Presence Of Body And Absence Of Voice

In the Heart of Country is the second novel of John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-), one of the well-known and intellectual contemporary South African writers. Published in1977, it has been considered as Coetzee’s most disruptive and disturbing novel, of which the description and narration given by the first narrator Magda contain a series of indistinguishable plots, which turns out to be Magda’s wild fantasy in an absent position. Magda has been struggling for her own voice as a woman, but her father’s ignorance and detachment drive her to fantasize two patricides, and meanwhile she desires to become a complete woman, therefore, she seems to to Hendrik with a show of reluctance, but ends up being abused by the black servant Hendrik, and eventually she is deserted on the decadent and desolate farm.This thesis intends to interpret In the Heart of Country in American feminist narratologist Lansers theory of feminist narrative voice and the genre of the diary novel with an aim to provide a detailed and systematic narrative analysis. The thesis begins with a general introduction to the writer J. M. Coetzee, his literary achievements and literature reviews home and abroad as well as the theories of the narrative voice and the implied author, and closes with the conclusion summarizing the thesis. In between is the main body which is comprised of three chapters, giving a detailed analysis of the novel from three aspects respectively:the women’s voice, the diary novel and Coetzee’s second self-the implied voice.Chapter One dissects a deserted life of the old spinster Magda who lives on the desolate farm away from the bustling town in South Africa. Though Magda desires a complete life as a woman, yet on the colonial farm where the male domination occupies, she is unable to make her voice reach to the outside, and to the public, therefore in a sense, Magda falls a victim to the colonialism and patriarch, and her mother and the maidservant Klein-Anna as well could not escape being oppressed and colonized. In In the Heart of Country, Coetzee molds three different women under the setting of South African inner land:Magda’s mother, Magda and the maidservant Klein-Anna. Contrasting their different conditions, Coetzee intends to intensify the reality of the women’s absent voices and their tragic life of being occupied by the male domination, though they share the same presence of their bodies.Chapter Two analyzes the reasons why Coetzee chooses the genre of dairy novel to confine and mute the women’s voices. On the one hand, Coetzee molds Magda into an evil and raging old spinster who desires to create a language of her own and speaks out her mind outright, with a seeming aim to defend for her; on the other hand, he deliberately confines Magda’s words to her locked diary—a symbol of patriarchal domination; and her voice is doomed not to go beyond the diary.Chapter Three focuses on the analysis of that the erasing voice behind Magda running through the novel in light of Wayne C. Booth’s implied author is actually conveying the author’s voice; Coetzee molds this raging and evil-like old spinster speaking aloud and erasing her voice in order to reveal the women’s tragic life in the colonial patriarch.In sum, through the interpretation of In the Heart of Country, this thesis aims to dig out the reality of the women’s absent voices in the inner land of South Africa. In the world of patriarchal domination, the women could not sound their voices, for their voices could simply be released in an insane way, and limited to the evil and hysterical muttering.