The Layered Gaze: Reading Lesbian Desire in Selected South African Fiction

This article offers a close textual analysis of the ways in which lesbianism is represented in two examples of contemporary South African fiction, namely Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf and Yvette Christiansë's Unconfessed. In an effort to challenge the erasure of lesbianism that characterises much of the scholarly engagement with these novels, the article focuses on the lesbian characters and the heteronormative male gaze through which other characters interpret lesbian desire. It emerges that heteronormative assumptions are deeply entrenched in the characters' understandings of lesbianism and this article regards the exposure of these assumptions as a first step in the authors' attempts to suggest alternative ways of reading lesbian desire.