Coetzee's Disgrace

Harder, yet easier too. One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be as hard as hard can be grows harder yet.

David Lurie in Disgrace, a middle-aged South African professor in Cape Town reflects after multiple disappointments in his own life and circumstantial failures brought upon him by himself. He is resigned towards his life and makes no attempt to resurrect what he loses with a casual affair with a much younger student. He is reckless, we get to know as we are told about his disinterest in his job, towards his personal life and missing passions. He has intellectualized all the events in his life so far. He has been dismissed from his teaching job at the university as a consequence. After which he tries to move away from things, city life, its intricacies and takes refuge at his young daughter's farm. Lucy Lurie. Lucy has chosen a country life. As David reflects his move to his daughter's house,

But he is a father, that is his fate and as a father grows older, he turns more and more- it cannot be helped- towards his daughter. She becomes his second salvation, the bride of his youth reborn.

All is going just like country life, until that day, the event which shakes his calm and gives rise to only, commotion of feelings, of a protective father. His daughter gets assaulted and plundered physically. After which he is not the same and probably never will be. His quiet reflections are always towards the incidence or some aspect of it.

Menstruation, childbirth, violation and its aftermath: blood matters; a woman's burden, woman's preserve.

Not for the first time, he wonders whether women would not be happier living in communities of women, accepting visits from men only when they choose.

And since Lucy decides to choose silence over the event of her violation, he thinks,

They will read that they are being sought for robbery and assault and nothing else. It will dawn on that over the body of the woman silence is being drawn like a blanket.

The book is a quick one, stunning in certain portions, a page-turner with a certain distinct quality of narrative darkness. My gripe with the book: Coetzee skipping more detailing of certain characters, like Melanie Isaac the girl he has an affair with, never makes an appearance in his life and sort of strangely disappears abruptly. And then Petrus, farm neighbor to Lucy. It is subtly hinted that he is a complex character in all its simplicity and might have something to do with the incidence but rarely gets more attention.