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July's People | Relationship Between Social Status and Self-Perceptions

Felty is a visiting instructor at the College of Charleston. In the following essay, he examines Nadine Gordimer's depiction of the relationship between her characters' social status and their self-perceptions, which collapse after the overthrow of white rule in South Africa.

Nadine Gordimer's July's People explores the nature of revolution, both on a political and a personal level. When the white Smales family must flee the violence that erupts to end the caustic racial oppression of South African apartheid, they lose not only their economic and social status but also any firm sense of their own identities.

The novel's title, in fact, underscores the indefinite nature of the relationships in the book. For instance, the fact that July is the servant of the Smales makes the family, to July's village, "July's People." However, when the...

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