Cathartic Womanhood: Imperialism and Femininity in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm

Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883) can be read as an anti-colonial novel, with colonialism equating patriarchy. This postcolonial reading is permitted through the characters’ rebellion against what seem to be prevalent rules of the society regarding race, gender, culture, and religion. By virtue of being a woman, one is made to refuse the patriarchal/imperial society. Through being a woman, or through womanhood in general (a status assumed even by some male characters) we are able to arrive at a symbiosis between the characters and their consciences. This reading provides the reader with the tools to understand the changes that occur in the characters as well as the interaction between them and the novel’s landscape, which seems to represent the natural aversion to the imposed, “unnatural” colonial rule.