Body Bereft

The taboos within the tidal moods of the menopause are described with an anger and a verbal intensity that are uniquely Krog's. Close relationships are.
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As Gilleard and Higgs i explain, while ageing can be viewed as "a process or processes of biological change occurring after reproductive maturity has been attained [ As will be elaborated on below, Krog gives voice to this fluidity in Body Bereft , through her emphasis on ageing as a process of becoming, rather than a preexisting condition. This indicates that the menopausal body and the ageing body exist on a continuum that does not allow for easy delineations, highlighting the fluid nature of the body presented in Body Bereft.


  1. Hard Boiled Eggs and other Psychiatric Tales;
  2. Body Bereft.
  3. Services on Demand.

This ageing body is often defined by discourses of disintegration and loss. In order to demonstrate Krog's engagement with this discourse, I investigate "when tight is loose" 23 in relation to the "[n]arratives of decline" discussed by Twigg However, this discourse of lack is not the only marker of identity ascribed to the older body by Krog.

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As my analysis below will demonstrate, in other poems Krog presents defiant and resilient older bodies that refuse to be associated with only decline. I will read "manifesta of a grandma" 30 in relation to its engagement with the "successful ageing" paradigm advanced by Rowan and Kahn. I will next demonstrate that through focusing on the multi-layered role played by the body in the experience of ageing, Krog offers alternative modes of representation for bodily identity in older age, and refuses to submit to discourses that delimit the potential meaning of identity in later life.

I posit that in these poems Krog presents alternate visions of ageing that refuse to be pinned down by conventional understandings. In "when tight is loose" Krog presents us with an ageing body defined by its disintegration The poem reinforces this idea of a body in revolt through dissecting the wholly coherent body associated with youth into the fragmented components associated with ageing corporeality. Each body part is described as an isolated entity with its own intentions over which the speaker has no control.

Not only are "her thumbs [ The placement of the word "refuse" at the end of the line and stanza emphasises how ageing has signified a transfer of power in the split between self and body, and alludes to the deterioration conventionally associated with ageing. This collapse is further illustrated in the stanzas that follow.

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Significantly, the "arse" is described as belonging to the "colon", and not to the speaker, furthering the sense of displacement the speaker feels from her body. The body's revolt against the speaking subject shifts into the speaking subject's revolt or revulsion at the ways in which her body is changing: According to Jay Prosser 65 , skin serves the function of "individualizing our psychic functioning" and "making us who we are". It "holds each of us together, quite literally, contains us, protects us, keeps us discrete" Prosser What happens when "tight" becomes "loose" is that the discreteness of the individual begins to be compromised.

The body described by Krog in this poem is fragmented into disparate elements that lack coherent meaning. In her discussion of Krog's portrayal of abject bodily identity, Viljoen concludes that while the simile conveys Krog's feeling that the speaking subject's "ageing and menopausal body is indeed an affront to the existing social order", it is also an attempt to "confront society's negation of the menopausal woman by making this body visible in all its abject specificity" While this does convey a sense of empowerment, bodily decline remains the overriding characteristic of Krog's representation of the ageing female body in this instance.

While most of the poem details the speaking subject's embodied experience of ageing, the final three stanzas explore the far-reaching effects of this corporeal disintegration in relation to the rest of the subject's lived reality. In each case, the division between herself, her perceptions and her corporeal reality results in a dissolution of her previously established identity.

Furthermore, this description illustrates that it is impossible to separate the biological reality of ageing from the cultural construction of older age. This highlights the deterioration and collapse of the older body, and thus illustrates the ways in which ageing is associated with the "[n]arratives of decline" mentioned by Twigg While "when tight is loose" foregrounds the body as the locus of representation, "manifesta of a grandma" is concerned with stereotypes in society surrounding old age generally, and grandmothers specifically.

In this comic poem, Krog systematically points out and challenges outdated representations of grandmother-hood by parodying the representation of grandmothers in popular media forms such as newspapers and children's picture books.

As will be illustrated below, this has the effect of highlighting the societal impetus that demands "successful ageing" as the ideal way of growing older. The poem starts off with a question, presumably asked by a grandchild: Significantly, this question and the imagined facetious response involve issues of societal perceptions and representations of grandmothers. Krog in this poem deconstructs how grandmothers are perceived by both their grandchildren and by society as a whole and gives voice to the difficulty involved in finding an accurate and encompassing definition for the roles and characteristics of grandmother-hood.

The first part of the imagined response to the child's question " This study states that "storybooks are one means by which children can learn and develop attitudes towards grandparents and older adults in general" Since "research indicates that children's books often depict grandparents as very aged", the representations of grandparents in storybooks can be said to shape and simultaneously reflect children's perceptions of their grandparents. More importantly, these depictions very often show grandparents to be homogeneously aged.

The facetiousness of Krog's imagined response to the child's question seems to undermine this stereotype. However, in this poem, the speaking subject very pointedly later refers to her "early breeding ability", indicating that she does not fit into the imagined community of "very old" grandparents who populate storybooks and contribute to children's perceptions of their grandparents.

Thus, her inability to define grandmother-hood and her resultantly conflating it ironically with being "very old" undermine the idea that to be a grandmother should only mean to be "very old".

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Krog goes on to define the characteristics of stereotypical grandparents, using children's books as a starting point. Furthermore, the study states that "[w]earing glasses is the most common feature attributed to grandparents: In Krog's poem, both the grandmother and the grandfather wear glasses.

Significantly, despite Krog's reference to the speaking subject's "early breeding ability" which suggests that she considers herself somewhat an anomaly, the study found that the grandparents in children's books are decidedly "older than the average grandparents of young children" In contrast to the stereotypical images of grandparents found in storybooks, the speaking subject presents the reader with her own first-hand observations of the elderly. This description seems to find resonance with Rowan and Kahn's idea of the successful ageing paradigm.

This difference comes across in both Krog's description of their appearance and of their activity.

Body Bereft.

Firstly, instead of having hairstyles stereotypically associated with older age, the women have "short-clipped hair" and the man has a "ponytail", and instead of wearing outdated forms of footwear, they are wearing much more practical and modern "running shoes". The "gent" does not use the parodic wooden walking stick; instead he makes use of an "aluminium strut".

Furthermore, he is described as "[n]imbly [ Secondly, instead of being depicted as busy "joyously knitting", these older adults are on a shopping expedition. This implies that they possess a self-sufficiency and capability that their literary counterparts lack, and are thus representative of Rowe and Kahn's idea of 'successful ageing'.

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The conclusion of the poem returns to the question that was posed at its beginning. While the initial question might appear innocuous enough, the content of the poem is evidence to the contrary and proves that defining grandmother-hood is a complex and problematic endeavour.

As has been discussed above, this is because perceptions about being a grandmother are intrinsically connected to the abounding negative, outdated and stereotypical representations of grandmothers in society, in literature and in the media. This can be seen when contrasting the almost resigned acceptance in "we take it lying down" with the poem's attempts not simply to accept these negative stereotypes. In light of the remainder of the poem, the subject's sense of resignation itself becomes a mocking reaction to the social pressure that demands acquiescence in older age.

This may be related to the discourse that speaks of older age in terms of bodily disintegration, and the simultaneous impetus that demands 'successful ageing'. Krog highlights the fluidity of the construction of identity in older age through foregrounding these divergent identities in this poem and throughout the collection. In "how do you say this", Krog 28 most cogently expresses the tension between the narratives of decline that characterise the lived experience of older age, and the societal impetus that demands successful ageing.

Despite claiming not to know how to write the ageing body, Krog attempts to do so in this poem that describes a sexual experience between two older bodies. She achieves this through liberating the ageing body from being a self-enclosed marker of identity characterised only by lack and loss.

Bodily disintegration and successful ageing in Body Bereft by Antjie Krog

Instead of giving in to the reductiveness involved in categorising the components of the ageing body in an unaccommodating language that inevitably has to render a "wrinkle [ Through focussing on how an ageing body perceives and interacts with another ageing body, she is able to avoid pinning down the body, and the meaning ascribed to it instead becomes fluid and shifting, as we see the speaking subject attempting to overcome conventional ideas of the limited sexuality accorded to an ageing individual.

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Krog grew up on a farm, attending primary and secondary school in Kroonstad. She is mar Krog grew up on a farm, attending primary and secondary school in Kroonstad. She is married to architect John Samuel and has four children: Andries, Susan, Philip, and Willem. In she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape. Books by Antjie Krog. Trivia About Body Bereft. No trivia or quizzes yet. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.