the old chief mshalanga

The Old Chief Mshalanga by Doris Lessing is a tale of racial discrimination between dominant whites and inferior blacks. Lessing, on the other hand, uses the story's setting to highlight the fact that people should not be judged based on their skin color. According to the story, people make conclusions about their peers based on their skin color. The Old Chief Mshalanga depicts the torments that blacks endured when serving white masters on their own African soil. The current thesis aims to have an empirical response to Doris Lessing's use of landscape and how she frames The Old Chief Mshalanga as a feminist tale. Application of Feminism in Doris Lessing’s The Old Chief Mshalanga

The author uses this story as an avenue of presenting her past experiences in life. History reveals Doris Lessing as one of the female writers who fought for liberation of the blacks with most of her writings revolving around the problems the African populace faced in the twentieth century. The story puts a lot of concentration on Nkosikaas; a fourteen year old girl who narrates how she interacted with the old chief Mshalanga and his people. Adoption of a female character to drive the story clearly brings out the feminist ideologies upheld by Lessing. The author uses Nkosikaas to drive her feminist agenda. She strives to become equal to the male characters presented in the story. For instance, Nkosikaas does not give the old chief the kind of respect he deserves when they first meet. At this instance, the small girl thought that chief Mshalanga and his people would pave way only because they were blacks. However, she is forced to show respect and acknowledges “I thought that the pride that made the old man stand before me like an equal- more than an equal, for he showed courtesy, and I showed none” (Lessing 721). Here, it is clear that the females are trying to outweigh their male counterparts despite the positions they hold in the society.

Despite the efforts made by female characters to outdo the males, social order is out rightly restored. Doris is keen to institute checks on the issue of female dominance in the African land where males are the key sources of societal authority. It is evident that the narrator (Nkosikaas) is a girl who treats every man as an inferior being. This can be attributed to the fact that she is not a native. Despite this, order has to be restored when she meets with the old chief Mshalanga. She has to pave way and treat him with the respect he deserves. On the other hand, Nkosikaas has to relate to her father with a lot of respect. This ultimately decreases the levels of feminist pride upheld by Nkosikaas.

Use of Landscape

Nature is one of the aspects applied by many works of literature to bring out the meaning of ideas. In the old chief Mshalanga, the narrator is meant to revolve her story on the rich African landscape as a way of enlightening the audience about the struggles she goes through while fighting for liberation of the blacks. It is important to put into consideration the fact that the setting of the story is in Rhodesia; a region in South Africa which was highly dominated by the white settlers. Landscape features are used in symbolic ways in Doris Lessing’s’ “The Old Chief Mshalanga”. For instance, the “jutting piece of rock” (Lessing 723) is used in a symbolic way to represent the intrusion effects of the whites in rich African soils. The rock intrusively thrusts out of the soil to occupy the land which is sparsely filled with vegetation. Nkosikaas has the zeal of bringing freedom to the blacks. However, it is hard to accomplish this dream in this place and longs to live in another region where her presence would be appreciated. This is revealed by the use of landscape when she starts imagining of other regions like the northern forests which are cool. In other instances, she dreams of the pale gleaming castle.

Landscape is used in Lessing’s the old chief Mshalanga to reveal oppression among the native blacks. For instance, the narrator’s description of her father’s land reveals how land ownership regulations in this African country are poor. As a matter of fact, the laws are in great favor of the foreign whites than the natives. Lessing makes a deliberate attempt to compare the narrator’s white father’s land as a bush. The choice of words in this section of the story clearly reveals the fact that the whites owned large tracts of land which were not cultivated to contribute to economic growth. On the other hand, the Africans were forced to work as laborers in these farms. Here, Lessing reveals the economic prejudices faced by Africans by being forced to provide cheap labor on their own lands. The remote nature of Africa is compared to the rocks and trees by the narrator. Since the whites look at the blacks as uncivilized people resembling these trees, they uphold the notion that they are the givers of light modernity and civilization.

Conclusion

Lessing presents the old chief Mshalanga as a story of feminism with immense use of landscape. The feminist ideologies upheld by the narrator are used to reveal how women fight for recognition in the African society which was highly dominated by the males. On the other hand, landscape features are used in a symbolic way to reveal the oppressions, struggles and prejudices suffered by Africans on their own soils as servants of the foreign white masters.



Work Cited

Lessing, Doris. The Old Chief Mshlanga. HarperCollins UK, 2013.