Browsing by Author "Mkwesha, Faith"

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    Zimbabwe women writers from 1950 to the present : re-creating gender images
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Mkwesha, Faith; Samuelson, Meg; Bangeni, Nwabisa; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Department of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: My thesis focuses on Zimbabwean women as writers and thus on women as producers, contesters and negotiators of gendered images, and the ways in which they write gender identities in and of the nation. I have selected Zimbabwean women-authored texts written in English, from 1950 to 2015. The fictional texts are set in five historical periods – pre-colonial and colonial incursions and the first chimurenga (war) from 1890-1897, colonial rule from 1898-1966, the second chimurenga 1966-1978, independence and the first two decades of self-rule from 1980-1999, and the third chimurenga? and the Zimbabwe crisis from 2000 to the present – each of which is marked by important gender (re)configurations. My delineation of the five historical periods refers to the setting, not production, of the primary texts. The periodization approach makes evident the significant shifts in gender relations and roles in the home and the nation, and the ways in which narratives by women writers reproduce, inscribe, recreate, subvert or contest these gendered positions. Also, organizing primary texts according to their temporal setting depicts how gendered images are composed in each era, which is then revisited by later generations of writers to re-create the images. The women writers revisit the past to raise pertinent issues about the present state of the nation. I argue for the duality of gender, because this perspective makes evident how gendered subjects are produced, showing that women’s identities and roles are shaped in relation to those of men and vice versa. I argue for the category of woman in Chapter 1, and read the texts as fictional narratives written by women because this approach shows how Zimbabwean women writers contest and challenge gender images created by settlers and nationalists from different ideological perspectives, and hold up mirrors to their gendered societies, while constructing new self-images along with new constructions of masculinity. Throughout the thesis I read closely the texts as laboratories where gender is conceived, practised, tested, discarded, and re-defined. In the Introduction Chapter 1, I also argue for the interconnectedness of sex, race, ethnicity, class and politics in the constitution of gender subjectivities. Using the house trope, the quest motif and the filth trope I analyse themes of inclusion, exclusion and belonging. There are seven chapters: Chapter 1 the introduction, Chapter 2 focuses on the woman-hero and the weeping hunter, Chapter 3 focuses on the questing rebellious modern woman and the ineffective husband, absent father, jealous husband and possessive boyfriend, Chapter 4 redefines the concept of hero to inscribe women liberation heroines in the nation, while challenging the authenticity of the self-glorifying nationalist male hero, Chapter 5 focuses on liberated genders, Chapter 6 focuses on the resilient woman and the vulnerable man, and Chapter 7 is the Conclusion. The questions with which I approach the five historical moments represented in my primary texts are: How do women writers renegotiate, contest and re-inscribe gendered images located in these five historical periods? What role do women as writers and characters play in the construction and redefinition of their images and those of their male counterparts? What kind of alternative avenues open up for writers to represent women’s interests? In what ways do these representations of gender participate in the (re)imagining of the nation?