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Surname 1 Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Analysis of Lucy Lurie in Disgrace Why would Lucy, in deep silence opt to disregard the violence committed against her? Disgrace has its setting in Cape Town in South Africa where racial segregation happens as an effect of apartheid. Dreadful events including women abuse and manipulation repeatedly occurred between the African American citizens and the white citizens in the country. David Lurie is the protagonist in this book since he endures many conflicts including robbery and rape. (Wright 158). Therefore, he leaves the city to the country with his daughter Lucy Lurie. David Lurie gets to understand the true meaning of disgrace after Lucy was raped and when he tried to rape Melanie in Cape Town. The author, J.M. Coetzee, therefore, uses the struggles of the protagonists to portray the events of the novel. In the beginning of the book, there is a white woman, Lucy Lurie, who is mostly independent. However, she occasionally gets assistance from Petrus who does the hard labor and attend to the dogs. She is lucky to be living a seemingly quiet and private life in Eastern Cape South Africa after the apartheid rule. Lucy welcomes her estranged father who is running away from a scandal he causes at his workplace. Her life is upraised when something mysterious happens. She undergoes a terrible and brutal experience that changes her life to disgrace since she is unable to overcome the humiliation of being raped and impregnated by three men. In contrast to her father's path, however, Lucy settles for a liberal lifestyle instead. The author,

Surname 2 Coetzee depicts her as a hardworking lesbian who lives on her own in her land doing farming and raising dogs. "Now here she is, flowered dress, bare feet and all…a solid countrywoman, a boervrou." (Coetzee 60). Her lover was not around as she had departed, leaving Lucy to look after the farm for herself. Lucy is different from her father David as portrayed in the book. It is even hard to think that the two of them are also related. David's character includes his suave, sleek and sophisticated ways that involve watching films about art, pouring red wine and teaching at a university in a renowned metropolitan area. On the other hand, Lucy is a hardworking woman living in the countryside, doing farming for a living and barely cares about her body image and fashion. Further, into the book, it is revealed that Lucy's home was a commune at one point making her the only person who has did not move away. "Now here she is, flowered dress, bare feet and all, in a house full of the smell of baking, no longer a child playing at farming but a solid countrywoman, a boervrou." (Coetzee 75). It makes her more interesting and odder at the same time. She focuses on staying on her farm even after her friends and lover leave. Regardless, Lucy does not give the answers out rightly since she arouses curiosity making every step of the book exciting. Lucy's relationship with other people especially her sexual relations are the major components that make up her character. In the course of the novel, we discover that Lucy is a lesbian and lived with her lover, Helen. She later moved on (Wright 160). Lucy's sexual identity portrays her views on sex and gives David a platform of thinking about women and their sexuality. Therefore, David finds it comfortable talking to Lucy about Melanie since both of them had experiences with women in romantic and sexual ways. As stated in the introductory

Surname 3 paragraph, Lucy does not only take David's side of the story but also considers her encounter as a victim of sexual assault. Therefore, she also looks at Melanie's point of view as a universal female perspective. The experiences Lucy encounters as a victim of assault do not only transform her ideas on male and female dynamics but also turns her ways of relating to the people in her life. It seems to lead to the development of a closer father to daughter bond between David and Lucy. However, the unfathomable happens when three intruders attack the pair, and Lucy is caught in the middle of it all and is raped. After the terrible event, the character of Lucy takes a significant turn. The trauma she experiences makes it hard for her to find help from the police. David is puzzled about her reaction since she becomes depressed and withdrawn. Lucy's habits change to lying awake in the night and sleeping during the day. Additionally, she becomes more snippy and irritable with David (Wright 161). Before being raped, it seemed that David and Lucy were quite close and even opened up to each other about specific personal topics. After the rape incident, however, Lucy closes up. Besides that, she tends to see David in the way she portrays the men who raped her since he had put another woman through whatever she was dealing with. Conflict and tension come in between David and Lucy. Lucy assumes David is not capable of giving her a better option of what she is already. On the other hand, David tries his best to persuade Lucy about the uninhabitable and dangerous state of the country by convincing her to go with him in a more civilized place. "Because I couldn't face one of your eruptions, David, I can't run my life according to whether or not you like what I do. Not any more. You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn't make an appearance until halfway through. Well, contrary to what

Surname 4 you think, people are not divided into major and minor." (Coetzee 29). Regardless, her rape encounter tends to tie her up to her place and the people around there. Her relationship with Petrus changes after she is assaulted, and they become something close to a family from being friendly neighbors. Lucy looks out for Petrus and ensures he gets his needs especially when the boy came at Petrus' party. Although Lucy gets upset to see him there, she acts right because she does not want to interfere with Petra's event by messing things up by involving the police. Lucy persuades David to leave the party since she had spotted the boy who had attacked them. Lucy tells David not to make a big deal out of it, but he does not listen. Instead, he tries to call the police and Lucy stops him as she did not want to damage things for Petras and his family. David insists she is making a mistake and Lucy becomes upset. Therefore, she chooses a silent exit although David is not capable of doing so. Later David receives a call from the police informing him of some developments in his case. Lucy accompanies him to pick the car, and when it becomes a mistake, Lucy gets frustrated. Eventually, Lucy opens up about her encounter. She told David how she felt about the intruders coming back to get her "I think they have done it before…At least the two older ones have. I think they are rapists first and foremost. Stealing things is just incidental. A sideline. I think they do rape." (Coetzee 88). She then told him about her views on sex and men in general. "When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me anymore. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know. When you have sex with someone strange – when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your weight on her – isn't it a bit like killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood – doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?" (Coetzee 96). Lucy writes to her father David telling him that she has to stay at her place because she does

Surname 5 not know where she came from. David calls Lucy from Cape Town to understand how things are, but not everything seems okay. David then returns, and Lucy tells him of her pregnancy. She confesses that she cannot deal with an abortion hinting that she ever had one in the past. Lucy then reveals to David of her consideration of getting married to Petrus as a business deal and for her interests sake. When David asks Lucy whether she loves her baby, she says objects does not but hopes that she will love the kid at some point. Lucy settles on marrying Petrus as a form of protection when she discovers she is pregnant following her rape encounter. However, there lacks a personal connection between Lucy and Petrus, but they try to live together in their ways. Lucy assists Petrus to achieve higher social standards by enabling him to acquire land. On the other hand, Petrus is said to be helping her even though he does not talk about her rape case. However, he promises to look after Lucy's child after he or she is born. In conclusion, David and Lucy seem to patch up their relationship although it is still distant. The character of Lucy Lurie is seen as being a passive victim of different circumstances in the changed South African Republic. Her responses to her rape assaults are seen as being oppressive and submissive. However, from a theological view, her actions are sacrificial, liberating and moral.

Surname 6 Works Cited Coetzee, John M. Disgrace. Penguin, 2000. https://www.shmoop.com/disgrace-coetzee/lucy-lurie.html Wright, Laurence. "David Lurie’s learning and the meaning of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace." JM Coetzee's Austerities. Routledge, 2016. 157-172....