First year 2nd semi Nadine Gordimer’s "The Defeated"

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Paper of Literary Criticism

Nadine Gordimer’s "The Defeated"

        The heart-gripping and sincere short story "The Defeated" by Nadine Gordimer is based on the childhood memories of the author. Writing the story as a young adult, she remembers these dear years of her life in Springs, the small gold-mining town in South Africa as a little girl and her friendship with Miriam. The character of the little girl possibly links to the author herself. The story relies on the flashback of Gordimer who narrates the story in first person, from the point of view of the little girl. She relates the details as she might have experienced them, by this, providing authenticity to this lovely story.

        Nadine Gordimer came from a good family with education and strict morals: her father was a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant and her mother an Englishwoman. In the story, her background is well reflected in the character of the little girl who is not allowed to go near the Concession stores because they are dirty and they smell. The Concession stores, authorized by the local government, are located in the dusty center of the town, like a market, always crowded with poor people. These town people mostly work in the mines, doing hard physical work. They smell sweaty, look dirty and dark skinned. However, their dark skin not only refers to the dirt that covers their body, but also to the fact that miners were mainly black people: " …the gray-dusty bodies of the natives – their silky-brown skin dies in the damp fug under-ground: after a few months down the mine, it reflects only weariness--…"(440). They are poorly clothed, and lack education and morals. This environment means danger to a little, fine, young girl; she can pick up diseases such as tuberculosis or bad habits easily. The tuberculosis germs are primarily present in very poor districts of urban areas, where garbage and rotten food are scattered on the streets providing good conditions for the bacteria to spread: "…the crowded pavement…littered with sucked-out oranges and tatters of dirty paper…" (437). Even the cats sniffing around the streets are hollow-cheeked and underfed, nobody takes care of them. They are dirty and also carry diseases.

        On the contrary, the girl of the story is strictly raised, in a clean home; her mother wants to protect her from the dirty mob. There is a wide social gap between the girl’s family and the average mining people of the town. She comes from the wealthy, well-educated upper-class layer of society with morals, far beyond the rabble of the mineworker class and the natives. She is the princess among them who cannot descend to this low and dirty level of society and mingle with them. In order to keep her away from this common people, her mother tells her the market is no place for little girls. How else could one explain this to a young girl so that she would understand the meaning of being socially different? Her mother obviously cannot tell her, "We belong to the superstructure of the society who are economically determined by wealth and education." Of course, a little girl would not understand. So her mother simply just says to her it is no place for little girls. But the more parents prohibit their children from doing something, children, by nature, usually get even more curious and want to disobey the rule. Children need life, noise and happenings without rules around them; they need to be always in the center where there is something permanently going on. The Concession stores were just the place. "I felt that life was going on down there at the Concession stores: noise, and movement…" (437), she remembers. It opens a certain mystery to her, something secret that attracts her. She does not consider going there sinful or dangerous; despite the smell and dirty people, she goes to the stores ignoring the prohibition of her parents. It is an enchanted world to her, a playground that tempts her childish mind. The author’s simile of "narrow white shops lying away ahead like a jumble of shoe boxes" (437) depicts very well the messiness of that area without any particular rules, order or value. Shoeboxes are nothing valuable, just cheap cardboard usually ending up in the garbage, which refers to the poor quality of goods sold in the Concession stores. With this simile, the author creates the sweaty and dusty atmosphere of the market place with its shops painted white as to be protected from the burning sunshine of the hot South African climate. The heat not only implies the temperature but also the intensity of life and excitement of the store area as the sole entertainment of the boring mining town.

        The poverty of this Concession store area is indeed emphasized by the author’s language of description, employing many native South-African words as well as expressions that refer to the barrenness. "Veld" (437) means sparsely wooded grassland, its vegetation as well as its people being quite poor. "Shabby" (438) is another word for poor, dirty or faded. The choice of food they sell in the shops mainly consists of thin-skinned oranges (not the most delicious type) and mealies (the African term for Indian corn), both cheap, low-quality meals for poor people. Some other goods the vendors offer are bracelets made out of the cheaper copper, (not gold despite the fact that it is a gold-mining town, but the gold is definitely exported) and knitted caps. These are products grown or made by the natives themselves, all simple, worthless goods.

        The girl is actually conscious of these people’s poverty and lack of morals. She smells the "carrion-breath" of these people and sees the "no-color chunks of horror" that give her the feeling of "dreadful enticement" (438) and revulsion. She sees them spit orange skins in the street, behave like animals, and inevitably realizes the difference between their background and education and hers: "Quite often I had to flick the white pith from where it had landed, on my shoe or even my dress, spat negligently by some absorbed orange-eater…"(438). With her delicate body and fine, clean clothes she leisurely walks among the miners who reek of sweat from hard mine work. They are rude people shouting, gurgling their throats and laughing loudly. " I was careful not to let them brush too closely past me, lest some unnamable something crawl from their dusty blankets or torn cotton trousers onto my clean self, …that terrible gurgle in their throat…blew their noses loudly between their finger and thumb, and flung the excrement horribly to the air" (438). As a reaction, she feels a strong disgust to these "wild, dirty men" whose highest need is to lie down outside in the sun and fill their mouth with oranges after coming out from "the darkness of the mine " (438). Darkness here means not only the obscurity and lack of light down in the mines, but also the darkness of the mind of these mineworkers, that is, their lack of education. The contrast of the sun and the darkness well represents the confrontation between the two different social classes: the wealthy, educated class where the girl comes from as opposed to the working class of the miners without schooling.

        However, despite her disgust and fear, the little girl still finds this place alluring enough to fascinate her by its liveliness. The oxymoron "dreadful enticement" (438) is an expressive combination of two words with contradictory meanings related to the girl’s contrasting but simultaneous feelings of disgust and enchantment about the market area. As to utter her disgust, she derogatively compares the storekeepers’ wives to lizards sitting in the sun. Lizards, such as most reptiles, arouse a general feeling of abhorrence in people with their slimy skin and cold body, mostly living in the dirt. They are animals at a low stage of evolutionary development, therefore, with low intelligence. The picture of the ideal woman in this girl’s mind is that of her mother; a clean, orderly, well-educated woman as opposed to the storekeepers’ wives who are not like her mother at all: uneducated, ugly, dirty and poor. The motif of disgust symbolically conveyed by metaphors of other reptiles and ugly animals, become an extensive simile in the story later on.

        One of these smelly and disgusting women is Mrs. Sayetovitz, one of the storekeepers’ wives. Her name sounds Slavic; most probably her family emigrated or has Slavic ancestors. As it turns out from Gordimer’s biography, her father was a Lithuanian Jew, who migrated with his family to South Africa. We can regard this biographical fact as a parallel to the Sayetovitz family. The name "Sayetovitz" obviously reveals the family’s Slavic roots; they might have come from Lithuania as the author’s father has. In the 1950’s, at the time when this story was written, in Lithuania and in the entire former Soviet Union, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe, the communist governments ruled. In the territory of the former Soviet countries Stalin was the leader of the Communist system. Many people left their countries with disappointment because they could not meet their expected living standards. They immigrated to America or South Africa hoping to be able to establish a new existence there. The time of immigration for most of them meant the period of revolution, when these nations’ people revolted against the communist oppression. The Sayetovitzes most probably had identical motivations to go to South Africa; they settled down and started running a small blanket store in order to secure the family’s living.

        Mrs. Sayetovitz appears familiar to the girl who has seen this woman many times before when she came to the stores. This makes the girl feel more comfortable among the market mob, especially when she realizes that the storekeeper’s wife is the mother of one of her classmates at school, Miriam Sayetovitz. The word ‘class’ bears a certain ambiguity here; the two girls are classmates at school, but they are definitely from two different social classes. Miriam’s parents belong to the poor layer of venders whereas the other girl comes from an elite family. Her parents play golf, the game of the well to do, on Saturday afternoons; they live in a house in a rich neighborhood, and have a cat and doves in their garden. The economic and social gap is clearly perceptible; the Sayetovitzes own a store that compares to a "deep, blanket-hung cave" (439) and live there in a small flat right behind the store. A cave normally is the living place of a wild beast or animal; therefore, it may be very dangerous to enter. As we learn from the story, the girl does not enter the "cave" for a long time, only when Miriam once calls her in. The clothing of Miriam’s mother, her creased alpaca apron and down-at-heel shoes also reveal the Sayetovitzes' poverty. The first impression that the girl gets of Miriam’s mother is quite negative and disdainful: an ugly and angry woman with small, pale eyes, heavy face and half blind. Knowing no morals, she sits there widelegged so that the girl can see her trashy and cheap lingerie. She emphasizes the woman’s ugliness very strongly, even hyperbolically: "Ugly, with the blunt ugliness of a toad…as if the earth were the wrong place, too heavy and magnetic for a creature so blunt; and the water would be no better: too subtle and contour-swayed for a creature so graceless " (439-440). Toad, an amphibian, a large type of frog is part of the motif already mentioned in connection with the lizard. It is not only a shiny, disgusting animal, but it also has the connotation with what it frequently represents in fairy tales; the ugly frog that turns into a prince after the princess kissed it. The word "blunt" meaning "unpolished, stupid" accentuates Mrs. Sayetovitz’s ugliness. The girl, in order to show her disgust, keeps comparing these people to inferior reptiles and amphibians, by this, increasing the readers’ disgust and antipathy as well. Therefore, similes work very efficiently in the story. The use of the attribute "ugly" is much repetitive in order to stress the unpleasant sight of Miriam’s mother even more. The description becomes indeed offensive and contemptuous, it gets a racist twinge: "She had the short, stunted yet heavy bones of generations of oppression in the Ghettos of Europe…her features were not essentially Semitic…" (440). "The dusty African with his odd, troglodyte unsureness, and his hair plastered into savage whorls with red clay" (440) is another racist comment that she makes on a man passing by. Since she is a child, it is pardonable to see only the physical qualities and ignore the inner value that may be positive. Actually, she herself admits later that Miriam’s mother is generous.

        Mr. Sayetovitz sells blankets, thus trying to make a living. He has a monotonous, boring life with the same activities every day: serving customers with patience, waiting until they make up their minds to buy. The girl despises not only the parents but also Miriam, by saying she remembers her because of her name, Miriam Sayetovitz, is so ugly. However, quite interestingly, and obviously intentionally, the girl’s name is never mentioned throughout the entire story. She even feels pity for Miriam: "I was always sorry for girls with ugly names " (439). Again, the author applies a simile here, comparing Miriam’s name to the "scrolled pattern of an iron gate with only the sky behind it" (440), like this: MIRIAM. The coldness of the iron and the M’s and the implacability of the A’s suggest a certain distance and rigidity she feels for the socially subordinate Miriam. The girl’s imagination of matching such a descriptive picture with a framework of the gates, with a house and flowers in it, indicates her fine, artistic sense and sophisticated, careful education. Also, she criticizes Miriam for her tousled black hair. Though, as time goes by, despite their social background, they seem to be interested in each other and a lovely friendship develops between them.

        The girl finds out just now about Miriam that her parents have a store in town. This is a new picture of Miriam in her eyes, different from that at school. Thus, she reevaluates her views about Miriam and becomes more interested and open for her friendship. From now on, their attachment represents a bridge over this social-economic gap that exists between the two classes and has separated them until now. The girl smiles at Miriam very friendly, while Miriam asks her mother whether they can have some red lemonade, both giving the sign of mutual recognition.

        The Concession stores and her friendship with Miriam become the most important values in the girl’s life. Whenever her parents are not at home, she runs down to the stores in secret to see her friend, Miriam. She is practically captivated by the vividness and gaudiness of the stores whose charm entices her from time to time. She not only loves looking around in the uncle's bicycle shop, where old sewing machines, bells and mascots are collecting dust but she also adores drinking lemonades with Miriam that she is not allowed to drink unlimitedly at home because her mother says they might spoil her dinner. While at home she has to behave according to strict rules, at the stores with Miriam she can enjoy her absolute freedom doing what she wants. However, while Miriam feels comfortable among these poor people, the girl cannot fight back her disgust. Again, she thinks of some repulsive animals, such as ants, swarming over Miriam's body who does not care since she is used to this dirty environment. The girl does not understand why Miriam does not bother about the dried and scary bats and cobwebby snakeskin while to her they look unpleasant and hideous. The author describes the girl as an adolescent with powerful curiosity and compares even her soul to a headless worm, another slimy, detestable crawler. She becomes part of this dirt, tainted by its sickening atmosphere, of which she feels guilty and ashamed of. Yet, Miriam just pulls her away, saying, "Oh, come on"; this lifestyle is normal to Miriam, this is her home.

        Finally, Miriam invites the girl in her father's store; thus the inner world of the dark cave that has been so mysterious to her until now bursts upon her sight at once. Inside, she is spelled by the magic power of the cellarlike shop where everything looks enigmatic and obscure. The dark blankets hanging from the ceiling remind the girl of stalactites as if inside a real cave. Mr.Sayetovitz himself she compares to a beast in its lair as he is walking among his blankets in the store. By these similes, the author achieves mystic and eccentric effects as they occur in a child's mind. The girl jeers at Mr. Sayetovitz with irony, just as she did at all the other poor people from the store area. She finds him ugly, too, and mocks his wide upper lips and puffy lower lips. We learn that the father's real name is Yanka but the immigration authorities changed it to John for the sake of easier spelling. In connection with the family name, Sayetovitz, Yanka too sounds Slavic, referring to the family’s Slavic origins. As Mr. Sayetovitz lost his name, Yanka, so did he lose his real identity in this foreign country. He and his family became members and, at the same time, victims of the nameless working class. Mr. Sayetovitz is a "gentle man" but not a gentleman: he looks unkempt and slovenly. This game with the words creates a certain irony related to the character of Miriam's father. He is sullen and dejected, unwilling to socialize, always gloomy and ill natured. He is tired of life and much work, selling his blankets every day is his only monotonous and endless activity. His buyers are mostly mineworkers, poor people, who want the best for their little money and do not want to be cheated. Because they are standing there too long to choose the blanket they most like, Mr. Sayetovitz cannot stand them; however, he would never deceive them. At most, when he gets impatient and loses his temper, he shouts at the native buyers in the store. Behind his fury, though, there lies the glimmer of racism. He bullies the little native boy, thus intimidating the weaker. He makes the natives feel their servitude: "He forced them to feel their ignorance, their inadequacy, and their submission to the white man’ s world of money. He spiritually maltreated them, and bitterly drove his nail into the coffin of their confidence " (442). The last phrase is a metaphor for Mr. Sayetovitz’s burying the natives’ self–confidence, that is, oppressing and despising them.

        However, Mr.Sayetovitz treats the girl exceptionally well. He knows that she comes from a white, higher-class family; therefore, he always smiles at her, feeling the power of the embarrassment of the social gap between them. In return, the girl behaves politely with him, as she was taught at home, repeating "Yes, Mr.Sayetovitz" and "Thank you" in her discomfort.

        The Sayetovitzes get to know their daughter’s friend right at the beginning of their friendship but not so the parents of the girl. For long, they do not meet Miriam until the girl takes her home to her birthday party. Their friendship resembles a double-edge sword; they are indeed close outside of school while in school they continue having distance and not making friends. Since they are children, they do not know how to handle their social diversity before their classmates. The girl probably feels ashamed to make friends with the working class Miriam and the two decide to hide their relation in school. At the party, the girl critically contrasts Miriam’s blue taffeta dress to her pretty, clean and well-furnished home, not being able to disregard their social difference. Miriam puts on that dress that seems pretty to her in order to compensate her subordination in the girl’s rich milieu. Also, the gloomy home of Miriam is described to show the contrast: "tarnished samovar," "mournful, green plush curtains," "damp, puddly yard" (443). As always, in the girl’s house Miriam shows no interest just indifference, with a kind of self-control that is amazing from a child, but within herself she surely admires and envies the rich and beautiful house of her friend. This indeed becomes obvious as later Miriam gushes over the girl’s expensive presents to her mother with childish enthusiasm. Miriam opens up for and tells only her mother her wishes with sincerity and confidence. Of course, the truth is that Miriam wants to have the same expensive presents; she is envious, as every child would be.

        With the time, however, the Sayetovitzes have seemingly gathered a small fortune and moved to a little house in the township. As compensation to the girl’s birthday invitation, now Miriam also invites her friends to her birthday and provides them with a cinema ticket and ice cream. She does not let her and the family’s pride be trampled. She possesses a powerful driving force to break free of the stereotype with which people stigmatize her. Her parents are proud of her; they give her music education, send her to school and do everything they can with all their efforts to elevate Miriam out of the mob, while they still remain uneducated and poor. As the girl looks back later, she sees that Miriam and she were intelligent little girls but not exceptionally brilliant, as Miriam’s parents saw their daughter. Miriam was their pride and hope, the meaning of their life and of what they have been working hard for.

        The girls’ friendship at the time they matriculate seems that it would become a life-long attachment. Although it is very difficult for the Sayetovitzes to send Miriam to university because of their limited financial situation, making hard efforts, they do so. They regard Miriam’s education as primary, the most important thing in their life. They could not throw off the yoke, but they want to help Miriam, who represents the next generation, do it. "Her parents were peasants; but she was the powerful young Jewess " (444). By this time, Miriam turns into a tall, beautiful, elegant, young lady. We may realize at this point that she is a dynamic character; the poor little girl from the dusty mining village now adjusts easily to her new social status, to the civilized and polished city and university life in Johannesburg.

        On the other hand, Miriam also separates from her friend and shows interest for the young and wealthy Jews at the Medical School instead. These educated people celebrate her, their Jewish "princess." Her new social position takes Miriam to luxurious villas with swimming pools, tennis parties and dances. The tables have turned. Now, it is the girl who is rather envying Miriam for her power and ambitions that she broke out of nothing, the dirty, stinky market town so successfully. She feels, now Miriam is higher valued than she is, just as it was the other way when they were little: "Beside her, I felt pale in my Scotch ginger-fairness " (444).

        "Miriam Sayetovitz and I had dropped like two leaves, side by side into the same current, and been carried downstream together " (445). This beautiful metaphor stands for fate itself. It is time for the girls to take their own separate ways of their lives. They are not little girls anymore but young ladies just standing on the threshold of LIFE. Despite Miriam’s poor start, her life luckily takes a turn. She becomes a teacher and the wife of a doctor in Johannesburg. On the other hand, the girl, born in a rich family, who has never had to face difficulties, lack anything or envy anybody, is now unsatisfied with her life. She, who started at a higher level than Miriam’s, ended at a lower one. She did not experience any great striking change in life, which leaves her with disappointment, dissatisfaction, and defeat.

        Her envy, curiosity and despair take her back to her hometown, the little nest of her childhood memories. She misses the good old days with Miriam and remembers them with nostalgia. Feeling just as a little girl again, she wants to see the Concession stores and visit her friend but Miriam is not there anymore. As close they were, they got so far from each other. However, at the market nothing has improved. It is the same or even more dirty, sweaty and disgusting place as it used to be during her childhood; even the beauty of her memories cannot embellish the bitter reality. Her feeling of disgust remains the same at the sight of the sick cats and sucked orange peels. The only thing she does not know yet, whether the Sayetovitzes and their store have changed. She expects based on what she has heard about Miriam that she took her parents with her into her wealthy home and lifted them out of their poverty as to show her gratitude for all they did for her. However, to her great astonishment, the old Sayetovitzes are sitting inside their store, even gloomier than before, worn by life, hopelessly. She sees them uglier, older and more miserable.

        As she sees Miriam’s parents, she knows it immediately: Miriam has ungratefully abandoned her good parents. The Sayetovitzes try to veil their grief and shame and still talk proudly about their daughter. The picture about Miriam’s home clearly reflects her wealth, high social status: she lives in an expensive suburb, in a large, white, modern house with flower border and fishpond. Sadly, her parents have been there once only, when Miriam’s son was born. They have never seen her husband and she has never taken them to her home; she comes to visit them once or twice a year for an hour. The girl understands now that Miriam feels ashamed of her parents and fears her doctor husband would never accept them. Selfishly, she does not want to risk the luxurious life she has in case her husband would leave her because of her poor origin. Thus, Miriam rather chooses to reject and neglect her parents, leaving them behind in the dusty mining town in poverty-- defeated.

        The little dirty girl, Miriam, now turned into a queen and refused her poor derivation. "She had forgotten a lot of things " (447): where she came from, the poverty, the need and her dear parents who helped her climb up to where she is now. Her smooth hands with expensive diamond rings contrast the rude, working hands of her father; the hands that have worked for her so hard to make somebody out of her. The Sayetovitz parents are now where they have always been, on the deep bottom of society, trampled upon, poor and defeated. As the title also suggests, they are the defeated, the weak and the disgraced. They do not deserve this sad fate and disrespect of their daughter. Instead of celebrating and sharing Miriam’s happiness, they sink even deeper into the dejected and sorrowful morass of their misery.

Reference:
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