Gertrude

Gertrude: A submissive woman, Kumalo’s younger sister who fled to Johannesburg with her little son in search of her lost husband lost in the mines.”

She is the reason that Stephen comes into Johannesburg and is exposed to this new modern way of life. She is also the first introduction of conflict. She also shows that religion has caused her to be ashamed of her life and lose touch with her family, giving the reader an idea of how religion will contribute to the story. She is one of the few women in the story, and her character is presented as a very submissive person, which correlates to the time period in which this book is written. Her character represents the sexism happening at the time along with the segregation between the blacks and whites of South Africa

• “There is laughter in the house, the kind of laughter of which one is afraid. Perhaps because one is afraid already, perhaps because it is in truth bad laughter” (29).

• “She gets up and goes to the yard. She calls, but the voice that was once so sweet has a new quality in it, the quality of laughter that he heard in the house” (31).
• “I do not like Johannesburg”... she looks at him with eyes of distress… “I am a bad woman, my brother. I am no woman to go back” (31).