Nadine Gordimer’s
July’s People
{
An Introduction including Cultural Context
Nadine Gordimer
• images taken from <powayusd.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/. ../pages/April_14.htm>
Nadine Gordimer




Born in 1923 in Springs, South Africa
1991 Nobel Prize of Literature Winner
Daughter of Isidore and Nan Gordimer (Jewish immigrant
parents)
Has witnessed how the minority white people weakened the
rights of the majority black people since she was a child.

Written in 1981 in the wake of uprisings of the 1970s, July’s People
is the imagined end to South African Apartheid.

Gordimer’s prophecy was bleak and cynical, and predicted an
overthrow of the apartheid system by Black South Africans

July's People captures the mood of a South Africa expecting
revolutionary violence just like that experienced by neighboring
countries. Instead of writing about a revolution, however, the
novel assumes such an event will happen and imagines what
affect it might have on a liberal white family. In this case, the
family decides to accept their servant's offer of refuge and flee to
his village to wait out the war.
Cultural Context
Apartheid was a system of legalized racial segregation enforced by the National Party
(NP) South African government between 1948 and 1994.
With the foundation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 (first as a British
dominion),racial segregation began to be officially implemented through
The Native’s Land Act of 1913. This first piece of segregationist legislation was intended
to restrict the ownershipand acquisition of land by blacks throughout the four provinces
of the Union of SouthAfrica. When the Afrikaner Nationalists (the National Party) came
to power in 1948, the system of apartheid was systematized and institutionalized under
extensive legislation.
The implementation of the policy was made possible by The Population Registration Act of
1950, which put all South Africans into three racial categories: Bantu (black African),
White, or Coloured (of mixed race). A fourth category, Asian (Indians andPakistanis), was
added later. Having legalized racial segregation through the previousAct, the Afrikaner
government further enforced the system of apartheid by a series of laws passed in the
1950s.
Apartheid
Various laws applied in the use of
public facilities, like chairs, toilets, bus
stops, stair-cases, etc.
Warnings
Student Uprising: 1976




Black students were
forced to learn in
Afrikaans.
Protests against
Afrikaans started.
More than 500 black
students killed by
white policemen.
More than a
thousand men,
women and
children wounded.
{ Novel’s Epigraph {
“The old is dying and
the new cannot be born;
in this interregnum
there arises a great
diversity of morbid
symptoms.” – Antonio
“Interregnum”
Definition = gap
between governments
or social structures
Gramsci Prison Notebooks
What is the tone of the epigraph towards the new? What word choices
suggest this? Thus, what is Gordimer’s take on it?
Important Themes & Ideas
of novel

Power shifts between
“master” and “slave”,
between the “colonized” and
the “colonizer”

Critique of white liberalism

Critique of complicit,
unknowing racism

Exposing the falsity &
hollowness of class / social
structures

Effect of language on power
dynamics

Effect of gender on power
dynamics
Even though the novel is told in 3rd
person narration, the protagonist is
clearly Maureen Smales. Gordimer’s
disassociating and jarring style mimics
the jarring uprooting of Maureen from
her comfortable upper class white
existence. Disorienting sentences /
paragraphs for you = connect to meaning
for the character.
{
Gordimer’s Style



Symbols of modern
world: the gun, the
Bakkie & keys, the
things the family brings
along, Coca-Cola, toilet
paper, the radio, etc.
Symbols of the future
(the children)



Minor characters
(Martha, the Chief,
July’s protégé, etc)
The body
The boar hunt
Etc.
Important Symbols
The White Tiger
 Urban vs. Rural
settings
 Master & Slave Role
Reversal
 Revolution of the
poor/oppressed
 Critique of colonization
 Exposing hypocrisy of
upper class
Cloudstreet
 Urban vs. Rural settings
 Personal journeys of
characters
 Water as
renewal/cleansing
 Post-war dynamics
 Emasculation of male
characters
 Children as Hope for the
future
Connections to Ponder
(come up with more)