“It left shame in me, lodged in my body”: Representations of shame, gender, and female bodies in selected contemporary South African short stories

Abstract

I offer a feminist literary analysis of gendered representations of shame in selected contemporary South African short stories. The analysis reveals how the dynamics of shaming operate by drawing on social constructions that continue to devalue and denigrate women’s bodies. The female characters’ narratives are littered with “I should haves” and other indications that shame fulfils a powerful disciplinary function that causes women to modify their behaviour and sanction their feelings in a futile quest to avoid shame. I demonstrate that this is a futile endeavour because female characters are bombarded with messages of shame from so many different avenues that it becomes impossible for any of them to emerge unscathed. The shame that they cannot escape resides in their bodies and the article seeks to listen to the corporeal articulations of shame in an attempt to acknowledge a potent, yet often silenced, aspect of women’s daily lived realities.