With reference to a number of short stories, write about the problems that lovers encounter because of social pressures.

Authors Avatar

Zarina M 11U

‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’  With reference to a number of short stories, write about the problems that lovers encounter because of social pressures.

I am going to discuss the problems that lovers encountered in the following stories: ‘Country Lovers’ by Nadine Gardiner, ‘Veronica’ by Adewale Maja-pearce, and ‘A Stench of Kerosene’ by Amrita Pritam.  Each of these stories shows how lovers suffered due to different cultures, traditions and social pressures.

Firstly, I am going to talk about ‘Country Lovers’.  This story is about two people who were in love, but were forced to keep their relationship a secret because they were from different cultures. Paulus was a white, farmer’s son, and Thebedi was a black worker on Paulus’ father’s farm. However, this did not seem to matter to either of them because they still fell in love. This can be supported by the following quote-

‘Paulus Eysendyck did not seem to realise that Thebedi was now simply one of the crowd of farm children.’

This shows that Paulus was considered to be superior to Thebedi because white people had more power over black people. Their relationship continued until Thebedi was married to a man of her culture, and Paulus went to university to make something out of his life, but soon their problems began. Thebedi gave birth to a child, which was clearly not her husband’s, but belonged to Paulus.

Join now!

‘The infant was very light and did not quickly grow darker as most African babies do.’

When Paulus found out about this, he was not very happy. He seemed almost ashamed – ashamed of his relationship with Thebedi. He was ashamed because Thebedi was from a different background and was not the same colour as him. He did not hide the fact that he had had relationships with white girls.

‘There was a pretty blonde who put her long hair into a kind of doughnut with a black ribbon round it, whom he took to see films.’

‘He took neighbours’ ...

This is a preview of the whole essay