Dislocation and Crisis of Female Identity in Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm

Abstract

This paper examines how dislocation creates the crisis of female identity in the Karoo farm landscape, in Olive Schreiner‟s The Story of an African Farm. African farm owners are displace from their farm landscape by the colonizers. As a result, the farm workers have to face the problem of identity crisis. Englishman are responsible for brings Africans identity crisis, when Africans are displace from their own farm land, new settlers start lose their identity. They struggle to establish their identity on the Karoo farm land. The displace condition of African new settlers are hovering around the Karoo farm land to get their identity and place from the colonizers. The main victims are women whose identity is determine in relation to the place. Their placelessness represents their identity crisis in the Karoo farm landscape. The research method comprise of a wide review of relevant literature on the dislocation and identity crisis. And Bill Ashcroft‟s The Post-Colonial Studies Reader focuses upon the Post-Colonial issues such as Language, Place, History and Ethnicity of the colonized people in the colonial landscape. Elleke Boehmer‟s, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature Migrants Metaphors represents colonizers domination upon the colonized people and their landscape, where colonized people lose their identity. In the colonial world people are displace from their land and become identity less. This research paper shows that how the term „dislocation‟ is relating with the women‟s identity. Women‟s identity is connecting with the place; their attachment towards the place is their destiny for questing identity in the colonial territory. Colonizers control the place and displace them from their land. African new settlers are struggling hard to establish their identity and place in the Karoo farm landscape.