Recently admitted to feminism's pantheon, South African-born
Schreiner was in her day (the late 1800's and early 1900's) a
writer and public figure noted as much for her advanced opinions as
for her unusual friends and personal eccentricities. But,
unfortunately, and this is always a danger in hagiography,
Berkman's Schreiner is so clever, so wonderful, and oh so dull.
Contending that Schreiner's passionate concern for the major issues
of her time was both her great contribution to posterity and her
major weakness, though of an eminently pardonable kind, Berkman
(History/U. Mass at Amherst) examines the evolution of this legacy.
Born to missionary parents, and the author of the first major South
African novel (The Story of an African Farm), Schreiner also spent
many years in England. Politically active in both countries,
Schreiner in South Africa was against British Imperialism, sided
with the Boers in the Anglo-Boer war, and supported black
empowerment. In England, she sided with the socialists,
suffragettes, and free thinkers, and befriended Havelock Ellis, the
well-known writer on sex. Her daring if unoriginal ideas, Berkman
believes, were shaped by childhood observations of nature and
relations with her family; her courage in articulating these ideas
makes Schreiner a formidable figure. The author contends, however,
that her failure to explore fully such ideas as black empowerment
and women's equality, and to resolve the tensions between what she
believed was right and what she observed in reality, detracts
somewhat from this accomplishment, a judgment perhaps too
reflective of a contemporary perspective. Like Virginia Woolf,
Schreiner was an original and seminal feminist, and deserves our
attention. Berkman's research cannot be faulted, but her Schreiner
is an elusive if saintly figure, overwhelmed by overstated
arguments, clumsy style, and an excess of academic jargon. (Kirkus
Reviews)
A biography of Olive Shreiner the first white South African
novelist to win international recognition, Olive Schreiner
(1855-1920) was also known for her political and social treatises,
which promoted feminism, socialism, pacifism, and free thought and
which criticized racism and British imperialism.
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