Scan barcode
A review by emma_probett
The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner, Dan Jacobson
4.0
'There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, “Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.”'
I remember watching this as a very young child, an old adaptation even then. I remember it because it had, what I thought at the time, was a disappointing ending. I think it might have been the first period drama I watched where the woman didn't change (remarkable within itself - I do seem to be partial still to bildungsroman in which there is a big reveal), and the men's feelings didn't change because of that, which is even more remarkable. The men in this novel all love Lyndall. They idolise Lyndall. They do not understand Lyndall. Only Waldo gets close. He remembers her as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult. He remembers and knows her in her entirety, although he often doesn't understand her. But what gives Waldo credence over the other men in this story is that to the end, he thinks and refers to her as a friend. Echoing, a novel yet to be written, Anne of Green Gables, she is his "heart's friend".
This novel returned to me in quotes in Vera Brittain's 'Testament of Youth', in which she spoke about Schreiner and Feminism, thinking about the New Woman, and how literature was changing and shaping her ideas even before the First World War broke out. For such an old book, Waldo's final outcry for Lyndall remains appealing to a modern audience, an audience that no doubt must steal navigate the whore-Madonna complex, ironically ignoring all complexity:
“Change is death, change is death!” he cried. “I want no angel, only she; no holier and no better, with all her sins upon her, so give her me or give me nothing!”
I remember watching this as a very young child, an old adaptation even then. I remember it because it had, what I thought at the time, was a disappointing ending. I think it might have been the first period drama I watched where the woman didn't change (remarkable within itself - I do seem to be partial still to bildungsroman in which there is a big reveal), and the men's feelings didn't change because of that, which is even more remarkable. The men in this novel all love Lyndall. They idolise Lyndall. They do not understand Lyndall. Only Waldo gets close. He remembers her as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult. He remembers and knows her in her entirety, although he often doesn't understand her. But what gives Waldo credence over the other men in this story is that to the end, he thinks and refers to her as a friend. Echoing, a novel yet to be written, Anne of Green Gables, she is his "heart's friend".
This novel returned to me in quotes in Vera Brittain's 'Testament of Youth', in which she spoke about Schreiner and Feminism, thinking about the New Woman, and how literature was changing and shaping her ideas even before the First World War broke out. For such an old book, Waldo's final outcry for Lyndall remains appealing to a modern audience, an audience that no doubt must steal navigate the whore-Madonna complex, ironically ignoring all complexity:
“Change is death, change is death!” he cried. “I want no angel, only she; no holier and no better, with all her sins upon her, so give her me or give me nothing!”