminsim. Schreiner was a freethinker who rejected traditional Christianity. The book has a passionate,mystical tone suggesting a pantheistic approach, I think, and a unity of all life. I think the searching, mystical, and yet skeptical tone of the book is what most influenced Thurman; but Schreiner's views on sexuality, gender relations, pacifism, and politics were also important to this great American mystic and civil rights activist. While Schreiner's work is often polemical in tone, a reader does not have to agree with feminism or Schreiner's version of feminism to love this book. My own interests led me to her discussion of religious questions.
It is valuable to see limitations in a book or writer one admires. Schreiner is not overly-critical of colonialism in South Africa, and she is often condescending and prejudicial in her characterizaions of black people and in her language describing them. Howard Thurman was painfully aware of these aspects of Schreiner's work. Still, he was able to be moved deeply by what he found extraordinary in Schreiner's language and vision, to learn from it, and to try to incorporate it for himself. There is something to be learned from this. Every person, particularly Schreiner, has his or her blind sides, formed in part by history, With the fallibility of individuals, it is possible to learn and move forward. Howard Thurman did so in his love for Olive Schreiner. Perhaps in doing so, he offered some insight in how people can move forward and learn from one another in the face of differences.
