Social Concerns : Race, Gender, Identity and Communal Spheres in Nadine Gordimer's Selected Novel

English Literature

The society in South Africa remains an unequal society based on social class perspective. Even the authorities admit that the society is divided into the rich, middle class and the poor. These reflect the purchasing power of different classes. The rich continues to have economic advantage, the middle class are in high depth of debts, and the poor are trapped in poverty. Gordimer’s novels are so valuable historically because they are so accomplished and developed as fiction.Connecting outer social reality and the inner self, Gordimer’s works are concerned with “private reverberations of public occurrences". Her works are indeed artistic transformations of social reality. As a writer with social consciousness and a social activist who rose against anti-human establishment, Gordimer displays an unmatched skill in integrating the political moods of her society into the very form and texture of her fiction. Nadine Gordimer’s fictional characters embody unease and often resentment with social class, expected cultural roles, and place. In her fiction, the conflicting notions of space and self are tied to gender, class, and identity. Gordimer’s characters are victims of circumstance, of birth, of place, but in addition to the feeling of exile linked to these factors, her fiction draws attention to female spheres, communal spaces, domesticity, and sexuality. In my research paper, I propose to analyze selected fictional works (novels and short stories) by Nadine Gordimer.I will propose how Nadine Gordimer presented black people in her novels, their conditions and their ways of living.The questions I will thus investigate are: How do the black and white people deal with the Race, Gender and Communal Spheres.

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