Representation of Women in Disgrace - Essay Example

Representation of women and how Lucy refutes the claims of patriarchy in the novel, Disgrace By J.M coetzee The story is set in the South Africa post-apartheid. It narrates the story of David Lurie, a 52-year old Communication and Romantic Poetry professor. He has divorced twice in his life. He works at Cape Technical University teaching the two mentioned areas of his profession. He believes that he has made an achievement in the creation of a comfortable life for himself. His life revolves within his finance and emotions. His position at the campus has been reduced, but that does not make him stop his dutiful teaching. He is dedicated in his work, though he is much older than some of his fellow teachers or professors. He is aged, and this has diminished his attractiveness, as well as, weekly visits to the prostitute to satisfy his sexual desires. He, however, still considers himself a happy man. When he seduces one of his own students, he ensures that he sets in a particular motion that will automatically sets in a particular chain of events that will later his complacency and leave him in a perplexed and utterly disgraced. He pursues his relationship with the young woman, Melanie. He describes her as having hips and as slim as a twelve year old girl. He becomes obsessed with her and consequently forgets or ignores her decision not to have sex. Melanie and her dad lodge a case against the professor and he is brought before the academic committee where he admits his mistake. However, he becomes reluctant and refuses to express or show any repentance to his action. In the other side of the case, the professor is jeered by his students, ridiculed by his ex-wife, and threatened by Melanie’s boyfriend. Finally, he is forced to resign fro his work. He takes a step and flees Cape Town for the sake of his daughter Lucy’s smallholdings in the African nation. He struggles hard to do the rekindling of his relationship with Lucy. He also comprehends the changing relationships between the blacks and the whites in South Africa by then. When three black strangers enter their house with an aim of making a phone call, they are scared and troubled. What follows is a harrowing afternoon full with violence that leaves them quite apart. Lurie discovers the vandalism of his home and decides to seek refuge in his daughter’s home. He later volunteers himself in the animal clinic where he helps. In summary, Coetzee’s book mainly explores the failure or the downfall of a man and dramatizes using unforgettable and unbearable vividness to portray the plight of a nation undergoing chaotic aftermath centuries of racial prejudices. This paper is meant to discuss the way women in the South African society are revealed or represented. To begin with, women face troubles and sufferings in the South African society. Raping is not a new term to the author of the novel. Lucy, the owner of the holdings is gang raped and left is left in a terrible condition. Despite this, Lucy chooses to remain quiet about the incidence. She takes no legal step against her offenders. This shows that the women in the post-apartheid African nation lacked the necessary courage to face and oppose some of the practices inflicted unto them by their male counterparts. After the incident, her father Lurie says, “It will dawn on them that over the body of the woman silence is being drawn like a blanket” (Coetzee 98). The entire book reveals the central incidence of narrative setting as sexual violation. However, in most cases there is absence of experience or evidence of those who have been sexually abused in one way or the other. This is an indication that women, in the novel have been portrayed as cowards and fearful individuals who are ignorant about their rights to have freedom of privacy; they are not aware of any rights that protect their safety from sexual and other physical violence. Lurie’s quoted say depicts the naivety of most women who are undergoing suffering and torture by men, but are always quiet about it. There are reasons why women do most feel like revealing the problems affecting in the southern African nation. Quite a number of them suffer from shamefulness; they are ashamed of revealing what they are undergoing to their male counterparts for immediate helps. Secondly, they have developed a natural and automatic fear of man. This is because the men are the ones who cause most of their problems. The other evidence in the book on women sacrilege is when Lurie, a professor goes ahead and seduces his student, Melanie. This is unethical in any matriculation institution. He lacks self-control and is attracted to a student whose age is quite lower than his. When he is questioned by the university’s academic staff on the matter, she does snot hesitate but says bravely that he is responsible for the meeting’s proceeding; that is, he is the reason behind the holding of the meeting. He is the subject, to give it more succinctness. The relationship between Lurie and his daughter, Lucy has frequently been strained. She knows her father’s history with women. She knows and is aware that her dad has always brought trouble to himself because of women. She holds him responsible for his own troubles. To give it more lucidity, .Lurie, in reverie thinks of all women in a funny or rather crowd way, “…a stream of images pours down…” these are images of women that the old man has known on two continents. The author uses simile to underscores this issue when he writes, “Like leaves blown on wind, pell-mell, they pass before him.” (Coetzee 102). The old man, in his meditation, talks of a German girl whom he picked bys the roadside and spent a night with. He is wondering whether the women he had met before also remembered him the way he does. From the incidence of the German girl, it is quite clear and cogent that the women in the novel lack their principles. They have been depicted tools used by men in the achievement of their sexual desires. Women in this society are used to pay for debts or crimes committed by their male relatives or friends. For instance, Lucy serves as a payback to the white community whom her father Lurie seduced their daughter at the University. Lucy pays this painfully by allowing gangs to rape her repeatedly. When asked by her father to object, she replies, “Don’t shout at me David. This is my life. I am the one who has to live here …they see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live without paying?” (Coetzee 89). Lurie’s reverie on the number of women he had spent time with has more literal meaning than the mere understanding of a text or an excerpt within a novel. Analyzed in a critical and lucid manner, this point suggests the desperation nature of the women within this society. Desperation makes them view men as a source of their own pride and success, to say the least. Several women (stream) surrounding one man in the modern society is definitely and arguably an evidence that gives a leeway to the conclusion that they are desperate in one way or the other. According to the novel, Lucy is arguably and evidently regarded as a patriarch. She wants peace within the society. She is also driven by her father’s safety. This drives her to easily subject herself to sexual violence among the African men. He does this with an aim of reducing the wraths, cooling down, or paying for her father’s mischievous step of seducing a university student. In addition to the above, Lucy is a patriarch of the two conflicting societies as she is ready to marry Petrus, an African man whose relative had raped her. Her father is totally against the step, but Lucy grows a lot of impatience when her father objects her decisions. She expresses her desperation. She is pregnant, she has no brothers, and she is poor and therefore needs someone who can care for her. She prefers Petrus, although he has a close relationship with the rapist. This implies that Lucy is ready to become a relative to one of her rapists. This is an epitome of forgiveness in the heart of the European girl. She is a symbol of unity between the two societies. Coetzee has used her to come to a resolution for the long and perilous war and desperation between the two groups. When her father objects the decision she reacts, “‘I don’t believe you get the point, David. Petrus is…” (Coetzee 132). From the above illustrations, it is conclusive that Coetzee has proven his literary knowledge and skills in coming up with a coherent story based on discrimination as a core theme. The entire book addresses gender and racial discrimination between the two races. Women in the society have been shown as the main target of men whose intention is to satisfy the human desires. Lucy, as one of the main characters in the novel, has been used as a source of reconciliation between the two societies. Work Cited Coetzee, John. Disgrace. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2000. Print. Read More