Domesticity and masculinities in Zukiswa Wanner’s ‘The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man’

Abstract

Zukiswa Wanner’s The Madams (2006) and Behind Every Successful Man (2008) grapple with the contradictory mess and incompleteness of black middleclass masculine and feminine subjectivities within the ‘post-apartheid’ South African nuclear family. These seemingly polarised positions are constructed and steeped within the unstable modern nuclear family and neo-traditional values. This articles’ discussion of the novels is foregrounded on the domestic as a site and an ideology that manufactures, shapes and regiments sexuality and subjectivity construction and gender performances in both males and females. It suggests that the relationship between class, consumerism and pseudo-African values play a significant role in the back and forth transformation of black masculinities and femininities.

Keywords: Masculinities; femininities, Middleclass; domesticity, culture