Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases: Seventeen Short Stories

"Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases: Seventeen Short Stories" by Perceval Gibbon is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The collection features the character of Vrouw Grobelaar, a formidable matriarch of a Boer family, who narrates tales filled with moral lessons, folklore, and cultural reflections from her life on the South African frontier. Through her stories, Gibbon explores themes of morality, human and racial dynamics, love, and conflict within colonial contexts. The opening of the book introduces Vrouw Grobelaar as a commanding figure respected for her lineage and wealth. She is portrayed as a fixed point in her bustling household, surrounded by grandchildren and Kafirs, whom she governs with an iron hand, albeit with underlying affection. The narrative sets the stage for her storytelling, where she shares fables that invoke the cultural heritage of the Boers, such as tales involving familial and moral conflicts that reflect the harsh realities of life on the frontier. Among her relatives, young Katje stands out, expressing youthful desires and challenges to Vrouw Grobelaar. The old lady’s stories reveal the complexities of human nature, often punctuated by the local magic and beliefs that shape their lives. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Perceval Gibbon was an author and journalist, serving for the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, as well as for other publications. Gibbon had travelled to South Africa in 1898, moved to the war front and became the representative of a syndicate of colonial newspapers at the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War. He is best remembered for his short stories, which often contained an ironic twist at the end. Gibbon's influence on the work of later South African authors has been acknowledged. For instance, the fictional narrator of Vrouw Grobelaar's Leading Cases (1905) is said to be a forerunner of Herman Charles Bosman's character Oom Schalk Lourens.