Reading The Stone Virgins as Vera's Study of the Katabolism of War

The article addresses Vera's unusual foregrounding of a violent male figure in The Stone Virgins—that of the dissident war veteran Sibaso, whose acts of murder and rape are depicted in mesmeric detail, as is his inner life. This focus in the text is read as serving Vera's analysis of the deforming, decreating effects of war on the individual psyche and on wider social forms. The densities of Vera's style and the disquieting shifts in narrative perspective in this text are interpreted as serving her sustained enquiry into the nature and effects of war. It is argued here that close textual engagement with this novel disproves standard critical notions about Vera's feminine focus in her writing, arguing that from the beginning of The Stone Virgins the writer establishes—albeit in a challenging and interrogative context—her particular interest here in the results of male subjugation to authority forms. It is argued that in a broader sense Vera contextualizes this focus through her cautionary and by no means merely valedictory portrayal of certain female war veterans, and in her recognition by way of contrast of the soft strength of such figures as Nonceba, Thenjiwe, and Cephas.