Olive Schreiner's hidden agony: fact, fiction and teenage abortion

Abstract

Scholars exploring Olive Schreiner's life have provided diverse interpretations of a crucial year: 1872, when Schreiner was a teenager in the Cape Colony. Primary sources relating to this period were destroyed; it is impossible to provide conclusive evidence of what ‘really happened.’ Nonetheless, this article argues that the possibility that Victorian women could induce abortions has been neglected by both historians and literary critics. It contends that Schreiner's fiction displays acute awareness of pregnancy terminations. It concludes by arguing that the most likely interpretation of events is that Olive Schreiner fell pregnant in 1872, contributed to her own miscarriage, and repeatedly reworked this painful experience in fiction, creating new versions of the past to serve the needs of the present.