Met die Boere in die Veld by Sarah Raal (Afrikaans text)
Very Scarce and even more so with the Dust Jacket intact.
Met die Boere in die Veld by Sarah Raal (Afrikaans text)
Hardcover
Publisher: Nasionale Pers, Beperk, 1938 First Edition.
Condition: Good. The original book with a very scarce DJ. DJ is shelf rubbed and edge worn and faded along the spine area with paper loss at places. Previous owner name neatly inscribed(1938) on first page. The book in its beautiful dark brown boards have no other inscriptions and the binding is excellent. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover.
Die skryfster se eie ervarings...
The conspicuous part played in the war by the Boer women was but a sequence to that which they took in the political affairs of the country before the commencement of hostilities, and both were excellent demonstrations of their great patriotism and their deep loyalty to the Republics which they loved. Some one has said that real patriotism is bred only on the farms and plains of a country, and no better exemplification of the truth of the saying was necessary than that which was afforded by the wives and mothers of the burghers of the two South African Republics.
What seems to be a typical feature of Boer women's personal texts which refer to the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) is the militant rhetoric of protest against the British aggression. Met die Boere in die Veld ("With the Boers in the Veld") by Sarah Raal is a perfect example of this trend. Yet, her case is unique, because she actually spent a part of the war in the veld, fighting side by side with her brothers, which definitely was not a traditional place for a woman during a military conflict. Her memoirs were published for the first time in the 1930s, reprinted a number of times, and re-issued in 2000 in two language editions - Afrikaans and English (significantly under a new title, The Lady who Fought). An additional introduction was added to both new editions, which suggests a new role of the heroine and a new meaning of her story. This paper discusses how Raal's original foreword and the new introduction influence the reader's response to the text. Additionally, attention is drawn to the role of other paratextual elements of the book and the matter of translation. Having taken into account political and gender discourses operating as a context for every reading, the text undergoes re-interpretations. Consequently, the book, once an anti-British Afrikaner nationalist propaganda story, turns into a popular adventure tale about a brave Boer girl, a story about an exceptional woman, a proto-feminist who transgresses the conventional gender roles, or into a universal pacifist protest. In the 2000 edition pacifist and feminist aspects come to the foreground, and this way the old story becomes a suitable read for the modern post-apartheid reader.
