Narrative as a Way of Being: Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist

The Conservationist, together with two other novels written in the 1970s (Burger's Daughter and July's People), has often been seen as marking a shift in the development of Nadine Gordimer's artistic stance—from that of a detached observer committed to a humanistic vision and employing the tools of a European-conceived realism to a writer fully identified with her South African materials, forging an African artistic identity, and evolving an individualized technique; from, moreover, rendering individuals whose worlds are shaped by the realities of being South African to rendering characters seen as representing and embodying historical and political forces and processes. It is the aim of this paper to suggest that, contrary to prevailing critical opinion, the shift described is not unequivocal: in the delineation of the protagonist in The Conservationist, the vision of the individual on a personal inner quest has not been wholly superceded by this character's representing and playing out the inevitable destiny of his class and status. Rather, these two visions exist side by side, expressing, perhaps, ambivalence on the part of Gordimer herself.

The bulk of the narrative of The Conservationist involves the visits of Mehring, a white, successful, middle-aged South African capitalist in the period of apartheid, to his weekend farm, and the thoughts, feelings, and imaginary conversations that fill his mind as he meanders over the farmland and engages in conversation or activities with his black overseer, Jacobus. Through the narrator's allowing us not only to see Mehring as he walks about and drives his car but also to hear his thoughts and internal dialogues with people who are absent (mostly his ex-lover Antonia and his teenage son Terry), we learn about aspects of his "real life"—his business pursuits, his status in the world outside, his political views, and bits and pieces of his personal history, including his marriage and divorce, his affair with Antonia, his relations with his son, and his connection to South West Africa, where he financially supports an old German couple who are obviously but somewhat obscurely a part of his past.

In the opening pages of the narrative, the body of an unknown black man is discovered on Mehring's land. Due to bureaucratic incompetence and obviously racist attitudes, it is hastily buried by the police in a makeshift way where it has been found. The anonymous body under the ground disturbs Mehring, constantly coming into his thoughts as he walks about his land. Its shadowy haunting presence accompanies his growing sense of isolation both from his social life in town and from the blacks and Indians who live on and around his farm. Eventually, in a period of flooding, the body resurfaces, an event which symbolically resonates with Mehring's own gradual loss of control over various aspects of his life and with the flooding of his mind, in the last scenes of the novel, with horrifying fantasies and distorted visions that bespeak his shattered state of mind. When the body is finally given a proper burial by the black people on the farm, Mehring himself seems to have receded completely into the background, serving only to cover the costs of the burial.¹

In the various readings of the novel, the place given to the symbolic significance of the land and the body of the black man is, understandably, central (see, e.g., Wade 1978, Thorpe 1983, Cook 1985, Clingman 1986, and Head 1994). The writing of the novel, in 1974, coincided with historical events in South Africa when it was becoming clear, to whites as well as to blacks, that "the balance of history was demonstrably swinging" (Clingman 1986: 139), that white supremacy was nearing its end. It is in this decade that Gordimer's writing assumed its mature form and her stance as detached observer was largely replaced by a full engagement and identification with political and cultural issues—allowing critics, especially those writing from the post-colonial perspective, to embrace her as a post-colonial and an African writer. Thus, the resurfacing of the body in the novel and...