The Veranda

In colonial architecture, the veranda is a significant feature in theorising the relationship the settler had between the external world and the internal domestic place. The veranda not only became an extension of the interior of the house, as it held settees and tables, but it extended the house onto the garden and became part of it as pots of plants were placed on it. The steps leading from the veranda onto the garden constituted the furthermost border of the domestic space, as close to the peripheral, outside space. The veranda may also be seen as a metaphorical reflection of gender positions, between the bordering ground of the exterior space of the men’s domain and the interior domestic space of the women’s domain. In this way, Lessing provides the settlers a space to be in Africa but not of Africa, a safe space from which to survey the landscape and at the same time follow their English traditions without getting dirty or taking risks. This is evident in the story ‘The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange’ where the owners of the successful farm spent most of their time on the veranda watching the sunset and entertaining visitors. “The veranda, which was lifted on stone pillars, jutted forward over the garden like a box in the theatre…there sat Major Gale and his wife, as they did every evening at this hour, side by side trimly in deck chairs, their sundowners on small tables at their elbows, critically watching, like connoisseurs, the pageant presented for them” (Winter In July: 36). The veranda being lifted above the plants below is significant because it is as if a distance was being kept between the human construction of the veranda and the African soil. The imagery used here, is taken from European culture, the theatre box, the connoisseur and the pageant but what stands out is the inactiveness of the Gales on the veranda, they simply sit back and wait for a ‘show’ to be presented. Their relationship with the land is indicated by their separation from it and their elevation above it, conveying the Gales’ sense of superiority to Africa and their complacency about their life there.

This sense of superiority given by the veranda scene is carried over to illustrate the ethnic and cultural divisions between the Afrikaner and English- speaking settler in this story. Mr. Gale employs an Afrikaner to help him manage the farm, who has a seventeen year old wife, the De Wets. From the start, Mrs. Gale and the De Wets clash because of the cultural and ethnic division between them as they have different attitudes and values towards life. The first difference is in regard to the gardens, in which the young Afrikaner bride takes no interest at all. Mrs. Gale, on the other hand, could not imagine

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anyone not being fond of gardens. According to Robert Balfour, the colonial garden in Africa represented the European transformation of an alien space and formed a buffer between the coloniser and the alien space of the bush, the veranda being part of the buffer region. “The concept of ‘White Experience’ is able only to convey meaning insofar as it denies and excludes its subconscious links with ‘Black Experience’”. (Balfour: 126). Mrs Gale’s veranda space is then replicated in the garden by a bench situated on a rocky ledge overlooking the valley where she sits to view a mountain scene and the ridges below. She dislikes the alien space of the wild valley with its smells and dangerous river intensely, yet Mrs. De Wet prefers the valley to the garden. Much to Mrs. Gale’s horror the younger woman disregards her invitation to sit with her on the bench and instead goes down to the valley and swims in the river, enjoying the smell of the vegetation. Ultimately, it is the attitude that each has to the veranda that divides them as women, Lessing suggesting here that Mrs. De Wet, as a representative of the Afrikaans-speaking settler and younger than Mrs. Gale, is more integrated with Africa than is the Englishwoman. She opens herself out and responds to the outdoor environment while Mrs. Gale keeps her distance from it.

The veranda in this story serves to illustrate the artificial life that Mrs Gale has created for herself in Africa and Lessing conveys the snobbishness of the English upper- class by Mrs. Gale’s closing statement, whereby she advises her husband that the next time he takes on an assistant, it must be people of their own kind; the de Wets, by the manner of their behaviour, were no better than savages. (Winter In July: 62) Mrs Gale’s ‘veranda attitude’ clearly shows Mrs Gale’s own racism towards both the Afrikaner and the African and her refusal to let go of what was English. Whereas young Mrs de Wet was more open to Africa and could move beyond the house into the freedom of the bush suggests that future generations could integrate successfully with its land and its people and take on a different view of landscape.

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