ABSTRACT

After reclassifying Melina Rorke’s so-called autobiography, Melina Rorke: Told by Herself (1938), as a work of autofiction, this article argues that despite the transgressive nature of the text for a 1938 publication, various gender tensions underscore and subvert the narrative. Rorke’s textual transgressions include scripting the forbidden female body, casting herself as hero of her own story and fabricating most of the life narrative she claims is autobiographical. Utilising Dorothy Driver’s theoretical conceptualisation of South African literatures as male-dominated and aligning women with nature and men with culture, this article illustrates that Rorke textually reconfigured her female hero protagonist to align with both nature and culture. Yet, Rorke’s alignment with nature, through her writing of the taboo female body, is beset with ‘gender-related tensions’. Once nature and culture coalesce in the fractious image of Rorke as ‘the Florence Nightingale of the Anglo-Boer war’, being both militant and domestic, she is seemingly unable to effortlessly align with cultural spheres. Finally, this article suggests that Rorke consciously constructed this textual representation of her protagonist and that the ambiguities and ambivalences associated with this portrayal is more considered and purposeful than readers would initially assume.

摘要

在将梅丽娜·罗克所谓的自传《梅丽娜·罗克：自述》（1938 年）重新归类为自传作品后，本文认为，尽管 1938 年出版的文本具有越轨性质，但各种性别紧张关系强调并颠覆了叙述。罗克的文字违规包括编写被禁止的女性身体脚本，将自己塑造成自己故事的英雄，以及编造她声称是自传的大部分生活叙事。利用 Dorothy Driver 将南非文学作为男性主导的理论概念化，并使女性与自然和男性与文化保持一致，这篇文章说明了罗克在文本上重新配置了她的女主人公，以使其与自然和文化保持一致。然而，通过她对禁忌女性身体的写作，罗克与自然的结合被“与性别相关的紧张局势”所困扰。一旦自然和文化在 Rorke 的“英布尔战争中的弗洛伦斯·南丁格尔”这个易怒的形象中融合在一起，既好战又内向，她似乎无法毫不费力地与文化领域保持一致。最后，这篇文章表明，罗克有意识地构建了她的主人公的这种文本表征，并且与这种描绘相关的模棱两可和矛盾心理比读者最初想象的更深思熟虑和更有目的性。