On The Modernist Elements In The Story Of An African Farm

Olive Schreiner was the first novelist of South Africa and the first British-South African writer who achieved international acclaim.Her debut,The Story of an African Farm,is the first English novel in South Africa which tells the story of three young people’s growth process and their ideological changes in the remote South African colony.In it,Schreiner began her modernist experiments.Schreiner had a modernist soul.She was rebellious,innovative,and dared to question inequality.She resisted tradition,pursued freedom,and opposed the oppression of imperialism,colonialism and sexism.Her modernist soul originated from the chaotic situation,innovative ideas,and her personal experience in South Africa.Her modernist ideas deeply influence her writing.Her works not only show the characteristics of modernist ideology,but also reveal multiple artistic characteristics of modernism.This thesis mainly analyzes the modernist elements in The Story of an African Farm from perspectives of theme and art and explores Schreiner’s modernist practice.In terms of theme,Schreiner doubted the authority and existence of God,strongly opposed centrality,especially anthropocentrism,ethnocentrism and phallocentralism.In addition,the modernist features of The Story of an African Farm are particularly obvious in artistic form.The dilution of plot and the application of stream of consciousness make The Story of an African Farm distinguish from traditional novels.Schreiner also applied Bildungsroman as a symbolic structure to express her understanding of “the meaning of life”.From the formation of Schreiner’s modernist ideas to the thematic and artistic modernist arrangements in The Story of an African Farm,the thesis emphasizes that Schreiner is not only an excellent female writer but also a modernist writer who is brave to break the Victorian convention.