‘I Just Express My Views & Leave Them to Work’: Olive Schreiner as a Feminist Protagonist in a Masculine Political Landscape with Figures

There are disturbances as well as regularities in the gender order, including challenges to and re-workings of conventional hierarchies. An example of such re-workings provides the focus of discussion: the political interventions of South African feminist writer and social theorist Olive Schreiner (18551920). Discussion of Schreiners letters to a number of important white political figures is organised around an epistemological question: can Schreiners political influencewithin the masculine political landscape of the Cape in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries be convincingly demonstrated by concrete epistolary examples and compelling evidence? Discussed here regarding womens presence in a masculine political landscape, this epistemological question exercises historiography more generally: with what certainty can knowledgeclaims about the past be advanced? The ideas context in which these questions are explored is feminist historiography concerning gender and in particular separate spheres, which were particularly troubled and complex in the South African context. We argue that the performative dimensions of letter writing need to be encompassed within notions of influence and proof, rather than this being conceived as always lying outside the text: texts and words can have powerful effects, with the evidence in Schreiners case pointing strongly to her significant political influence. Chapters © 2013 The Authors. Book compilation © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.