From Publishers Weekly
The importance of Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) in the South African and British cultural and social history of her day has been overlooked; a full review of her thought is overdue. Author of the first South African novel ( The Story of an African Farm ), this iconoclast was also a pioneer politically and socially, advocating sexual freedom, pacifism, socialism and feminism, among other causes. Berkman's intellectual biography seeks to establish Schreiner's essential significance, but the effort is only partially successful. Although the range of research is broad, the subject's vibrancy is smothered in a cumbersome, ornate prose style better suited to the Victorian period than to one who rebelled from it. The author's decision to employ a thematic rather than a narrative structure (modern enough in its categories, such as "the androgynous vision") illuminates Schreiner's ideas but leaves Schreiner herself something of an enigma. Both the richness of personality and the South African context are, in consequence, subordinated--and, with them, the focus of a remarkable story. Berkman is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts. Illustrations not seen by PW .
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
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)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
