Ghosts, Revenants and Talking Heads in Ingrid Winterbach’s Niggie
Ghosts, Revenants and Talking Heads in Ingrid Winterbach’s Niggie

Summary/Abstract: Ingrid Winterbach’s novel, Niggie (meaning cousin), is set against the backdrop of the Anglo-Boer War. Against a Jungian, archetypal reading, this article equates the characters in this novel to certain Tarot figures, exploring the role of revenants and ghosts in the lives of these characters. Of the revenants and dream images, we meet, we note amongst others, the woman with red hair and a little feather hat that can change shape. All revenants appear to more than one of the characters and leave them with a feeling of unease and unhappiness. Throughout the novel there is constantly a feeling of foreboding and uncertainty: a feeling as though all the characters were to find themselves on the threshold between life and death. Even the living characters become almost ghost-like and both reader and characters are sometimes uncertain whether they exist or not.

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