A Critical Textual Analysis of Gender Disparities in Reneilwe Malatji's Selected Short Stories

This article demonstrates the abstractness of the gender theory of motherism posited by Nigerian scholar Catherine Acholonu, showing its weakness as a theory by which to gauge rural women's experiences in Africa. Using the short stories of South African writer Reneilwe Malatji as literary data, the article argues that gender works in conspiracy with culture, age, marital status and ethnicity to constrain rural women from exiting abusive marriages, speaking up against their husbands' infidelities, ending dissatisfactory marriages, and fighting poverty. At the same time, Malatji's short stories highlight the agency of rural women in resisting gender constraints to attain self-empowerment. The article proposes ultimately that a re-theorization of motherism must reflect the harsh realities in rural women's lives and simultaneously show that alongside the debilitating experiences of patriarchal oppression women are also acting as agents of their own transformation.