Nadine Gordimer and Her Revolutionary Utopian Vision

Abstract

Nadine Gordimer and Her Revolutionary Utopian Vision In A Sport of Nature, published in 1987, Gordimer makes her essential, revolutionary gesture through the protagonist, Hillela Capran, whom the author links to the historical events of South Africa. Hillela's transformation from individual to national to world historical figure is enacted with her body and her sexuality. Readers realize early in the novel that she refuses to acknowledge societal boundaries when she is found with a "colored" boy and has to be sent away from her Aunt Olga's house because of the scandal. And a few years later, she sleeps with her "sibling cousin" Sasha, much to the horror of her Aunt Pauline and Uncle Joe. Hillela's sexuality later comes to embody her "refusal to use South African categories in her assessment of people" (Peck 155). She marries a black man and instead of trying to simply ignore their differences, she embraces them and is fascinated by them. Whaila wakes one morning to find Hillela examining his body. A Sport of Nature breaks down the western privileging of the private over the public in order to build a revolutionary utopian vision for Africa's future. Throughout the novel we see various, seemingly small at times, events in Hillela's young life dated by the political events in South Africa. In her early life, these personal and political events are presented separately, but throughout the novel Hillela's personal life becomes increasingly public as it is intertwined with the political developments of both South Africa and Africa in general. And by the end of the novel, Hillela's personal and public lives are one and the same.