A Study Guide for Es'kia Mphahlele's "Mrs. Plum"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Es'kia Mphahlele's "Mrs. Plum," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535828994

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Mrs. Plum

Es’kia (Ezekiel) Mphahlele

1967

Introduction

First published in Mphahlele’s 1967 short story collection In Corner B,Mrs. Plum was written during the early 1960s while the author was living in Paris. The collection, which includes stories about life in Nigeria and South Africa, was published by the East African Publishing House in Nairobi, Kenya, though the author had taken a teaching position in Denver, Colorado, by that time. Such was the life of this homeless writer. Mphahlele’s work had been banned in his own country of South Africa, and In Corner B wasnot available there until the banning order was lifted in 1979.

Mrs. Plum, makes up four chapters, by far the longest story in the collection, and is sometimes considered a novella rather than a short story. It depicts the changing relationship between Karabo, a black South African cook from the village of Phokeng, and her employer Mrs. Plum, a white liberal living in the suburbs of Johannesburg during the years of apartheid. As Karabo observes Mrs. Plum’s conduct over three years, she comes to realize that Mrs. Plum’s attitude toward blacks is hypocritical, and that her belief in the equality of blacks and whites is shallow.

Mrs. Plum was heralded upon publication as an indictment of white liberal South Africans who claimed that they could bring about political change in the country by working within the system. This is a theme that the author had explored in other stories, including The Living and the Dead (1958) and We’ll Have Dinner at Eight (1961). It is still considered one of Mphahlele’s best and most important stories and has been included in several widely distributed anthologies of African and world fiction. Mphahlele himself included it in a later short story collection, Renewal Time, (1981) and called it "the best thing I ever pulled