26 pages • 52 minutes read
Fay WeldonInd Aff
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The History of Sarajevo
Sarajevo, now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is the city in which “Ind Aff” is set. It has a tumultuous and complex political history. Particularly relevant to the story are its roles as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and as part of Yugoslavia.
The Austro-Hungarian empire began to occupy Sarajevo in 1878, and the city officially became part of the empire in 1908. When Peter calls it the “Hungro-Austarian Empire” (Paragraph 31), this undermines his supposed historical expertise, and since the relationship is based partially on the narrator’s academic admiration of him, the cracks in the relationship begin to show.
On June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. According to conventional wisdom, this event triggered World War I due to the alliances of the assassinated parties. Peter and the narrator argue in the story about whether this event really caused World War I.
Princip was a nationalist—specifically, a member of Young Bosnia, a political group that believed in the liberation of the Bosnian people from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the ideal of a nation of Southern Slavs (including Bosnians). This nationalism is what the narrator of “Ind Aff” refers to when she repeatedly reflects upon Princip’s “inordinate affection” for his nation. This love, ultimately deemed irrational by the narrator, is constantly compared to the love she has for her professor.
After the war, Princip’s dream came to be realized in the nation of Yugoslavia, of which Sarajevo became a part. By the 1950s, it was a country of “mixed capitalist-communist economy” (Paragraph 9). In going to a private restaurant, the narrator explains to readers that “we knew we would pay more but be given a choice” (Paragraph 9). This choice foreshadows the choice that the narrator eventually makes to leave her lover.
Ideological Context: Second-Wave Feminism
Fay Weldon publicly identified as a feminist. Written in 1988, just before the birth of third-wave feminism, “Ind Aff” focuses on one of the major concerns of second-wave feminism: heterosexual relationship dynamics.
The second wave of feminism took place from the 1960s through the 1980s in the Western world, and it built on first-wave feminism by advocating for not only legal equality as the first wave also did, but also equality in relationships, family and home life, reproduction, and the workplace. Feminists critiqued male domination in all these cultural and intimate spheres, connecting the two with the popular slogan, “The personal is political!”
Weldon represents the personal-as-political in this story, which portrays a young woman embroiled in a relationship with her much-older thesis advisor. The genders of both participants in this unequal relationship links the relationship to gender inequality on a larger scale.
Second-wave feminism was later critiqued for its inattention to issues of race and class, to queer and trans rights, and to the Global South. The story’s focus on a European woman who can afford to travel and is in a heterosexual relationship (without mention of her race or the sex she was assigned at birth) characteristically ignores these aspects of identity. Second-wave feminism was also critiqued for having an aversion to sex; many critical thinkers discussed the idea that heterosexual sex objectified women and aimed to make them subservient, while others discussed female sexual pleasure to counter such subservience. The narrator considers her relationship to her sexuality in “Ind Aff,” both due to her affair and when she is attracted to a waiter.
The achievement of second-wave feminism most relevant to the story is Title IX, the legislation passed in the United States prohibiting sex discrimination in schools, which passed in 1972. Though the protagonist of “Ind Aff” is British, this legislation influenced views on sexual harassment throughout the Western world. In 1988, shortly before the publication of the story, legislation that included the promotion of gender equality in primary and secondary schools, the Education Reform Act 1988, passed in the UK.
