Rape and reconciliation: a comparison of Karen Jayes’ For the Mercy of Water and Emma Ruby-Sachs’ The Water Man’s Daughter

Abstract

To address the pressing issue of sexual violence against women in South Africa, and work toward a process of justice and cultural transformation, the implications of representations of sexual violence in post-Apartheid narratives must be considered. Karen Jayes’ For the Mercy of Water (2012), and Emma Ruby-Sachs’ The Water Man’s Daughter (2011) are two novels that center on the issue of water privatization in post-Apartheid South Africa while simultaneously depicting the trauma of male–female rape. Despite their similarities, however, the texts’ thematic concerns with rape and reconciliation work in very different ways. Employing Wendy Hesford’s concept of “rape scripts,” this paper argues that For the Mercy of Water, in questioning and rewriting prevailing patriarchal rape scripts, serves as a conscientious and responsible narrative that addresses the issue of rape while envisioning possibilities for social transformation, while The Water Man’s Daughter dangerously partakes in these scripts’ material and ideological reproductions.

Keywords:

• Rape
• reconciliation
• South Africa
• literature

Notes

¹ Graham, State of Peril, 139.

² Ibid., 16.

³ Artz, “The Weather Watchers,” 175.

⁴ Marcus, “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words,” 172.

⁵ Muller, “Parish Pump Politics,” 34–5.

⁶ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 13.

⁷ Ibid., 14.

⁸ Marcus, “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words,” 170.

⁹ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 19.

¹⁰ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 15.

¹¹ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 307–9.

¹² Carroll, “The Grotesque Today,” 307.

¹³ Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 837.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 43.

¹⁶ Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 843.

¹⁷ Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 43.

¹⁸ Ibid., 43–4.

¹⁹ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 18.

²⁰ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 45.

²¹ Ibid., 44.

²² Ibid., 308.

²³ Ibid., 291.

²⁴ Ibid., 204.

²⁵ Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 8.

²⁶ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 265.

²⁷ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 18.

²⁸ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 316.

²⁹ Ibid., 317.

³⁰ Ibid., 308.

³¹ Fleckenstein, “Writing Bodies,” 281.

³² Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 18.

³³ Yaeger, “Consuming Trauma,” 229.

³⁴ Moorti, Color of Rape, 129.

³⁵ Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 5 (original emphasis).

³⁶ Ibid., 6 (original emphasis).

³⁷ Ibid., 44–5 (original emphasis).

³⁸ Yaeger, “Consuming Trauma,” 229.

³⁹ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 16.

⁴⁰ Ibid.,18.

⁴¹ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 306.

⁴² Ibid., 378.

⁴³ Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 93.

⁴⁴ Mabuse, “Horror of South Africa’s ‘Corrective Rape’,” 1.

⁴⁵ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 13.

⁴⁶ Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 43 (original emphasis).

⁴⁷ Ibid., 44.

⁴⁸ Campbell, Marked Women, 240.

⁴⁹ Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 43, 44.

⁵⁰ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 206, 207.

⁵¹ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 306.

⁵² Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 304.

⁵³ Butler, Precarious Life, 44.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 33.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 135.

⁵⁶ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 110.

⁵⁷ Butler, Precarious Life, 44.

⁵⁸ Jayes, For the Mercy of Water, 341.

⁵⁹ Hesford, “Rape Stories,” 17.

⁶⁰ Ruby-Sachs, The Water Man’s Daughter, 95.

⁶¹ Ibid., 99.

⁶² Ibid., 234.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Hesford, Rape Stories, 1.