The Story of an African Farm (1883)

Olive Schreiner. The Story of an African Farm. Pub. 1883. New York: Penguin, repr. 2005.

General notes

• 29 (Preface) Methods of representation

 Human life may be painted according to two methods. There is the stage method. According to that each character is duly marshalled at first, and ticketed; we know with an immutable certainty that at the right crises each one will reappear and act his part, and, when the curtain falls, all will stand before it bowing. There is a sense of satisfaction in this, and of completeness. But there is another method - the method of the life we lead. Here nothing can be prophesied. There is a strange coming and going of feet. Men appear, act and re-act upon each other, and pass away. (ff.)

• 36-8: The overseer's silver hunting watch, the way it invokes religion fate and history for the boy. Time and apocalypse -- cf. McClintock 1995
• Time reinvoked on 137 at start of part 2
• Kaffir: black South Africans (derogatory now)
• Kraal: enclosure outbuilding for livestock
• Kopje: small hill
• 40 Waldo's sacrifice
• 45-6 as in The Mill on the Floss (1860) the opposition between education and agrarian work even in childrens' understanding
• 66 Waldo reading bible -- cf McClintock 1995 for Waldo and books
• Ch 5 strange/interesting structure
• 76 lyndall's books/bonaparte's phony teaching
• 93 Em swearing she will help the weak against the strong
• 102 Waldo's rejection of god and the mutual incomphrehensibility of experience/ feeling
• 103 Ghosts and guilt like hamlet or lady m then Macb at chapter end
• 109 Waldo reading abt property rights
• 114 Tant throws book at Waldo like John reed in jane eyre
• 119-20 deep time
• 130 a more visceral meditation on the wounds of childhood but reminiscent of Mill on the Floss
• 137 time and internal seasons - there aer 7 stages just as there are 7 in Shakespeare's Ages of Man (though they don't match)
• Also a metafictive moment indicating how the narrative is structured like in ch 5
• why recapitulating bildung that has already happened?
• 139 anticipating lacan mirror stage/self awareness: what were Victorian understandings of this part of childhood dev?
• 140-1 religious print culture: Bible, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley
• 143 book flinging again
• 150 almost a climate change metaphor
• 153 Darwinian faith
• 160 Macbeth again
• 169 art after stranger's fable
• 170 another recursion into Waldo's past, this time diegetic
• 174 Illustrated London News on Gregory's wall
• 186-7 gender (and Robbin island, later mandelams prison)
• 191 Goethe
• 216-17 books/evolution/deep time
• 252 again Waldo's experienced narrated in retrospect through vehicle of letter (though not diegetically offset like Gregory's)
• 253 clerk lighting his pipe with book paper
• 276 Book throwing again, then Shakespeare
• 290 universal unity of souls

Theme tracking

* = reading/writing
= = materiality
- = history
+ = religion 
[dot] = evolution/enviro
o = imperialism
~ = labor/industry

Reading/writing

• 36 otto's bible
• 39 waldo's slate
• 45
• 48 types of stories/brown history book
• 54 books/objects in Otto's room
• 55 newspaper
• 56 bible
• 58 lyndall reading
• 59 Bonaparte's "publications"
• 61 Bonaparte's wife writing to Wellington's nephew
• 63 bottle kept behind books
• 64 lyndall reading
• 67 waldo reading bible

The leaves of the book had dropped blood for him once; they had taken the brightness out of his childhood; from between them had sprung the visions that had clung around him and made night horrible.

• 73 Bonaparte's service
• 74 Bonaparte reading
• 75 Otto
• 76 em forced to learn John 14, telling about Lyndall's reading/Bonaparte's teaching

copy quote

• 78 letter bonaparte's "wife died"
• 93 otto writing letter to children
• 94 packing bag with bible etc.
• 95 story-book under Otto's pillow
• 97 box full of books
• 99 "he [Bonaparte] shook each book till the old leaves fell down in showers on the floor."
• 100 documents in German
• 104 "...no more minding of sheep and reading of books at the same time."
• 108 box of books
• 109 Mill's Political Economy

copy quote

• 112 Bonaparte finds Mill
• 114 Sannie throws book at Waldo
• 114 They burn Mill
• 119 Bonaparte wanting to burn more books
• 139 Time and Seasons - "we can read now - read the Bible"
• 140 Jeremy Taylor
• 143 book-throwing again
• 151 saving money for Latin Grammar and Algebra
• 156 Gregory's books
• 170
• 172 Gregory's "bright French novel and an old brown volume"
• 174 Illustrated London News plastered on walls
• 175 Gregory writing to sister
• 176 memory of reading
• 179 Gregory communicating by folding letter paper
• 186 Lyndall working to buy books and newspapers
• 191 Goethe
• 205 Gregory writing to sister again
• 214 philosophy and history
• 217 "the books that our grandmothers fed on the mould is eating"
• 225 Lyndall writing letters
• 226 Lyndall's volume of plays, 230
• 245 gregory looking at waldo's books
• 251 letters
• 252ff Waldo writing to Lyndall (recapitulating his experiences)
• 276 Lyndall telling to throw books out window, Shakespeare volume
• 278 letter
• 287 "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death" (Revelation 20:15)

Materiality

• 36 the silver watch
• 44 "Bushman-paintings"
• 46 pinup in Sannie's room
• 49 "Bushman-paintings" again
• 54 books/objects in Otto's room
• 69 black cloth
• 77 gum "a commodity prized by the children"
• 77 Waldo's machine
• 82 Otto's blue bag with odds and ends inside
• 97 waldo's sheep-shearing machine model
• 105 waldo comforted by machine
• 114 Sannie throws book at Waldo
• 114 They burn Mill
• 126 Em: "I wonder you can cut out aprons when Waldo is shut up like that."
• 138 "Material things still rule, but the spiritual and intellectual take their places."
• 157
• 174 Illustrated London News plastered on walls
• 174 Gregory's watch
• 179 Gregory communicating by folding letter paper
• 211 preparation for Boer-Wedding
• 214 "dazed with the tallow candles"
• 223 returning to "old familiar objects"
• 296 "workbox full of coloured reels"

Important (Plot, etc.)

• 40 waldo's sacrifice
• 102 waldo rejects God
• 130 "The troubles of the young are soon over, they leave no external mark" & ff. - Cross ref with The Mill on the Floss (1860)
• 186ff. Lyndall and feminism
• 241 "Will nothing free me from myself?"
• 252ff Waldo writing to Lyndall (recapitulating his experiences)

Shakespeare references

• 107 Macbeth
• 160 Macbeth
• 276 "...leaned her little elbows resolutely on the great volume, and knit her brows. This was Shakespeare - it must mean something."