Apartheid colonialism, gendered crime, and the domestic gothic in Mary Watson''s The Cutting Room
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Authors
Burger, Bibi
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
Mary Watson’s gothic novel, The Cutting Room (2013), deals with a woman who does not feel at home in her house. Her unease can be attributed to her conflicted feelings about being a wife in South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history, as well as to a fear of crime. Using feminist theories of women’s relationship to the domestic sphere, Freud’s writing on the unheimlich as well as Homi K Bhaba’s notion of the “postcolonial unhomely”, I argue that the genre of the gothic provides appropriate metaphors and an aptly uncanny atmosphere for the exploration of a South African woman’s complex relationship with the home.
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Keywords
Feminist gothic, Postcolonial literature, South African novel, Mary Watson (1975-)
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Citation
Bibi Burger (2020) Apartheid Colonialism, Gendered Crime, and the Domestic Gothic in Mary Watson’s The Cutting Room, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 32:1, 2-9, DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2020.1743024.