Olive Schreiner

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Author of what most consider the first great novel - "The Story of an African Farm" - to come out of South Africa, Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) is perhaps equally well remembered as an eloquent spokesman for feminist and pacifist causes. Plagued by asthma and severe bouts of depression throughout her life, Schreiner campaigned vigorously against the more predatory aspects of Cecil Rhodes's imperialist philosophy and the British role in the Anglo-Boer War of 1892-1902. Schreiner also set herself apart with her brazen rejection of the prevailing code of Victorian decorum, particularly as it applied to the women of her time.

Largely self-educated, Schreiner read voraciously and was particularly influenced by the writings of naturalist Charles Darwin and philosophers Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill. Adopting a progressive outlook on life, she rejected the generally accepted gender roles of her era and advocated "an equality of shared labor between men and women," according to Ruth First and Ann Scott, coauthors of Olive Schreiner. Although Schreiner first gained attention as a novelist, most of the writings published during her lifetime consisted of social and political essays, including her controversial feminist credo, as outlined in Women and Labour.

Experienced Difficult Childhood

Schreiner was born Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner at Wittenbergen Mission Station in the South African territory of Basutoland (now the country of Lesotho) on March 24, 1855. The ninth of 12 children born into an impoverished missionary family, she had an unsettled childhood of great hardship. Traveling with her family from post to post, Schreiner experienced little permanency in her early years. The family's difficulties worsened when her father, Gottlieb, a Boer, was expelled from the London Missionary Society for supplementing his meager missionary salary with income from private trading transactions. Schreiner's mother, English-born Rebecca Lyndall, was also a missionary. Because their father was hard-pressed to support his large family, 11-year-old Olive and her 9-year-old brother Will were sent to live in Cradock, a town in South Africa's Cape Colony. There they lived with their older brother, Theo, who was the headmaster of a school in Cradock. It was just the first stop for Shreiner, who spent the next several years boarding with family and friends.

Although she received no formal education to speak of, Schreiner read extensively, happily digesting the contents of every book she could find. At the age of 15, already depressed by the sudden death of a younger sister, Schreiner rejected the strict religious principles of her parents. By 1872, the 17-year-old Schreiner had found an informal position as a governess for a family in Dordrecht, a village in South Africa's Eastern Cape. While working in Dordrecht, Schreiner experienced her first love affair - a brief dalliance with Swiss businessman Julius Gau. She ended the affair and once again moved in with brother Theo, who had since relocated to South Africa's diamond fields. Shortly thereafter, Schreiner began working full time as a governess for wealthy Boer families in the Cape Colony. During her free time, she wrote. During 1874 and 1875, Schreiner largely completed work on three novels, Undine, which was published posthumously in 1929; The Story of an African Farm, published in London in 1883; and Man to Man, also published posthumously in 1924.

First Novel Published in England

In 1881, Schreiner left South Africa for England, where she hoped to become a nurse and get her novels published. She was forced to give up her dream of becoming a nurse when an asthmatic condition from her days in the diamond fields became chronic not long after she relocated. She did, however, continue her search for a publisher that might be interested in her writing. In 1882, Schreiner's semi-autobiographical The Story of an African Farm was accepted for publication by Chapman and Hall of London with the proviso that it appear under the pseudonym, Ralph Irons, to overcome the prevailing bias of the era against women authors. Although the novel, first published in 1883, stirred considerable controversy with its liberal views on marriage and religion, it was widely acclaimed as the first realistic description of life in South Africa. It was eight years before the true identity of the book's author could be revealed when a second edition was published in 1891.

Schreiner's novel examines in detail the lives of two orphaned cousins. One, Em, is a fairly traditional young woman, who feels her happiness will be complete when she has found a husband and become a mother. The other, Lyndall (the character thought to represent Schreiner) is an outspoken, sometimes stubborn embodiment of the "New Woman" ideal who refuses to marry her lover after he impregnates her. Although Lyndall and her child eventually die, the rebellious cousin's hopes for the future remain intact. "In the future … perhaps," Schreiner wrote, "perhaps, to be born a woman will not be to be born branded."

Joined London's Inner Circles

Although the true identity of the novel's author was kept from the public until 1891, Schreiner's accomplishment was well known to a small group of England's prominent, young socialists, who quickly welcomed the South African author into their inner circle. Members of this exclusive group included Edward Carpenter, George Bernard Shaw, W.E. Gladstone, and Eleanor Marx. Another close associate of Schreiner during her years in England was noted "sexologist" Havelock Ellis, with whom Schreiner had a brief love affair. Although the affair was over almost before it began, Ellis and Schreiner remained lifelong friends. In 1885 Schreiner was invited to join the Men's and Women's Club, an exclusive discussion group headed by Karl Pearson, a one-time attorney who had taken up a second career as a professor of mathematics. Smitten by Pearson, Schreiner tried unsuccessfully to take their friendship to a higher level. Frustrated by Pearson's lack of response, she set off on a tour of England, France, Germany, and Italy. During her travels she began work on From Man to Man, a novel she never was able to finish. In 1889 a brief romantic relationship with novelist-poet Amy Levy ended in tragedy when Levy committed suicide.

Increasingly troubled by her asthmatic condition, Schreiner in 1889 returned to South Africa, settling in the country's pollution-free central high plateau known as the Karoo. Through her brother, William, who was then attorney general in the Cape Colony government of Cecil Rhodes, she met and developed a close friendship with the controversial prime minister. The friendship was to last only a few years, ending in 1892 when the two became locked in a bitter dispute over the future direction of South Africa's political and social development.

Married Ostrich Farmer

Less than two years after her split with Rhodes, Schreiner married ostrich farmer Samuel "Cron" Cron wright, who shared many of her convictions and was extremely supportive of her writing career. Although Schreiner retained her maiden name, her husband took the joint surname Cronwright-Schreiner, perhaps hoping to trade on his wife's growing fame as an author. Cronwright worked at a variety of jobs - including farmer, estate agent, and land dealer - before being elected in 1902 to a seat in the parliament of the Cape Colony. In April 1895, Schreiner gave birth to a daughter, who died only 16 hours later, setting off a deep depression in the author. In 1897, Schreiner published Trooper Peter Halkett of Mashonaland, an anti-war allegory extremely critical of Britain's imperialism and racism in South Africa. Convinced that Rhodes was likely to push South Africa into war, Schreiner wrote An English South African's View of the Situation, an impassioned plea to head off a conflict between the majority Afrikaners and the British. But her plea fell on deaf ears. The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 was a difficult period for Schreiner. For her outspoken support of the Afrikaner cause, she was interned by the British for more than a year. Even more devastating was the burning of her house, in which were stored all her manuscripts, including the notes for her feminist credo Women and Labour.

Released from detention by the British at the end of the war, Schreiner feverishly struggled to reconstruct her notes for Women and Labour. When the book was finally published in 1911, it quickly developed into the "bible" of the early-20th-century feminist movement. Although Schreiner expressed some disappointment with her final product, the book was widely acclaimed as an important statement of feminist aspirations. In the book, Schreiner, a strong supporter of universal suffrage who in 1908 founded the Women's Enfranchisement League in Cape Town, argued that the vote was "a weapon, by which the weak may be able to defend themselves against the strong, the poor against the weak." In making her case that there was essentially no difference between the productive potential of men and women, Schreiner wrote: "When all the branches of productive labor be considered, the value of the labor of the two halves of humanity will be found so identical and so closely to balance that no superiority can possibly be asserted to either as the result of the closest analysis."

Develolped a Heart Condition

The asthma that had plagued Schreiner for years eventually led her to develop a heart condition. In 1914 she made plans to visit Italy for treatment but was forced at the last minute to divert to England after war was declared. She remained in England for the entirety of World War I, working on a new book that examined pacifism within a feminist and socialist moral framework. During the war she also championed the rights of conscientious objectors. In the early fall of 1920, convinced that death was near, Schreiner returned to South Africa, where she suffered a heart attack and died on December 11, 1920. Before her death, she had requested that her remains, along with those of her infant daughter and longtime pet dog, be entombed on a mountain in the Karoo, not far from Cradock. Schreiner's husband, Samuel Cronwright, saw that this wish was carried out.

Cronwright, Schreiner's sole heir and the executor of her will, was, however, less faithful in discharging some of his late wife's other requests. In her will, Schreiner had insisted that only a select few of her unpublished works be submitted for publication. Specifically, she expressed the wish that only The Child's Day and a series of essays under the general title of Stray Thoughts on South Africa be published. Cronwright, from whom Schreiner had long been estranged though never divorced, decided instead to submit a number of her other works to publishers, hoping that he might continue to profit from his wife's celebrity. Under his direction, Schreiner's From Man to Man, or Perhaps Only was published in 1926. The book, a collection of essays outlining Schreiner's political and sociological philosophies, dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including the exploitation of women in prostitution and marriage, the promise of sisterhood, the importance of death within the context of life, and the moral obligation of whites to promote anti-racism in their dealings with blacks. Potentially even more damaging to Schreiner's legacy was the publication in 1928, authorized by Cronwright, of Undine, the unfinished first novel written by the author.

Despite Cronwright's callous disregard of Schreiner's last wishes, the author's reputation appears to have survived untarnished. She will be long remembered not only for her writing but for her unwavering commitment to feminist and pacifist causes. Schreiner's ultimate goal is perhaps expressed best through the voice of Lyndall, the author's heroine in The Story of an African Farm, who argued that "the world will never come right, till … the female element of the race makes its influence felt."

Books

Contemporary Authors, Gale Group, 2000.

Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2002.

Feminist Writers, St. James Press, 1996.

First, Ruth, and Ann Scott, Olive Schreiner, Schoken Books, 1980.

Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Inc., 1995.

Online

"Creative Quotations from Olive Schreiner," Creative Quotations for Creative Thinking,http://www.creativequotations.com/one/998.htm (February 11, 2003).

"Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner," Insane Tree Promotions,http://www.insanetree.com/olive.htm (February 11, 2003).

"Olive Schreiner," Spartacus Educational,http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUschreiner.htm (February 11, 2003).

"Olive Schreiner," Washington State University,http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/Schreiner.html (February 11, 2003).

"Olive Schreiner (1855-1920)," Drew University,http://www.depts.drew.edu/wmst/corecourses/wmst111/timeline-bios/OSchreiner.htm (February 11, 2003).

"Olive Schreiner: Biographical Overview," Emory University,http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Schreiner.html (February 11, 2003).

Quotes:

"We were equals once when we lay new-born babes on our nurse's knees. We will be equal again when they tie up our jaws for the last sleep."

"The troubles of the young are soon over; they leave no external mark. If you wound the tree in its youth the bark will quickly cover the gash; but when the tree is very old, peeling the bark off, and looking carefully, you will see the scar there still. All that is buried is not dead."

"My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others, and comforting those that are sad."

"Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it."

"A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say .Come, be my wife! With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street. They both earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the most beautiful external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the least clean traffic that defiles the world."

"We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest -- blank; and the world tells us what we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says -- Work; and to us it says -- Seem! To you it says -- As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labor is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says -- Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labor. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women."

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Olive Schreiner
Born	24 March 1855(1855-03-24) Eastern Cape, South Africa
Died	11 December 1920 (aged 65) Wynberg, South Africa
Occupation	Novelist, Suffragist, Political Activist
Notable work(s)	The Story of an African Farm, Woman and Labour

Olive Schreiner (24 March 1855 - December 11, 1920), was a South African author, pacifist and political activist. She is best known for her novel The Story of an African Farm, which has been acclaimed for the manner it tackled the issues of its day, ranging from agnosticism to the treatment of women.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 England & Europe 1.3 Return to South Africa 1.4 Final days 2 Books by Olive Schreiner 3 Books about Olive Schreiner 4 External links

Biography

Early life

Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner (1855-1920) was named after her three older brothers, Oliver (1848-1854), Albert (1843-1843) and Emile (1852-1852), who died before she was born. She was the ninth of twelve children born to a missionary couple, Gottlob Schreiner and Rebecca Lyndall at the Wesleyan Missionary Society station at Wittebergen in the Eastern Cape, near Herschel in South Africa. Her childhood was a harsh one as her father was loving and gentle, though unpractical; but her mother Rebecca was intent on teaching her children the same restraint and self-discipline that had been a part of her upbringing. Olive received virtually all her initial education from her mother who was well-read and gifted.^{[clarification needed]} Her eldest brother Fred (1840-1901) was educated in England and became headmaster of a school in Eastbourne.

When Olive was six, Gottlob transferred to Healdtown in the Eastern Cape to run the Wesleyan training institute there. As with so many of his other projects, he simply was not up to the task and was expelled in disgrace for trading against missionary regulations. He was forced to make his own living for the first time in his life, and tried a business venture. Again, he failed and was insolvent within a year. The family lived in abject poverty as a result.

However, Olive was not to remain with her parents for long. When her older brother Theophilus (1844-1920) was appointed headmaster in Cradock in 1867, she went to live with him along with two of her siblings. She also attended his school and received a formal education for the first time. Despite that, she was no happier in Cradock than she had been in Wittebergen or Healdtown. Her siblings were very religious, but Olive had already rejected the Christianity of her parents as baseless and it was the cause of many arguments with her family.

Therefore, when Theo and her brother left Cradock for the diamond fields of Griqualand West, Olive chose to become a governess . On the way to her first post at Barkly East, she met Willie Bertram, who shared her views of religion and who lent her a copy of Herbert Spencer’s First Principles. This text was to have a profound impact on her. While rejecting religious creeds and doctrine, Spencer also argued for a belief in an Absolute that lay beyond the scope of human knowledge and conception. This belief was founded in the unity of nature and a teleological universe, both of which Olive was to appropriate for herself in her attempts to create a morality free of organized religion.

After this meeting, Olive travelled from place to place, accepting posts as a governess with various families and leaving them because of the sexual predation of her male employers in many cases. During this time she met Julius Gau, to whom she became engaged under doubtful circumstances. For whatever reason, their engagement did not last long and she returned to live with her parents and then with her brothers. She read widely and began writing seriously. She started Undine at this time.

However, her brothers’ financial situation soon deteriorated, as diamonds became increasingly difficult to find. Olive had no choice but to resume her transient lifestyle, moving between various households and towns, until she returned briefly to her parents in 1874. It was there that she had the first of the asthma attacks that would plague her for the rest of her life. Since her parents were no more financially secure than before and because of her ill-health, Olive was forced to resume working in order to support them.

Over the next few years, she accepted the position of governess at a number of farms, most notably the Fouchés who provided inspiration for certain aspects of The Story of an African Farm, which she published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron, as well as a small collection of stories and allegories called Dream Life and Real Life.

England & Europe

Olive Schreiner 1889 at Menton, France

However, Olive’s real ambitions did not lie in the direction of writing. She had always wanted to be a doctor, but had never had enough money to pay for the training. Undaunted, she decided that she would be a nurse as that did not require her to pay anything. By 1880, she had saved enough money for an overseas trip and she applied to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh in Scotland. In 1881, she traveled to Southampton in England. Once there, she was never to realize her dream of becoming a medical practitioner, as her ill-health prevented her from completing any form of training or studying. She was forced to concede that writing would and could be her only work in life.

Despite that, she still had a passion to heal society’s ills and set out to do with her pen what she could not with pills. Her Story of an African Farm was acclaimed for the manner it tackled the issues of its day, ranging from agnosticism to the treatment of women. It was also the cause of one of her most significant and long-lasting friendships, as the renowned sexologist Havelock Ellis wrote to her about her novel. Their relationship soon developed beyond intellectual debate to a genuine source of support for Schreiner.

She finally met him in 1884 when she went with him to a meeting of the Progressive Organisation, a group for freethinkers to discuss political and philosophical views. This was one of a number of radical discussion groups to which she was to belong and brought her into contact with many important socialists of the time. In addition to the Progressive Organisation, she also attended meetings of the Fellowship of the New Order and Karl Pearson’s Men and Women’s Club, where she was insistent on the critical importance of woman’s equality and the need to consider men as well as women when looking at gender relationships.

However, her own relationships with men were anything but happy. She had refused a proposal from her doctor, Bryan Donkin, but he was irritatingly persistent in his suit of her. To make matters worse, despite her reservations about Karl Pearson and her intentions just to remain his friend, she soon conceived an attraction for him. He did not reciprocate her feelings, preferring Elizabeth Cobb. In 1866, she left England for the Continent under something of a cloud, traveling between Switzerland, France and Italy before returning to England. During this time, she was tremendously productive, working on From Man to Man and publishing numerous allegories. She also worked on an introduction to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

Return to South Africa

Given the situation in England, it is perhaps unsurprising that Olive chose to return to South Africa, sailing back to Cape Town in 1889. The return home was unsettling for her – she felt extremely alienated from the people around her, but at the same time experienced a great affinity for the land itself. In an attempt to reconnect with her surroundings, she became increasingly involved in local politics as well as produced a series of articles on the land and people around her, published posthumously as Thoughts on South Africa.

Her involvement with Cape politics led her into an association with Cecil John Rhodes, with whom she would soon become disillusioned and against whom she would write her bitterly satirical allegory Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland. This disillusionment began with his support of the “strop bill” that would allow black and coloured servants to be flogged for relatively small offenses.

Her opposition to the “strop bill” also brought her into contact with Samuel Cronwright, a politically-active farmer. They were of the same mind on the “Native Question” and on Rhodes, and Olive soon fell in love with him. During a brief visit to England in 1893, she discussed the possibility of marrying him with her friends, although she was concerned that she would find marriage restrictive. She put aside these doubts, however, and they were married in 1894, after which they settled at Cronwright’s farm.

The next few years were difficult and unsettled ones for them. Olive’s worsening health forced the couple to move constantly, while her first and only child died within a day. This loss was only worsened by the fact that all her other pregnancies would end in miscarriages. However, she found solace in work, publishing a pamphlet with her husband on the political situation in 1896 and Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland the next year. Both of these isolated her from her family and the people around her, and she was given to long spells of loneliness during that period of her life.

In 1898, the couple moved to Johannesburg for health reasons. In the aftermath of the Jameson Raid, they were seen as the champions of the Republican cause in the face of the inevitable war between Boer and British. Olive tried to persuade South African officials to turn away from the path of war, and, when that failed, wrote The South African Question by an English South African in an attempt to open the English public’s eyes to the reality of the situation. That was equally unsuccessful, but Olive was undaunted. Throughout the war, she continued to defend Boer interests and argue for peace as did her brother William Philip Schreiner, although she was suffering physically and psychologically and all her efforts only met with ridicule. As a means of distraction, she began reworking the “sex book” she had started in England into Woman and Labour, which is the best expression of her characteristic concerns with socialism and gender equality.

The last few years of Olive’s life were marked by ill-health and increasing sense of isolation. Despite this, she still engaged in politics and was determined to make her mark on new constitution, especially through a work like Closer Union. In this polemic, she argued for more rights not only for blacks but also for women. She also joined the newly-founded Cape Branch of the Women’s Enfranchisement League in 1907, becoming its vice-president. However, she refused to lend her support to it any longer when other branches wished to exclude black women from the vote.

Final days

When Women and Labour was finally published in 1911, Schreiner was severely ill, her asthma worsened by attacks of angina. Two years later, she sailed alone to England for treatment, where she was trapped by the outbreak of World War I. During this time, her primary interest was in pacifism – she was in contact with Gandhi and started a book on war, which was abbreviated and published as The Dawn of Civilisation. This was the last book she was to write. After the war, she returned home to the Cape, where she died in her sleep in a boarding house in 1920. She was buried later in Kimberly. After the passing of her husband, Samuel Cronwright, her body was exhumed. Olive Schreiner, along with her baby, dog and husband were laid to rest atop Buffelskop mountain, on the farm known as Buffelshoek, near Cradock, in the Eastern Cape.

Books by Olive Schreiner

• The Story of an African Farm, 1883
• Dreams, 1890
• Dream Life and Real Life, 1893
• The Political Situation in Cape Colony, 1895 (with S.C. Cronwright-Schreiner)
• Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland, 1897
• An English South African Woman's View of the Situation, 1899
• A Letter on the Jew, 1906
• Closer Union: a Letter on South African Union and the Principles of Government, 1909
• Woman and Labour, 1911
• Thoughts on South Africa, 1923
• Stories, Dreams and Allegories, 1923
• From Man to Man, 1926
• Undine, 1929

Books about Olive Schreiner

• Phyllis Bottome: Life of Olive Schreiner, 1924
• The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 1924 (edited by S.C. Cronwright-Schreiner)
• An Olive Schreiner Reader, 1987 (Writings on Women and South Africa by Carol Barash)
• Olive Schreiner Letters, 1988 (edited by Richard Rive)
• My Other Self: The Letters of Olive Schreiner and Havelock Ellis, 1884-1920, 1992 (edited by Y.C. Draznin)
• Not Without Honour: The Life and Writings of Olive Schreiner, by Vera Buchanan-Gould (Hutchinson, 1948)
• Memories of Olive Schreiner, by Lyndall Gregg [Dot Schreiner], (Chambers, 1957)
• Olive Schreiner Her Friends and Times, by D. L. Hobman, (Watts & Co, 1955)
• A Track to the Water's Edge, The Olive Schreiner Reader by Howard Thurman (Harper & Row, 1973)
• Olive Schreiner by Ruth First and Ann Scott, with Forewoerd by Nadine Gordimer (ISBN 0704341565)

External links

• Works by Olive Schreiner at Project Gutenberg
• Biography by Carolyn Burdett, University of North London
• Archival material relating to Olive Schreiner listed at the UK National Register of Archives

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