The Story of an African Farm

The final chapters of the novel address the existentialist issues that have preoccupied Waldo in new ways as the disappearance and death of Lyndall create a crisis of faith for all the characters. The final events also deal with the fate of women under patriarchy, including Women’s Status in Marriage, in ways both explicit and implicit. Lyndall’s pregnancy, though only hinted at until after the birth of her child, puts Lyndall’s beliefs about relationships between men and women to the test. When she speaks to the gentleman, it is clear that the two have already been intimate and that he is asking Lyndall to marry him for propriety’s sake. As he himself admits, “I love you. I do not pretend that it is in any high, superhuman sense” (237). Thus, Lyndall will not accept his offers of marriage. She is also afraid—because she loves him—that if she does marry him, “[she] shall never be free again” (236). The issue for Lyndall is both philosophical, in that she requires equality, independence, and a meeting of minds in marriage, and material, in that she is unwed and pregnant—a scandalous state at the time.

Lyndall is presumably already pregnant when she agrees to marry Gregory; he is the better potential partner because she demands that he promise to serve her rather than the other way around. In this blunt negotiation and other ways, Lyndall’s relative innocence hovers over the narrative, though she is clearly an experienced adult who knows her own mind. Lyndall’s discussion with Gregory regarding love is barely veiled talk of sexual intimacy: “But, when its sun shines on it [love], through its whole dead crust a throbbing yearning wakes: the trees feel him, and every knot and bud swell, aching to open to him” (229). She is both mocking his exaggerated sense of romance and flirting with him. Nevertheless, when Gregory searches for her, one of the strangers he encounters describes Lyndall as possessing “a rose-bud tinge in the cheeks; hands like lilies, and perfectly seraphic smile” (267). The metaphors here speak of innocence and virtue, likening Lyndall to unopened buds, delicate flowers, and angels.

Likewise, Gregory emphasizes Lyndall’s childlike aspect and innocent demeanor as he cares for her. He thinks of her as “[h]is little ewe-lamb” (273), a Christian symbol not only of innocence but also of martyrdom, implying that her suffering ennobles her. Further, she is infantilized, as Gregory observes her taking “the delight of a small child” as she puts on her shoes (281). She is clothed in “white dresses” and “pink bows,” with “a transparent little face, refined by suffering into an almost angel-like beauty” (281). The implication is that Lyndall’s “transgression” is excused by her suffering or that Lyndall’s punishment—the death of her child and her own impending doom—washes clean her “sins.” It is notable that Tant’ Sannie, who espouses a wholeheartedly antiquated version of marriage and childbirth, thrives after having a child despite being much older than Lyndall.

In this, Lyndall’s death echoes the tendency of 19th-century literature to “punish” transgressive women with death: Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and the eponymous heroine of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth suffer similar fates even as their plights are treated sympathetically. When speaking of her baby, Lyndall calls the child only “it,” claiming, “I did not love it” (278). This too appears to justify her fate; maternal feeling was perhaps the only trait the Victorians associated more strongly than chastity with female goodness. In addition, she dies looking at her own reflection in the mirror. The narrator comments on this unusual pose with a question: “Had she found what she sought for—something to worship?” (284). While this certainly refers to the various crises of faith that underpin the narrative, it also implies that Lyndall loves only herself. In other words, if the circumstances leading up to her death indict the rigidity of 19th-century sexual mores, Lyndall’s fate nevertheless seems karmic. She never wanted children, so her child dies; she wished to live for herself alone, so she dies seeing no one but herself.

Waldo, in contrast, finds much to love in the world, in nature (which he capitalizes, conferring on it a kind of divinity or transcendent value), and in Lyndall. He too may have found some sort of answer in the end, reflecting, “It is but the individual that perishes, the whole remains” (290). Nevertheless, the conclusion implies that he joins Lyndall in death after wandering out into the sunshine one last time. The ending is ambiguous: Waldo may die because, like Lyndall, he has no place in 19th-century society, or he may die because his education and character arc are complete after Finding God and Unity in Nature. Regardless, the novel ends with only the most conventional of the younger generation—Em—alive and with her impending marriage to Gregory reaffirming the social mores that Lyndall and Waldo questioned.