Old Chief Mshlanga and Julys People
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The Step onto African Soil
A sudden awakening to intrinsically interwoven ideologies occur to both the girl from "Old Chief Mshlanga" and Maureen from Julys People when they are given the opportunity to interact with the blacks from South Africa. The girl and Maureen come into the interactions unaware of how deep the British ideologies run and come learn that they subscribe to them, though in different ways. The girl was aware of her hatred of the blacks while Maureen thought she was accepting and liberal. What follows for either is the realization that despite an intense desire to befriend the blacks, they can't because, as the girl phrases it, it is "a very old dance, whose steps I could not learn"(Lessing 51), it is impossible to do this because of the barrier created by their individual ideologies. It is these ideologies that leave them standing alone in the end, unable to cover the gap that was historically created between the blacks and the whites.
The girl was taught to disregard the blacks for everything except their household use, despite this they weren't given respect. They were strictly a commodity for the whites. The girls says that "it was even impossible to think of the black people who worked about the house as friends"(Lessing 49). She uses the word impossible as if they were vastly different, that color is such a great barrier virtually impossible to penetrate. Maureen however comes from a different background...