Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan: Black Conciousness and the Search for Self-Affirmation

Abstract

This article is an attempt to demonstrate the power of non-conformity with regard to literary projections. Though written in 1969, Miriam Tlali’s novel, Muriel at Metropolitan exhibits forceful portrayals of Apartheid South Africa’s socio-economic and political system. The novel explores, in the crudest manner possible, the realities of racial inequality in South African society. Tlali, in my view, succeeds in her intentions of telling the South African story exactly as it was by ignoring the existing literary conventions. Her chosen form of literary creation was deliberate; as she was certainly not unaware of the conventional forms of literary expression. Her deliberate disregard of conventional forms of literary creation was frowned upon by such critics as Njabulo Ndebele and caused much debate on the relativity of literature in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. This article also attempts to show how ideological persuasions, in some cases, influence the creation of literary works, as it was the case with Protest Fiction. Perhaps by visiting texts of old, particularly vilified and marginalized ones, we can learn to appreciate the fact that we cannot confine literary art to conventional forms alone; the diversity of a society and its particular conditions may sometimes require unconventional forms for its literary portrayals. The point here is that Tlali chooses to portray the harsh truths about racial relations in South Africa in a manner that reflects surface levels of that reality. It is poignant to point out that the irony of the South African condition is that much of the ills of the Apartheid system still infest the South African Society. Political masters have changed but conditions are basically more or less the same. South Africa needs writers like Miriam Tlali to mirror in their works the South African reality.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p2469