Olive Schreiner (1855–1920)
Author of The Story of an African Farm
About the Author
Image credit: Ratsumies Peter Halket Mashonamaasta (published in 1909 in Finland), by Olive Schreiner (1855–1920), translated by Aino Malmberg (1865–1933).
Works by Olive Schreiner
Dreams and Dream life and real life 3 copies
Sny 2 copies
Schreiner, Olive Archive 1 copy
The Buddhist Priest's Wife 1 copy
Three Dreams in a Desert 1 copy
Van man tot man 1 copy
Dreams 1891 [Leather Bound] 1 copy
The South African Question 1 copy
Associated Works
Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siècle (1993) — Contributor — 205 copies, 2 reviews
What Did Miss Darrington See? An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction (1989) — Contributor — 126 copies
Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers: 1852-1923 (2020) — Contributor — 108 copies, 2 reviews
The Lifted Veil: The Book of Fantastic Literature by Women 1800-World War II (1806) — Contributor — 45 copies
Femmes de Siècle: Stories from the 90s - Women Writing at the End of Two Centuries (1992) — Contributor — 18 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Schreiner, Olive Emilie Albertina (Birth name)
Cronwright, Olive Emilie Albertina - Other names
- Iron, Ralph
- Birthdate
- 1855-03-24
- Date of death
- 1920-12-11
- Gender
- female
- Education
- at home
- Occupations
- feminist
novelist
essayist
governess
political activist - Relationships
- Cronwright-Schreiner, S. C. (spouse)
- Short biography
- Olive Schreiner was born to a German father and an English mother, missionaries in South Africa. Despite their strict religion, their household was erratic, and Olive's education rested primarily on her mother and her own reading. When her older brother was appointed headmaster at a school in Cradock, she went to live with him and received a formal education for the first time. She then worked as a governess for about 8 years. Olive studied the works of a wide range of prominent Victorian intellectuals, wrote a number of her own short stories, and began to develop her own social ideas. During this time, Olive saved enough to buy herself passage to England, where she hoped to study medicine. However, she had to abandon this plan due to her own poor health. She published her first book, The Story of an African Farm, in 1883, which launched her career as a novelist and social activist. In 1894, she married Samuel Cronwright, a politically active farmer in South Africa, who shared her views. Her works included much political and social criticism, and some were published under the pseudonym "Ralph Iron." She opposed Cecil Rhodes' colonialist policies in Africa as well as England's involvement in the Boer War. She also supported the women's suffrage movement and took a pacifistic stance against World War I.
- Nationality
- South Africa
- Birthplace
- Wittebergen, South Africa
- Places of residence
- Wittebergen, Cape Colony, South Africa
England, UK
Healdtown, South Africa
Cradock, South Africa - Place of death
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Burial location
- Buffels Kop, Crodock, South Africa
- Associated Place (for map)
- South Africa
Members
Reviews
Anyone reading this in hopes of learning something about 19th century colonial agronomy will be sorely disappointed: apart from the occasional mention of goats and sheep, this book is a farming-free zone. Maybe crops are being grown off-stage by indentured natives (or "woolly Kaffers" to use the author's terminology), but the Karoo farmstead where Schreiner lays her scene is a venue for delvings and harrowings of the philosophical rather than the agricultural sort.
The story, such as it is, show more concerns the growing-up of Waldo, Em and Lyndall. Em, nice but dim, is the stepdaughter of the twice-widowed but still ebullient farm proprietress Tant Sannie (or "the Boer woman" as the text prefers to call her). The precocious Lyndall, also an orphan, is Em's cousin. Waldo, a spiritual seeker, is the son of the German overseer. In part one their lives, hardly blissful to begin with, take a turn for the worse when one of the most preposterous baddies in all of literature shows up in the form of Bonaparte Blenkins, a sadistic conman who makes your average Dickens villain look like a Proustian character study. He wheedles his way into Tant Sannie's affections and proceeds to be utterly beastly to the kids, while Waldo grapples with the contradictions of religion and Lyndall with her awakening feminism.
Finally Blenkins comes unstuck and Tant Sannie kicks him out. Then it's time for Schreiner to lay it on thick with a section called "Times and Seasons", a rudely interpolated Ted Talk on the stages of (Waldo's, but also every thinking man's) religious development. There's an even more nauseating excursus a bit later, when a stranger passes through the farm and narrates a Bunyanesque allegory to Waldo ("then the hunter took from his breast the shuttle of Imagination, and wound on it the thread of his Wishes; and all night he sat and wove a net.") I think the phrase "show, don't tell" is very overused, but every writer should keep it in mind to avoid producing deadly stuff like this.
I suppose this is why people read the book today, for its atheist and feminist themes (the feminism comes later as we see what became of Lyndall). Fair enough, but I found it torturous. Schreiner's prose, not what you'd call subtle, veers wildly between mawkish (any description of Lyndall), archaic (three uses of "ever and anon", "Em needed not to send for him", "next morning the Bible we kiss") and unintentionally hilarious ("the hypocrite is rare as icebergs in the tropics"). Sometimes she comes up with glutinous gems like "he fixed his seething eyes upon her" and "the beautiful eyes looked into the depths of her soul".
There was one scene that I didn't have to force myself through like a wagon driver lashing his oxen up a muddy kopje: Tant Sannie eventually remarries and we're treated to a Boer wedding. Of course, being a Boer wedding it's not as much fun as a Greek wedding for example or an Armenian or a Hindu one. But there is still dancing, and a better spread than the usual roaster-cakes and mealies, and some people at least (go Em) enjoy themselves. The other incident that piqued my interest was when Gregory (another random who shows up at the farm later on and falls in love with first Em and then Lyndall) suddenly puts on womenswear and seems quite pleased with himself. But it turns out his transvestism is only the act of a lovesick mooncalf: by disguising himself as a woman, he hopes to get closer to little Lyndall and her little head, face, lips, hands, fingers...
This brings me to my last point. Schreiner's feminism is powerfully and clearly expressed through the character of Lyndall. But in proportion as she draws Lyndall's personality as independent, rational, and generally by contemporary standards unwomanly, she seems to feel the need to describe her physically as dainty, delicate, the image of womanly weakness. Perhaps this is ironic or a spoonful of treacle to help her controversial message go down. But she isn't terribly creative in how she does it. I did some textual analysis and it turns out the word "little" appears 508 times in The Story of an African Farm, accounting for one in every 200 words — five times its frequency in English as a whole. By my count 74 of these usages are in reference to Lyndall. They break down as follows:
Lyndall generally — 18
Parts of Lyndall — 56:
Hand(s) — 12
Foot/feet/footmarks — 11
Face — 5
Mouth — 4
Finger(s) — 4
Lip(s) — 3
Laugh — 3
Head — 3 (of which 1 indirect)
Chin — 2
Body — 2
Limbs, fingernail, arms, cheek, teeth, neck, life, toe, elbows, voice, soul — 1 each
That is, the only parts of Lyndall that aren't little are her nose, ears, eyes, jaw, tongue, shoulders, hips, knees, calves, ankles. We are told that she is "beautiful" three times, and that her eyes are "beautiful" no fewer than eight times. It's absolutely mad. Someone please enroll Olive in a creative writing class or just buy her a bloody thesaurus! show less
The story, such as it is, show more concerns the growing-up of Waldo, Em and Lyndall. Em, nice but dim, is the stepdaughter of the twice-widowed but still ebullient farm proprietress Tant Sannie (or "the Boer woman" as the text prefers to call her). The precocious Lyndall, also an orphan, is Em's cousin. Waldo, a spiritual seeker, is the son of the German overseer. In part one their lives, hardly blissful to begin with, take a turn for the worse when one of the most preposterous baddies in all of literature shows up in the form of Bonaparte Blenkins, a sadistic conman who makes your average Dickens villain look like a Proustian character study. He wheedles his way into Tant Sannie's affections and proceeds to be utterly beastly to the kids, while Waldo grapples with the contradictions of religion and Lyndall with her awakening feminism.
Finally Blenkins comes unstuck and Tant Sannie kicks him out. Then it's time for Schreiner to lay it on thick with a section called "Times and Seasons", a rudely interpolated Ted Talk on the stages of (Waldo's, but also every thinking man's) religious development. There's an even more nauseating excursus a bit later, when a stranger passes through the farm and narrates a Bunyanesque allegory to Waldo ("then the hunter took from his breast the shuttle of Imagination, and wound on it the thread of his Wishes; and all night he sat and wove a net.") I think the phrase "show, don't tell" is very overused, but every writer should keep it in mind to avoid producing deadly stuff like this.
I suppose this is why people read the book today, for its atheist and feminist themes (the feminism comes later as we see what became of Lyndall). Fair enough, but I found it torturous. Schreiner's prose, not what you'd call subtle, veers wildly between mawkish (any description of Lyndall), archaic (three uses of "ever and anon", "Em needed not to send for him", "next morning the Bible we kiss") and unintentionally hilarious ("the hypocrite is rare as icebergs in the tropics"). Sometimes she comes up with glutinous gems like "he fixed his seething eyes upon her" and "the beautiful eyes looked into the depths of her soul".
There was one scene that I didn't have to force myself through like a wagon driver lashing his oxen up a muddy kopje: Tant Sannie eventually remarries and we're treated to a Boer wedding. Of course, being a Boer wedding it's not as much fun as a Greek wedding for example or an Armenian or a Hindu one. But there is still dancing, and a better spread than the usual roaster-cakes and mealies, and some people at least (go Em) enjoy themselves. The other incident that piqued my interest was when Gregory (another random who shows up at the farm later on and falls in love with first Em and then Lyndall) suddenly puts on womenswear and seems quite pleased with himself. But it turns out his transvestism is only the act of a lovesick mooncalf: by disguising himself as a woman, he hopes to get closer to little Lyndall and her little head, face, lips, hands, fingers...
This brings me to my last point. Schreiner's feminism is powerfully and clearly expressed through the character of Lyndall. But in proportion as she draws Lyndall's personality as independent, rational, and generally by contemporary standards unwomanly, she seems to feel the need to describe her physically as dainty, delicate, the image of womanly weakness. Perhaps this is ironic or a spoonful of treacle to help her controversial message go down. But she isn't terribly creative in how she does it. I did some textual analysis and it turns out the word "little" appears 508 times in The Story of an African Farm, accounting for one in every 200 words — five times its frequency in English as a whole. By my count 74 of these usages are in reference to Lyndall. They break down as follows:
Lyndall generally — 18
Parts of Lyndall — 56:
Hand(s) — 12
Foot/feet/footmarks — 11
Face — 5
Mouth — 4
Finger(s) — 4
Lip(s) — 3
Laugh — 3
Head — 3 (of which 1 indirect)
Chin — 2
Body — 2
Limbs, fingernail, arms, cheek, teeth, neck, life, toe, elbows, voice, soul — 1 each
That is, the only parts of Lyndall that aren't little are her nose, ears, eyes, jaw, tongue, shoulders, hips, knees, calves, ankles. We are told that she is "beautiful" three times, and that her eyes are "beautiful" no fewer than eight times. It's absolutely mad. Someone please enroll Olive in a creative writing class or just buy her a bloody thesaurus! show less
Elaine Showalter sums up Schreiner as "A freethinker marked to the marrow of her bones with the Calvinism of her missionary parents; a disciple of Darwin, Mill and Spencer who floated in a sea of sentimentality; a dedicated writer who could never finish a book; a feminist who hated being a woman; a maternal spirit who never became a mother — everything about her life is a paradox." Not totally straightforward then!
This is really exactly the kind of book you would expect from a complicated, show more clever young person who grew up in the arch-conservative back of beyond in a time seething with exciting new ideas. It's about a couple of sisters, the wild and progressive Lyndall and the placid and domesticated Em, growing up on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape together with young Waldo, the overseer's son, working as a farmhand but looking as though he is going to turn into a brilliant engineer, or possibly a poet, or a sculptor, or none of the above. Throw in an Afrikaans stepmother, an Irish con-man, a cross-dressing farm-manager, and a trunk full of our late father's radical books, and tragedy is just about inevitable.
There are glorious chapter-long feminist rants, endless agonising about what it really means to live in a world where you can't seriously believe in God any more, more symbolism than you can shake an elaborately-carved stick at, lots of lovely African scenery and weather, a bizarrely complicated series of emotional and sexual entanglements, and a large supporting cast of nameless black people treated with a curious mixture of late-Victorian "scientific" racism and semi-enlightened humanity. A book so hopelessly messy that you can pull just about anything you like out of it, but a great account of growing up in confusing times, all the same. show less
This is really exactly the kind of book you would expect from a complicated, show more clever young person who grew up in the arch-conservative back of beyond in a time seething with exciting new ideas. It's about a couple of sisters, the wild and progressive Lyndall and the placid and domesticated Em, growing up on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape together with young Waldo, the overseer's son, working as a farmhand but looking as though he is going to turn into a brilliant engineer, or possibly a poet, or a sculptor, or none of the above. Throw in an Afrikaans stepmother, an Irish con-man, a cross-dressing farm-manager, and a trunk full of our late father's radical books, and tragedy is just about inevitable.
There are glorious chapter-long feminist rants, endless agonising about what it really means to live in a world where you can't seriously believe in God any more, more symbolism than you can shake an elaborately-carved stick at, lots of lovely African scenery and weather, a bizarrely complicated series of emotional and sexual entanglements, and a large supporting cast of nameless black people treated with a curious mixture of late-Victorian "scientific" racism and semi-enlightened humanity. A book so hopelessly messy that you can pull just about anything you like out of it, but a great account of growing up in confusing times, all the same. show less
I was a bit surprised at this novel: it's published in 1883, so the same year Wilkie Collins finished Heart and Science, and the year after Thomas Hardy wrote Two on a Tower. Yet its much more prescient of modernism than either of those late Victorian works, reminding me more of early James Joyce or E. M. Forster than Schreiner's actual contemporaries. It has a fragmented, difficult style, but one appropriate to its subject matters, about the difficulties of coping with massive complex show more systems like religion and patriarchy while living on the fringe of the massive complex system that is empire-- though Schreiner is seemingly way less interested in interrogating its complications than she is those of gender and religion. I liked it, but I wanted to love it; I frequently enjoyed the detached narrative voice, but sometimes found it more difficult than I felt was necessary. There was some engrossing stuff (the horrific victimization of children by Bonaparte Blenkins), some funny stuff (Bonaparte's more comedic escapades) some great stuff (Bonaparte's final comeuppance), some intriguing stuff (young Waldo's adventures in the world), some startling stuff ("'Waldo,' she said, 'Lyndall is dead'" is such a powerful sentence), and some weird and offputting stuff (most of the last couple chapters). Probably worth another read someday, and I would certainly teach it; I don't think I've read another book quite like it. show less
Imagine growing up in isolation: no school, no radio or television let alone electronic devices, few neighbours and those few distant. If you were lucky, there would be books, but none selected with you in mind. Hard as it is to picture such an existence now, it was not an uncommon situation for children whose parents had colonized the vast prairies of Canada, Australia and South Africa one hundred and fifty years ago. What is unusual, is that there was so little contemporary writing about show more it.
Olive Schreiner grew up in such a world in the Cape Colony, part of what is now South Africa. While she had no great affection for her fellow white South Africans, calling them "... a whole nation of lower middle class philistines, without... intellect or muscular labourers to save them", she did have sympathy for the children who had to grow up in such an environment.
The Story of an African Farm has three such children, brought together by circumstance. Lyndall was an orphan sent to live with her uncle. She had been provided for financially and would be able to go away to school when the time came. Em was also an orphan, daughter of the uncle to whom Lyndall had been sent, a man who had since died. This left the care of these two little English girls to Tant' Sannie, a Boer woman. As Lyndall explained it to Em: Tant' Sannie is a miserable old woman... Your father married her when he was dying, because he thought she would take better care of the farm, and us, than an Englishwoman. He said we should be taught and sent to school. Now she saves every farthing for herself, buys us not even one old book. She does not ill-use us. Why? Because she is afraid of your father's ghost.... three nights ago she heard a rustling and a grunting behind the pantry door, and knew it was your father coming to 'spook' her. The third child was Waldo, son of the German overseer, Waldo was a tormented child, obsessed by the idea that everything must die, terrified of God and the hereafter.
In the summer of 1862, the year of the great drought, a stranger entered their world. Bonaparte Blenkins was an Irishman who quickly insinuated himself into their lives, soon overthrowing the established order of their world. By the time Blenkins had finished with the farm, the whole structure of the children's lives was destroyed. Older now, it was time for them to embark on the next stage of their lives.
Lyndall, determined to find wealth and fame, went off to finishing school, a place she later scathingly described. "They finish everything but imbecility and weakness, and that they cultivate." Em stayed on the farm, learning all the domestic duties entailed in its proper running, along with its actual management. Waldo wandered, simultaneously fleeing and seeking his God.
Lyndall's return to the farm three years later turned life upside down once more. Schreiner has taken a wilful child and turned her into a strong determined woman, albeit a tragic one. Her forward looking feminist views were considered radical by the Victorian reading public. At the same time, the book was an instant success, perhaps because it was published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron. Had Lyndall's views been acknowledged as written by a woman, it is likely they would have been rejected outright.
Schreiner introduced a new character in this second part of her book. Gregory Rose quickly became engaged to Em. Upon Lyndall's return however, Em realized he was smitten with Lyndall and broke the engagement. Lyndall did not share his feelings. She described him as
While many see Lyndall as the primary protagonist of the novel, this does Em a disservice. While she could be dismissed as a mere pretend housewife, lacking only a husband, she is far more than this. She is the foil to Lyndall and in many ways has more inner strength than her cousin, allowing the two girls to break out of the conventional stereotypes of their time.
The title of the book suggests not a story of children though, but the story of the farm itself. It is always there, changing with the seasons, but never changing in its essence. Schreiner's connections to such a world are obvious in the love Lyndall, Em and Waldo have for their home, the constant in their lives, and in their links to each other. Schreiner would go on to write other books, but she never recreated the success of this one, perhaps because she herself was uprooted from her veld. show less
Olive Schreiner grew up in such a world in the Cape Colony, part of what is now South Africa. While she had no great affection for her fellow white South Africans, calling them "... a whole nation of lower middle class philistines, without... intellect or muscular labourers to save them", she did have sympathy for the children who had to grow up in such an environment.
The Story of an African Farm has three such children, brought together by circumstance. Lyndall was an orphan sent to live with her uncle. She had been provided for financially and would be able to go away to school when the time came. Em was also an orphan, daughter of the uncle to whom Lyndall had been sent, a man who had since died. This left the care of these two little English girls to Tant' Sannie, a Boer woman. As Lyndall explained it to Em: Tant' Sannie is a miserable old woman... Your father married her when he was dying, because he thought she would take better care of the farm, and us, than an Englishwoman. He said we should be taught and sent to school. Now she saves every farthing for herself, buys us not even one old book. She does not ill-use us. Why? Because she is afraid of your father's ghost.... three nights ago she heard a rustling and a grunting behind the pantry door, and knew it was your father coming to 'spook' her. The third child was Waldo, son of the German overseer, Waldo was a tormented child, obsessed by the idea that everything must die, terrified of God and the hereafter.
In the summer of 1862, the year of the great drought, a stranger entered their world. Bonaparte Blenkins was an Irishman who quickly insinuated himself into their lives, soon overthrowing the established order of their world. By the time Blenkins had finished with the farm, the whole structure of the children's lives was destroyed. Older now, it was time for them to embark on the next stage of their lives.
Lyndall, determined to find wealth and fame, went off to finishing school, a place she later scathingly described. "They finish everything but imbecility and weakness, and that they cultivate." Em stayed on the farm, learning all the domestic duties entailed in its proper running, along with its actual management. Waldo wandered, simultaneously fleeing and seeking his God.
Lyndall's return to the farm three years later turned life upside down once more. Schreiner has taken a wilful child and turned her into a strong determined woman, albeit a tragic one. Her forward looking feminist views were considered radical by the Victorian reading public. At the same time, the book was an instant success, perhaps because it was published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron. Had Lyndall's views been acknowledged as written by a woman, it is likely they would have been rejected outright.
Schreiner introduced a new character in this second part of her book. Gregory Rose quickly became engaged to Em. Upon Lyndall's return however, Em realized he was smitten with Lyndall and broke the engagement. Lyndall did not share his feelings. She described him as
...a true woman - one born for the sphere that some women have to fill without being born for it. How happy he would be sewing frills into his little girls' frocks, and how pretty he would look sitting in a parlour, with a rough man making love to him!Toward the end of the book, there will be a role reversal, as Lyndall will dominate Greg, now disguised as a woman, a person she does not recognize.
While many see Lyndall as the primary protagonist of the novel, this does Em a disservice. While she could be dismissed as a mere pretend housewife, lacking only a husband, she is far more than this. She is the foil to Lyndall and in many ways has more inner strength than her cousin, allowing the two girls to break out of the conventional stereotypes of their time.
The title of the book suggests not a story of children though, but the story of the farm itself. It is always there, changing with the seasons, but never changing in its essence. Schreiner's connections to such a world are obvious in the love Lyndall, Em and Waldo have for their home, the constant in their lives, and in their links to each other. Schreiner would go on to write other books, but she never recreated the success of this one, perhaps because she herself was uprooted from her veld. show less
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