'The artist woke': Perceval Gibbon: from reporter to novelist.

Abstract

My contention is that the development in Gibbon's narrative technique shows evidence of a liberalising ideological change, which enabled the author to transcend the racist attitudes apparent in his early works and attain a more tolerant point of view in Margaret Harding, his last novel. I draw a distinction between Gibbon's authorial 'point of view' and 'narrative viewpoint' to differentiate between his own occasionally-expressed racism, and his ironic portrayal of racist characters. Gibbon ultimately overcomes his ambivalence by refining his style; a process that not only mirrors the resolution of his personal response to the question of race but also marks his progress from news reporter to accomplished artist In my Introduction I argue that Gibbon, whose preoccupation was with social issues rather than the individual moral development of his characters, has tended to be ignored by critics who favoured the psychological (or realist) novel. In Chapter 1, the short stories of The Vrouw Grobelaar's Leading Cases are shown to reveal two key elements of Gibbon's writing: a readiness for personifying typically South African attitudes, and a concern with relationships between people of different races. Gibbon's narrator does not, however, distance himself sufficiently from Vrouw Grobelaar's bigoted views. Souls in Bondage addresses a theme that Gibbon recognises as the matrix out of which South Africa's future society must develop: the relationship between white colonials and the local black population. The central character, Thwaites, reflects in ·his shifting sympathies Gibbon's own growing apprehension of racism, and is evidence of Gibbon's firmer control over the narrative and moral centre of his material. While Salvator ignores the racial predicament in South African society, it reveals some development of Gibbon's command of narrative viewpoint. The theatrical 'placement' of juxtaposed characters anticipates the structure of Margaret Harding. In Margaret Harding Gibbon's criticism of racist society shows a maturity in which the uncertain identifications of Vrouw Grobelaar and Souls in Bondage have been resolved. The richer, more poetic depth of his writing style may also be attributable to a collaboration with Joseph Conrad. Gibbon's work deserves more than a marginal place in South African literature. His Vrouw Grobelaar short stories and his novels offer a unique insight into society at the turn of the century, and reflect the author's own experience of shedding the Social Darwinist ideology of race: from 'savage' to 'artist'.