“Maar in my briewe aan jou beteuel ek my” : die rol van briewe in Etienne van Heerden se In stede van die liefde (2005)

“But in my letters to you I rein myself in”: The role of letters in Etienne van Heerden’s In stede van die liefde (2005) (In love’s place, 2013). Etienne van Heerden’s novel In stede van die liefde (2005) (translated into English as In love’s place in 2013), isn’t a traditional epistolary novel since it only makes use of letters in parts. That letters play an important role in the novel is confirmed by the main character Christian Lemmer’s “unsent” letters to his wife, Christine, as these letters play a crucial role in character development and self-disclosure. Instead of letters decreasing the geographical and psychological distance between them, the distance and separation between them are emphasized because the letters are unsent. Christian only reveals the content of his letters verbally to Christine at the end of the novel. It therefore appears that the letters in this novel are primarily directed to the reader, and therefore fulfils the role of self-revelation for Christian, a type of confessional monologue which can be seen as a form of the diary entry. The characteristics of the epistolary novel as established by Altman (1982), Martens (1985), Botha (1987), Field (1989), MacArthur (1990), Rosenmeyer (2001) and Mullan (2006), appears to be deliberately deviated from or undermined, creating the necessity to determine the role that letters play in the novel.