'A vague vision of a legion of Mephistopheles': The attitudes of four women to class and race on the Eastern Cape Frontier, 1843-1878

Abstract

This article evaluates the class and racial attitudes of four European women who lived on the Eastern Cape frontier between 1843 and 1878. Their cultural baggage included a rigid sense of class structures which defined relationships between people and especially that of master and servant. The women came from the middle class and there is no indication that they were prepared to accept the more egalitarian conditions which they experienced on the frontier. Their racial prejudices were bound up with their class ideologies and religious beliefs. Hence they retained a sense of European superiority and bias against the "heathen", but their contact with the indigenous people did modify their views slightly.