Politics of Hospitality in The Story of an African Farm

Rachel Hollander

Published in 1883, Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm clearly participates in many of the central political debates of the fin-de-siecle, but with its hybrid form, rural South African setting, and “new woman” story line, it also defies easy categorization. In this early work, Schreiner notoriously refuses to address head-on the colonial power struggles between African natives and European settlers, choosing to focus instead on the tensions between English, Dutch, and German characters, while relegating the Africans to the margins. As with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, however, the question of the novel’s political and especially ethical investment cannot be settled by looking only at the level of plot and character.

Focusing on the farm as an example of what Homi Bhabha has termed the “unhomely” colonial setting, I argue that the novel engages with the politics of hospitality in both theme and narrative form, as the story of Waldo and Lyndall unfolds around the problem of leaving home, the welcome of the stranger, and the risks and possibilities of opening oneself to the other. The instability and unconventionality of relations between characters are echoed by the novel’s multiple voices and fractured structure, as Schreiner suggests the possibility of radically new understandings of gender and intimacy. To fully appreciate the complexity of the politics of the novel, its suppression of colonial others must be seen in tension with its exploration of the possibilities of unconditional hospitality.