BOOK REVIEW: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

A Cynical Account of a Man's Sexual Appetite and Addiction to the Oppression of Women

The ideas connoted in this text are of the sort one would expect from an 18th or 19th century novel and certainly not one written at the turn of the 21st century. Therefore, I am thoroughly disgusted by the conveyance of women as passive and dependent within this text and the utterly regressive ideas J.M. Coetzee presents throughout his novel, Disgrace. Even the strongest of female characters encountered in this works are not only repressed and dominated by either Lurie or other males but also dependent upon one male or another for some form of sustenance, whether financially or emotionally.
The standard for women brought forth in the novel, of them not being able to “hold their own” so to speak, is not only an archaic notion but also feeds into the inequality that the progressive women of today are striving against. If texts such as this are continually circulated they will effectually validate the horrors that constitute a patriarchal society.
The first female character that we meet, Soraya the female prostitute, exemplifies the helplessness of the subtly symbiotic relationship between a whore and her fare. While the man needs the woman in order to satiate his innate need for regular sexual satisfaction, the object of satisfaction is ambiguous. By this I mean, it could be any woman, a horny man is not a picky man, thus putting the male in the position of power by allowing him to pick and choose where to go for sex, while the prostitute takes what she can get. Soraya is not simply a professional prostitute; she is also a mother, and thus a provider. Her dependence on the male sexual desire in exchange for money opposed to creating her own service or cultivating a more creative talent outside of exploitation of her physical self, which we must admit is a profession anyone with a vagina can succumb too, forces her into a parasitic position of oppression. Soraya’s only saving moment of female power was the termination of her “relationship” with Lurie upon his overstepping of prostitute-client boundaries. However, the fact that she only terminated the relationship because it crossed from the professional into the personal conveys her shame and “disgrace” with her job, thus nullifying any strength this scenario could portray.
Melanie is the most pathetic case throughout the novel. Here, we have a college age woman, my age, that is supposedly so incredibly apathetic and naïve that she cannot ward off male advances. What attractive twenty-something female has never said “no”, and meant it? The fact that she lays apathetically while he has his way with her diminishes any credibility she may have. And not only that, but she runs back to him, crying, trying to at least get an ‘A’ out of the whole experience. Melanie is dominated and manipulated by Lurie, and her only defenses are her father and her boyfriend, both of which males, pushing her even further into a position of helplessness and dependence on her patriarchs. Sick, sad, and unfortunately, realistic. At least she brings him to court in the end and doesn’t hole herself up in her room in hysterics for the next five years lamenting on how she “coulda woulda shoulda” said “no”.
The saddest case, in my opinion, is Lurie’s daughter Lucy, who begins the novel as a strong-willed lesbian farmer that doesn’t need nothin’ but her own two hands, and ends the novel as a beaten down woman, “married” to the brother-in-law of the man who disgraced her and pregnant with the child of her rapist. Lurie attempts to try and help Lucy out of the muck she calls her life, and with the only ounce of feminist courage found in this book, she refuses. However, her “marriage” to Petrus completely overrides any speck of feminism this book may hold.
All in all, it is a poignantly disgraceful book. A good read for masochists, male chauvinists, anti-feminists, and possibly those wishing to explore the repercussions of patriarchy and oppressive attitudes towards women in South Africa. That being said, it did win the Booker Prize and is an accepted and well-respected works from a tumultuous place during a tumultuous time.


Just a simple journal entry I am turning in to my Literature of Exile class that is edgy & short enough to post. FP.