Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12671962

Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12671962

Author(s): Ashish Awasthi & Dr. Ram Prakash Gupt

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12671962

PDF: Download Full Text

Volume 15 | Issue 3 | June 2024

Pages: 482-491

 
AboutUs: https://www.the-criterion.com/about/
 
Archive: https://www.the-criterion.com/archive/
 
ContactUs: https://www.the-criterion.com/contact/
 
EditorialBoard: https://www.the-criterion.com/editorial-board/
 
Submission: https://www.the-criterion.com/submission/
 
FAQ: https://www.the-criterion.com/fa/
 
 
 
 
ISSN 2278‐9529
Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal
www.galaxyimrj.com

The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 15, Issue-III, June 2024 ISSN: 0976-8165
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People
Ashish Awasthi
Research Scholar,
Department of English,
C.M.P Degree College,
University Of Allahabad, Prayagraj, India
&
Dr. Ram Prakash Gupt
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
CMP Degree College,
University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, India.
Article History: Submitted‐31/05/2024, Revised‐20/06/2024, Accepted‐23/06/2024, Published‐30/06/2024.
Abstract:
This paper aims to explore the notion of intersectionality with particular context to the
interconnectedness of race, class, power dynamics, ethnicity, and gender in South Africa. The
term intersectionality refers to shared identities, as gender, sexual orientation, class, caste, and
disability, are interconnected and produce different kinds of oppression and discrimination for
those who are marginalised. It is becoming more and more apparent that addressing interrelated
oppression and persistent gender inequality requires using an intersectional paradigm in research.
This framework can be used globally to understand the various axes of power within a society
that lead to the further marginalisation of specific groups of women and races. Based on a social
class perspective, South African culture was uneven. It was classified among the upper class,
middle class, and poverty-stricken, as acknowledged by the administration. The fact that
Gordimer’s novels are so competent and evolved as fiction explains why they are important
historically. July’s People was written at the time when apartheid was at its peak in South Africa.
The novel portrays both racial and gender investigations of South African society. An analytical
approach would be followed with the help of primary text and secondary sources such as articles,
interviews, and essential books to develop a critical analysis method. The paper intends to look at
gender and race inequalities in South Africa through Gordimer’s novel, as the country has
suffered from this aculeus for more than 50 years.
482
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12671962

Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
Keywords: Intersectionality, South Africa, gender, race and marginalization.
Introduction
It is to be noticed that the legacy of black feminist criticism gave rise to Intersectionality.
It is widely used in the humanities to contribute to the theoretical understanding of concurrently
held subject positions and their relationships to identify categories and social divisions.
Something that intersects another thing is referred to as intersectional. The nomenclature of
Intersectionality relates to phenomena that intersect with something else. The notion of
Intersectionality alludes to a set of theoretical positions that explore to mend the perception that
identity classifies and the set of social relations in which they are stationed.
Exploring intersecting kind of discussion leads us to comprehend social relations through
the lens of intersectionality. This necessitates the intricacy of social organisations and for much
oppression such as ageism, ableism, casteism, sexism and racism may coexist and present in be
active in a person’s life. Intersectionality aims to understand and remove the potential barriers to
a human being’s or group’s well-being. It was American legal expert Kimberley Cranshaw who
used the term “intersectionality” which came as an extension to the Black feminist movement.
Crenshaw said that feminist and anti-racist movements were both ignoring the difficulties what
actually black women experience.
In Crenshaw’s law-oriented articles, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”
(1989) and “Mapping the Margins” (1991), she argued the unprecedented occurrences of native
African women, shedding light on how they connect to the poles, especially alongside gender
and race, and centred on the occurrences not generally conveyed in the discussion of the
inequality on the basis of race and gender. Dependent on comprehensive and authentic
membership acknowledgement across African civilisations, the junction of these various
acknowledgements in action, as lived experience, has both intended and unforeseen
repercussions. Gender, race, and class are examples of labels or identities that might be
intersectional. Above-mentioned intersections can increase, decrease, or stabilise a group’s or
individual’s access to assets, portability, and political and economic fairness. These interactions
could be amid a single person or organizations that identify as belonging to particular population
groupings or centred upon obvious membership issues that people or groups encounter.
According to Crenshaw, intersectionality is the most frequently studied by Western academics in
483

The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 15, Issue-III, June 2024 ISSN: 0976-8165
 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
terms of gender, race, and class – a perspective that is becoming more and more contested; as she
points out:
Intersectionality is a provisional concept linking contemporary politics with
postmodern theory. In mapping the intersections of race and gender, the concept
does engage dominant assumptions that race and gender are essentially separate
categories…suggesting a methodology that will ultimately disrupt the tendencies
to see race and gender as exclusive or separable…the concept [intersectionality]
can and should be expanded by factoring in issues such as class, sexual
orientation, age, [colonialism], and colour. (60, 2015)
Crenshaw differentiates intersectionality by emphasising that in actual life, identifying
memberships are never isolated – neither for those who live inside multiple memberships nor for
other persons they interact with. All of the forms of intersectionality are depicted in the African
setting, from resistance, both pull and push to adoption and adaption of the Western institute of
society, in addition to from Africa’s indigenous civilisation. African identities were either denied
or suppressed for these historically imposed systems – economic educational, political and
religious – to come into being.
As Crenshaw discusses, Intersectionality can be understood from the perspective of
“othering.” Patricia Hill Collins asserts the othering of identity as the binary establishes of
exploitation to justify its usage in maintaining dominant vs. non-dominant groups, such as male-
female, white/black, and rich/poor. Patricia elaborates: “Difference is defined in oppositional
terms. One part is not simply different from its counterpart; it is inherently opposed to its
“other.”… they are fundamentally different entities related only through their definition as
opposites.” (70, 2000)
Discussion
The writings of Gordimer have always featured the imagery of South Africa. Gordimer
portrayed her culture in the form of social shifts and it is clearly visible in her decades-long body
of work that is written during and after apartheid. Her works of fiction are primarily about
identity, gender, and class exile. In a similar vein, Gordimer’s protagonists fight both their own
identities and society’s expectations. Furthermore, to serving examples of how South African
484

Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
culture has changed, her characters also have to deal with a patriarchal system in which they are
limited with power. In her work, Gordimer has examined the arbitrary classification of the male-
dominated structures that seek to explore her characters. Gordimer also highlights the conflict
between gender roles and social class.
The writings of Gordimer depict various feminine places during and after apartheid in
multiple eras of the artist’s development. Gordimer’s characters’ roles have grown over her
writing career to address themes of race and gender discrimination and the possibility of
relationships in communal and gendered settings beyond South Africa.
It was unsurprising that Gordimer’s work has changed critique, given the length of her
writing career. There is ample documentation of Gordimer’s fictional and private attempts to
address racial and gender-based socioeconomic concerns that were prominent in South Africa
during and after apartheid. Her writings make one reevaluate the dimensions between men and
women and White and Blacks. Nonetheless, Gordimer has had a conflicted and ambivalent
relationship with feminism itself.
In her initial interactions, critics have learned that Gordimer was unwilling “to think
herself as a feminist writer” (Driver 33) and she “expressed impatience with the feminist
movement.” (Head 19) Robin Visel admits that though Gordimer “said several times that the
women’s liberation movement is irrelevant in South Africa,” (34) her fiction writings depict that
this statement was oversimplified.
Gordimer never claimed herself a propagator of feminism, and she considers herself a
writer who is also a woman; she “gives particular polemical force to her documentation of
inequality in male-female relationships by employing it to define female growth.” (Driver 34) In
addition, Gordimer’s body of work provides a wealth of insight into how women create identities
under constrained cultural contexts. As Karan Lazar acknowledges in her article Something Out
There, Gordimer’s writing “shows the potential for transgression, for alternative ways of seeing,
amidst the existence of patriarchal-cum-racist stereotypes.” (58)
In her obligation to rehabilitate South African historical events and communities,
Gordimer has taken her part as a responsible and intellectual writer that she is at the centre of the
fight for revolution to be “concerned with and completely at one with the people in the great
485

The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 15, Issue-III, June 2024 ISSN: 0976-8165
 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
battle of Africa and of suffering humanity.” (Fanon 166) Gordimer’s novels are a deep-bone
consideration of the repercussions of the patterns of apartheid but also a way “…to imagine a
variety of probable scenarios in which an array of fictional selves could act out possibilities.”
(Bazin 29)
In all Gordimer’s writings, July’s People (1981), was published amidst the structured
racial disparity. The plot of the novel speculates in the post-apartheid duration. The occurrences
of the story are, essentially, as an authoritative critique of how racial exploitation torments social
life, and, later on, they impart abundant expectations for the future of livelihoods. Nevertheless,
the story reveals clues about the aftermath of the revolutions and the changes brought about by
the new political age amid the disordered nature of the events and symbolically, much-discussed
in open-ended ending. However, Gordimer does not provide clear guidelines for the kind of
society that will upsurge from the ashes of apartheid.
July’s People gives much elusive knowledge for its portrayal of the arid contemporary
life in which Gordimer focuses upon life beyond the nonappearance of white domination as
apartheid. It has been thoroughly observed by Ali Erritouni in his argument of the dystopian
viewpoint and utopian projections of a more egalitarian society; he observes that this novel
“draws a grim picture of South Africa in order not only to expose the social and economic
consequences of apartheid but also to open up utopian horizons beyond it.” (69)
July’s People, the seminal works of Gordimer, was printed in 1981, prior to the
eradication of racial discrimination and Apartheid government (ended in 1994 with the
establishment of Mandela’s African National Congress Party, Hazlett: Apartheid). This novel
was an effort of her exposition to how Apartheid would end. The novel was banned soon after its
release in South Africa. The setting of the novel is in a made-up South Africa where Whites and
Blacks are engaged in a civil war. In the novel Smale couple, Bam and Maureen are forced to
escape from their place to July’s place. It was such a strange time that Black and White people
weren’t able to establish any harmony between them. The Smale couple are from white family
that fled the conflict in Johannesburg and are now refugees in the community of their black
servant July. July’s People provides an excellent overview of Gordimer’s work; discussing and
illuminating white people’s behaviour towards Black people and how this loss is felt.
Simultaneously, Gordimer unfolds the resistance of forcefully imposing the Afrikaans language
486

Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
on blacks. By doing this, the government wanted to diminish the accessibility of black children
and deprive them of global knowledge. This act created plenty of concern in the South African
political arena. The novel centres around the inter-racial relationship delineated by the bond
between Maureen, and additional character, particularly her servant, July. The novel also reflects
the energy of balance change for White individuals deprived of authority gradually and at the
mercy of ever more powerful black men.
Intersectionality in July’s People
The novel explicitly deals with racial tensions of apartheid in South Africa. The Smales,
who were once in a position of privilege, find themselves displaced and powerless in the rural
setting. This highlights how race and class intersect to shape individuals’ experiences and
opportunities. Their situation was critical due to displacement, as they could not find comfort in
this new, haunting place. In contrast, Maureen’s husband, Bam, has found ease in staying there
with his servant. Gordimer writes:
Bam could help July mend such farming tools – scarcely called equipment – as he
and his villagers owned… There was no bag of cement; but they worked together
more or less as they did when Bam expected July to help him with the occasional
building or repair jobs that had to be done to maintain a seven-roomed house and
swimming pool. (JP 29-30)
It is visible that when Maureen moves into July’s community, her inherent racism
manifests itself. In the shifting condition (employer-employee) is something, Maureen cannot
abandon. July serves as a temporary, physical safety net for her; it is never mental or emotional
because he is their Black servant. It appears that the person who has been providing for their
needs for more than a decade has suddenly become the most untrustworthy person. The author
makes it clear that the Smales always remember to carry a gun for feeling of security and
Maureen takes The Betrothed a novel. It was an unconscious gesture; it does allude to the
sources of power for each of the two people. The book that was delivered is never read, much
like the gun. Here, Gordimer is not implying reading for pleasure. She is implying reading to
establish one’s identity and space. She says about Maureen, “She was in another time, place,
consciousness; it was pressed in upon her and filled her as someone’s breath fills a balloon’s
shape.” (JP 35)
487

The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 15, Issue-III, June 2024 ISSN: 0976-8165
 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
The bakkie, a car, comes to represent the Smales’ independence. Their reliance on July
and the greater black community are reduced as long as they have it. Nevertheless, it becomes a
question of disobedience when the latter gets hold of the keys and uses them somewhere without
their consent. They realize how dependent they are on July. Without him, they could not last.
However, with the time Maureen understands the equality and partnership. She tells him, “If I
offended you if I hurt your dignity if what I thought was my friendliness, the feeling I had for
you—if that hurt your feelings… I know I didn’t know and I should have known.” (87-88)

The power dynamics between the Smales and July are complex. July, a mere servant in
the city, becomes the titleholder in the rural setting with local knowledge and power. Race and
class have an impact on the change in the power dynamics, demonstrating how these groups are
related. While July’s People does not focus explicitly on gender issues, the novel touches on
traditional gender roles. The Smales’ relationships and functions within the family are
challenged and transformed throughout the story, illustrating how gender intersects with other
social categories.
In July’s People, the realms of race – which is intimately related to class in South Africa –
and gender intersect. Gordimer’s choice to place a guy as the representative of the dark world
and a female as the protagonist and antagonist in the (reverse) positions of protagonist and
antagonist gives this novel its unusual urgency. This involves much more than the roles of
“madam” and “boy” explored by other individuals. The whole set of social and moral relations
invoked by Eldridge Cleaver in his book Soul on Ice as:
I know that the white man made the black woman the symbol of slavery and the
white woman the symbol of freedom. Every time I embrace a black woman I’m
embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m
hugging freedom …. The myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the
coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde. The white man turned the white
woman into a weak-minded, weak-bodied, delicate freak, a sex pot, and placed
her on a pedestal; he turned the black woman into a strong self-reliant Amazon
and deposited her in his kitchen. (160-62)
488

Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
In their contemporary state of affairs, it is an ineffectual exercise. When Maureen can do
nothing any longer about her appearance she sometimes realises the need to hide what she thinks
to be her shame, “She felt his eyes upon her hands picking at her toes. She stretched her legs and
tucked the hands out of the way under her armpits.” (JP 154) Meanwhile, as she starts to defy the
white patriarchal ideal of the woman, there are times when she finds a strange new joy in
laughingly showing off things that would have previously made her look bad in front of the other
women of the society and she openly displays, “…yellow bruises and fine, purple-red ruptured
blood-vessels of her thighs, the blue varicose ropes behind her knees…” ( JP 111); and when she
says about her breasts, “The baring of breasts was not an intimacy but a castration of his
sexuality” (JP109) there is nothing sexual or provocative in her gesture, no casual nakedness that
comes naturally within close relations contrary, in response to his patronising acknowledgement
of her decline, followed by “Oh my poor thing,” (JP 109), echoed significantly, it is a deliberate
act of denial aggression and a significant move towards a new kind of self and power.
The characters’ cultural identities are determined by their racial circumstances,
intersecting with their awareness and understanding. The Smales, as white South Africans,
confront their preconceptions and biases as they navigate a vastly different cultural environment
whereas the black women in July’s People indeed fulfil the most menial of functions, serving in
the fields, fetching and carrying, washing and cooking and cleaning (both for their own families
and the whites in their midst), bearing children, submitting themselves to the comings and goings
of their men, of their man, as they would to a force of nature.
Conclusion
To conclude, Nadine Gordimer’s July People predates the formal articulation of
‘intersectionality’. The novel provides a rich exploration of how various social categories
intersect and shape the characters’ experiences in the complex socio-political context of
apartheid-era in South Africa. This novel tells the tale of Bamford and Maureen Smales’
responses, adjustments, and survival to life in a black hamlet following their expulsion from their
white middle-class area. On the one hand, Bam has an easier time, adjusting to his new existence
with July’s people than Maureen does. Since he can control his emotions and try to fit in the
group instead of letting them control him. However, Maureen finds it difficult to cope with the
situation’s reversal, and spirals into madness, as a result she faces her inability to accept a life
489

The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 15, Issue-III, June 2024 ISSN: 0976-8165
 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
devoid of a “superior” racial identity. She really cannot bear this change in her lifestyle and
cannot function without the authority, control and comforts she used to have. Their relationship
is on the verge of collapse due to Bam and Maureen’s drastically divergent responses and
adjustments in life in July’s village. Therefore, the entire effect of this visionary narrative’s
reversal of the colonial and racial power-play is scary, dismal and negative. Finally, it is evident
that July’s People explores the broader political context of South Africa during the apartheid era.
The characters’ national identity is deeply entwined with the political realities of the time, and
their experiences reflect the intersection of individual lives with the broader socio-political
landscape.

Abbreviations:
JP – July’s People
Works Cited:
Abidogum, Jamaine M. and Sterling Recker (ed.) Africa and Diaspora: Intersectionality and
Interconnections. Springer International Publishing, 2021.
Bazin, Nancy Topping. “Nadine Gordimer’s Fictional Selves: Can a White Woman be at Home
in Black South Africa?” Alternation, vol. 7, no. 1, 2000, pp. 29-40.
Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment. New York: Routledge. 2000.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of
Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 1989, no. 1, 1989, pp. 139-167.
…………………….“Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, july 1991, pp. 1241-1299.
Driver, Dorothy. “Nadine Gordimer: The Politicisation of Women.” English in Africa, vol. 10,
no. 2, Oct. 1983, pp. 29-54.
490

Race and Gender Intersectionality in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People 
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030 
Erritouni, Ali. “Apartheid Inequality and Postapartheid Utopia in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s
People.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 68-84.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. London: Penguin Books.
2021.
Gordimer, Nadine. July’s People. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Head, Dominic. Nadine Gordimer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
Lazer, Karen Ruth. “Some Thing Out There/Something in There: Gender and Politics in
Gordimer’s Novella.” English in Africa, vol. 19, no. 1, May 1992, pp. 53-65.
Visel, Robin. “Othering the Self: Nadine Gordimer’s Colonial Heroines.” Ariel: A Review of
International English Literature, vol.19, no. 4, 1988, pp. 33-42.
Yount Lisa, et al., (ed.) Why Race and Gender Still Matter An Intersectional Approach. Taylor
and Francis; 2015.
Web Source:
Hazlett, Thomas W. Apartheid, https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Apartheid.html. Accessed
on 27/05/2024

491