Setting

In "Town and Country Lovers," Gordimer provides details about the South African setting that give the reader an idea of what this setting, marked by separatism and segregation, feels like to the characters. Gordimer shows the reader a glimpse of what it is like to be a black or colored South African by providing brief descriptions of lifestyle and living conditions. The cashier, for example, is said to live "a bus- and train-ride away to the west of the city, but this side of the black townships, in a township for people of her tint."

The restrictive setting is described from the white characters' points of view, as when Dr. von Leinsdorf invites the cashier into the kitchen for a cup of coffee because he "couldn't very well take her into his study-cum-living-room and offer her a drink." When Paulus meets Thebedi privately, he makes sure that they...