Women as a Metaphor for Land: Reading Nadine Gordimer's the Conservationist

Abstract

InTheConservationist, Nadine Gordimer hasrevealedthe commodification of females. Furthermore,she has also uncovered thesuppression of blackby white colonizersin the apartheid era.Untiland unless politics of any country becomesfree ofbiastowardsany group,progress isnot possible.In the case of females’freedom, each and every member of society must eliminate theirprejudicestowardswomen and shouldn’tconfinethemtotheir custom and traditiononly. Societyshouldn’tassociate themonly with abodyand sexuality.In this text,females have been treated as sexual objects to be consumed by malesand inthesimilarway the landbythe colonizers. The point being made in the text is not, however, only a feminist one.There is a conspicuous parallelism between thefemaleandthe landin the society dominated by the males and the white imperialists. The land and the womanare linked to each other in terms of their exploitation;sexual guilt functions asa surrogate for colonial guilt.