SOURCE: "Paton and the Silence of Stephanie," in English Studies Africa, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1989, pp. 53-63.

In the following essay, Hooper investigates the function and effects of Stephanie's "silence" in Too Late the Phalarope.

In every story there is a silence, some sight concealed, some word unspoken, I believe.

                            [J. M. Coetzee, Foe]

I think it might be safe to describe the affiliations of Alan Paton as liberal and humanist, and his endeavour as a writer of fiction as realist and didactic. Certainly in Too Late the Phalarope his concern is to investigate the implications of an "iron law" for the lives of individual people, and to demonstrate its destructive effect. Yet, in the voicelessness of Stephanie, the story contains a "silence", the functioning and effects of which I would like to investigate.

In Too Late the Phalarope Paton sets up a narrative frame behind which his own position...