In the Heart of the Country by J. M. Coetzee
"In the Heart of the Country" is J. M. Coetzee's second novel, set in early 20th century South Africa. The narrative is delivered through the perspective of Magda, a white spinster living on a farm with her domineering father, who embodies the harsh realities of colonial life. As the story unfolds, Magda grapples with her isolation and the emotional turmoil resulting from her father's relationship with a black mistress. This dynamic triggers a series of extreme reactions from Magda, leading to a blurring of the line between reality and fantasy in her narrative. The novel features a complex exploration of violence and desire, as Magda enacts various violent fantasies towards her father and his mistress, illustrating her psychological distress. The unreliable nature of her storytelling raises fundamental questions about the nature of reality and the impact of personal trauma. Central to the narrative are themes of disorientation and alienation, reflecting both Magda's inner struggles and the broader socio-political landscape of South Africa during this period. Coetzee's work challenges readers to consider the intricate layers of truth and perception within the context of a deeply troubled environment.
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In the Heart of the Country by J. M. Coetzee
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1977
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The narrator of Coetzee’s second novel, In the Heart of the Country, is a virginal white spinster named Magda, who is living at the beginning of the twentieth century on a South African farm with her father and several servants and field hands. Magda’s father is the callous ruler of the farm; his character and the isolation of farm life in South Africa have a decided effect on Magda’s psychology. When her father takes a black mistress, Magda’s reactions are not only extreme, but the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur.
In conventional literary terms, Magda’s narrative may be considered “unreliable,” because of inconsistencies in the sequence of events and in the manner of presentation. For example, in one scene, Magda brutally kills her father and his mistress with an ax while they are in bed; a little later, her father is up and about. A little later still, Magda once again enacts a scenario motivated by both envy and vengeance, shooting her father as he is in the midst of a sexual act; toward the novel’s end, after an elaborate and illegal burial of her father, Magda is nevertheless still conversing with him. There are a variety of sexual encounters, although these seem to arise from Magda’s wishful imagination, rather than as a record of actual happenings. There are sexual undercurrents in her relationships with the two men, her father and the servant Hendrik; even her conversations with Hendrik’s young wife, Klein-Anna, seem filled with erotic tensions, and in one scene, Magda makes a proposition to the couple that suggests the existence of a love triangle. Magda’s narrative, like that of Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee, is motivated by highly intense and personal wishes and desires. If the accounts themselves appear dubious to the reader, however, they are accurate renditions of the narrator’s troubled psychological state. Coetzee seems to pose this question throughout the novel: What is real, what is reality? At the heart of the journal entries, what is actual may remain forever unknown, but what is certain is the disorientation and alienation that Magda experiences as a result of her life in South Africa.
Bibliography
Attridge, Derek. J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Gallagher, Susan. A Story of South Africa: J. M. Coetzee’s Fiction in Context. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Head, Dominic. J. M. Coetzee. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Huggan, Graham, and Stephen Watson, eds. Critical Perspectives on J. M. Coetzee. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Kossew, Sue, ed. Critical Essays on J. M. Coetzee. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998.
Poyner, Jane, ed. J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006.
Wright, Laura. Writing “Out of all the Camps”: J. M. Coetzee’s Narratives of Displacement. New York: Routledge, 2006