‘There's another story here’: Skewing the Frame in Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat

Abstract

When reading Marlene van Niekerk's novel, Agaat ([2004] 2006. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball), one initially takes exception to Jakkie de Wet's satire of his melancholy mothers in the frame narrative. However, I will argue that Jakkie's perspective in the frame narrative requires closer investigation as it proves to be an essential and cunning narrative tool utilised by Van Niekerk to disrupt the powerful mythologies presented in the mother-daughter story. Although we remain somewhat distanced from Jakkie by an initial allegiance to the redemptive fictional narrative, his detached ironic voice introduces a necessary caveat to the liberatory potential of Milla's fantasy of reconciliation. Furthermore, he questions the extent of Agaat's capacity for subverting Milla's dominant discourse and becoming a vitalising force for Afrikaner culture. Jakkie introduces a dialectic that questions certain founding narratives or mythologies of redemption evident in Milla's narration. As the ironic dissenter who switches positions and allegiances, his function is to break the frame of the narrative. Frank Kermode claims that master plots are comforting and are often difficult to dispute because they constitute ‘the mythological ‘structure’ of society (in Abbott. 2002. The Introduction to Narrative. 44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) It is not surprising then that Jakkie's role in the frame tends to be sidelined in critical discussions of the novel, as he unnervingly interrupts the authority of Milla's master plot of redemption. As a postmodern eir n Jakkie plays a similar role to Socrates in Plato's Dialogues and uses irony to play ‘upon his interlocutors' discourse in order to draw it out, to develop its possibilities in a dialogue destined to end in aporia’ (Lang. 1988. Irony/ Humour: Critical Paradigms. 38. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins).

Keywords:

• Agaat
• frame-narrator
• postmodern irony
• Marlene van Niekerk

Notes

The primary forum for this debate was the online journal, Litnet; however, Rossouw's article continues to be foregrounded in arguments surrounding the novel's significance in the current socio-political milieu. See articles by Anton van Niekerk (2000), Andries Visagie (2005), Willie Burger (2005), Loraine Prinsloo and Andries Visagie (2009).

Cheryl Stobie refers to Agaat as a ‘saviour-figure’, a ‘symbol of hope’ and reconciliation between the races that offers a ‘progressive way into the future’ (2009, 25 (3): 67, 68).

See Alyssa Carvalho and Helize van Vuuren (2009).

Hutcheon's view of Canada as situated ideologically between the North and South or West and East may not be naturally assumed by all readers. Despite Canada's colonial past, its current economic power makes it more commonly associated with the rich North.

Jakkie's ‘brown’ mother is Agaat. (In Afrikaans coloured people were also referred to as bruinmense, brown people.) Agaat, Milla's adopted coloured daughter, is relegated to housekeeper after Milla discovers she is pregnant with Jakkie. Agaat becomes Jakkie's nanny and ‘second mother’. Agaat's connection to Jakkie almost equals Milla's on a biological level as she is, miraculously, able to breastfeed Jakkie when Milla, who suffers postnatal depression, cannot.

In South Africa the term ‘coloured’ does not refer to black people in general, but those commonly thought of as ‘mixed race’. Coloured people are also the descendants of Cape slaves, the indigenous Khoisan people and various other black groups as well as Europeans (Adhikari 2005, 2). They occupy an interstitial position between the white minority and black majority in the South African racial hierarchy (2). The term, ‘coloured’, is highly contentious because of its association with miscegenation, and thus scandal (Wicomb 1998). Also see G. J. Gerwel (1988).

The fact that Agaat does not have an heir (and cannot bear one because of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child) is significant in terms of the importance of genealogy and landownership in securing the perpetuity of the Afrikaner culture, according to the conventions of the plaasroman.

Willie Burger (2005) has explored this metaphor as a self-reflexive comment on the role language plays in establishing communication between the self and other.