Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm- Repetition and the Inability to Escape

    Olive Schreiner’s novel The Story of an African Farm presented its contemporary readers with unfamiliar issues, so her writing style was extremely significant for presenting her ideas in a way that provided understanding and, most importantly, empathy. The novel focuses on gender and colonial issues, and Schreiner reflects the center of these issues in her writing style. A repetition of narrative shows the narration’s resistance to change and move on. The narration becomes imprisoned, much as Waldo is imprisoned in a world of abuse and solitude, and Lyndall is imprisoned in a world where her gender decides her fate. The pages are saturated with repeated ideas, phrases, and individual words, and this repetition, juxtaposed with the plot, reveals the concept of being trapped in a world of social hierarchy, and it also simply aids Schreiner’s explanation of her religious and social issues.
    This novel, in early sections, suggests it is on the path of becoming a bildungsroman, as it begins with the children at a young age. Soon, Waldo and Lyndall seem to undergo a significant change that leads to developing greater goals for his or her life. In fact, one section about Waldo even meticulously traces his spiritual change during his childhood, and readers learn that Lyndall successfully goes away to boarding school, as she has dreamed previously. However, despite these characters’ greatest efforts, they are constantly oppressed by a superior force, and neither can ultimately survive in a world away from the farm. On the very first page of the novel, Schreiner states that everything on the farm seems to be touched by an “oppressive beauty” (1). For Waldo, this force manifests itself in Bonaparte Blenkins, especially when he destroys Waldo’s book, since learning is Waldo’s strongest way of connecting himself to a wider world away from the farm. As Bonaparte has come to the farm and manipulatively displaced Waldo’s father, he acts as a small-scale colonizer of Waldo. For Lyndall, the oppressive force is actually her own gender, since women in the late 19th Century were still treated as inferiors to men. Thus, Schreiner uses colonization and gender inequality as oppressors that trap the children and prevent them from escaping the unsatisfying lives they are born into.

     Geographically, the characters are unable to escape the farm, as Schreiner does not allow Lyndall to live long once she has run away from the farm, nor does she allow Waldo to be happy during the time he is away, and so he returns. Stylistically, Schreiner has further represented the constraints of the farm with her abundance of repetition throughout the novel. When a word or phrase is repeated, the narration fails to develop or move on, just as colonization and societal prejudices prevent their victims from developing. Therefore, readers experience the same sense of entrapment as Waldo and Lyndall and can actually empathize with them. This technique was extremely important for Schreiner, since she was writing for a Victorian audience in England who was far removed from the happenings in South Africa and previously had little understanding of the consequences of oppression.
    One great, previously unexplored issue Schreiner presented in this novel to her Victorian readers was that of doubting and questioning religion. Early in the novel, Schreiner uses repetition to emphasize Waldo’s spiritual agony. Upon his introduction, Waldo awakes and lies in bed listening to the “tick--tick--tick!” of his father’s watch (3). To Waldo, each tick reminds him that “every time it [ticks], a man [dies]!” (3). Schreiner then goes on to repeat over and over that the ticking represents the “dying, dying, dying!” of “many, many, many!” (3). Apparently, this scene itself is a repetitive one for Waldo, as he constantly worries of men who are not Christian and are dying and going to Hell. Waldo is such a young boy, yet he is so overly concerned for these strangers that he is repeatedly tormented by the thoughts of their deaths. Schreiner uses Waldo to investigate a person’s religious struggles, and the abundant repetition successfully conveys the unrelenting torment of his early days when he is consumed by Christianity. Thus, his later questioning of such a harsh faith is more acceptable to readers who are Christian themselves, as no reader expects a child to carry such a heavy weight on his mind.
    Soon, Waldo transforms from being religious to being extremely spiritual without believing in a Christian god. His spirituality, as he grows older, is very akin to Naturalism, as he believes in the oneness and interconnectedness of everything in the universe. Repetition, again, becomes a useful tool for conveying this relationship between smaller ideas and wider ideas in the world because small-scale beings are merely reflections of the larger ones. Thus, Waldo realizes that the outline of the thorn-tree is the same shape as the “delicate metallic tracery between [the] rocks,” “the antlers of the horned beetle,” and “in that exact path does [the] water flow” (118). Waldo decides that these exact repetitions prove that they are “all the fine branches of one trunk, whose sap flows through  [everyone]” (118). Schreiner’s stylistic repetition has become a manifestation of the universe. As one word is similar, and often exactly the same, to the next word, one part of the earth is linked to any other.
    Finally, just before his own death, Waldo realizes that this thing that links all creatures to each other is, ironically, death. He believes that “Death’s finger is everywhere,” yet “it is but the man that dies, the Universal Whole of which he is part reworks him into its inmost self” (259). Essentially, “the body never dies, because it turns again to grass and flowers” (258). To Waldo, and apparently Schreiner, by the narrator’s frequent use of plural first person pronouns, repetition is essential for the cycle of life, as atoms do not vanish but rearrange to form new beings. In a parallel sense, for man, dreams are essential to life because “our fathers had their dream; we have ours; the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist” (260). This cycle of dreams mirrors the cycle of nature, and Schreiner believes it is as important to man as the cycle is important to the earth.
    As Schreiner has created repetitions to explain her spirituality to readers, some of her characters similarly use their dialogue. Bonaparte Blenkins, for example, often uses repetition in his dialogue. Readers know that his words are insincere, as his only intention from the beginning is to colonize the farm that is not rightfully his, but his repetitions are his attempt at masking his lies to others. Bonaparte constantly uses repetition to communicate with those he wants to manipulate--especially Tant Sannie. For example, when he gives a sermon at the farm’s church service, he superfluously addresses his listeners as “my friends” or “beloved friends” (38). In fact, none of these people are his friends, and most of them cannot even understand him. By repeating this simple phrase, he gives the impression that he cares deeply about others, even when they have just met. This benevolent façade aids his colonization attempt because Tant Sannie believes he is good and trusts his accusations, like those that lead to Otto’s exile from the farm. As Schreiner manipulates her readers into their empathy and reactions through repetition, Bonaparte manipulates his listeners into thinking his intentions are good.
    Similarly, Bonaparte uses others’ repetitions to manipulate them. Soon after Otto’s death, when Bonaparte has decided to use his influence on Tant Sannie to have complete control over Waldo, he ascertains from her repetitive language how to gain this power. Tant Sannie states that Waldo is “as mad as mad can be,” and Bonaparte perceives that “the repetition of the word mad conveyed meaning to [his] mind” (71). After realizing Tant Sannie fears Waldo’s madness, Bonaparte expresses his knowledge that the only thing to cure madness is “the front end of a little horsewhip” (71). Thus, Bonaparte easily convinces Tant Sannie to agree to his abusing Waldo, which Bonaparte believes will put him in complete control over the boy. When Bonaparte fears whatever “[accounts] for the marvelous change to the boy coming down the ladder from the boy going up the ladder” to the loft, he again decides to use physical abuse to control him. To get Tant Sannie’s permission, he simply points to Waldo’s book and repeats “sleg, sleg, Davel, Davel” (80), which are Dutch words he has picked up meaning “wicked Devil,” and Tant Sannie is successfully convinced. Again, Bonaparte has used repetition of language to manipulate those whom he attempts to colonize.
    Ultimately, Schreiner uses repetition to reflect her theme that social hierarchies trap and oppress those who are on the lower rungs. The novel’s protagonists’ suffer from colonization and gender inequality, and Schreiner’s repetition suggests that these hierarchies will continue to plague its victims until people take action and abolish these social inequalities altogether. Bonaparte, who alleges himself as an Irishman, represents this repetition of colonization, as Ireland was one of Great Britain’s first colonies. Yet, despite his people’s suffering, Bonaparte has no difficulty inflicting the same pains on weaker people. Tant Sannie even expresses this ease of repetition of abuse as she considers that she had “been beaten many times and been all the better for it” (91). Thus, The Story of an African Farm has characters whose suffering the reader can experience. This ability to empathize improves the efficacy of the novel’s message because it actually calls its readers to action to prevent these women and poor people from suffering due to others’ thirst for power.