The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

While she was writing The Rôle of the Missionaries, Taylor expressed her sense of
depression and despair to Tabata both about writing history and about political tensions
and intrigue in the movement. He replied that it was because of Taylor’s “particular
temperament” and because she was an artist, who “[felt] the atmosphere sooner than
others”, that her feelings took “a very sharp form”. And because her “tentacles [were]
always spread out to feel [her] environment”, she was able to write. But “that same
quality” also exposed her “to tortures occasioned by the changing temperatures in
winds, the cross‐currents or even social torrents”. And these ‘tortures’ were “not felt as
such by the majority”. Because she was an artist, Tabata felt that Taylor had experienced
the internal political crisis in the Unity Movement that had “crept into our very lives,
into our blood and bones and … our very hearts” even more acutely. For her to get “fits
of despondency” was not a “sign of weakness”, as she seemed to think. It was normal,
Tabata felt, that Taylor was “bound to sense the coming storm long before it overtakes
us”. 29
It was with these emotional insights that Tabata encouraged Taylor to write. She
recorded in her diary: “B urges me to liberate my pen by writing my own story”. Rather
than be “egoistic”, however, Taylor thought she would try “to speak for all children who
[had been] violently deprived of security in the society of violence”. After almost two
weeks, Taylor made “a small beginning” to the story of ‘Linda’ (as she had decided to
name this character). Doubting whether she would succeed, Taylor felt fear come to her
“straight away”. 30 She identified some of her difficulties in writing this story:
It is her mother – my mother – I must recreate. Yet it
concerns her child too when she was grown up. Its
underlying theme is the bondage of woman in this society
and the betrayal of youth. But she is eager to grasp life,
knowing nothing of it. It is my daughter’s too. Or girlhood.
The characters make faint, tentative movements of life. 31
29 I.B. Tabata to Dora Taylor, 1952 (c.23 July 1952), I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
30 Dora Taylor, Extended Diary, entries for 6 & 18 August 1953, Dora Taylor Papers.
31 Dora Taylor, Extended Diary, entry for 18 August 1953, Dora Taylor Papers.
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