“People just Didn’t Respect Women who Were not Married”: Revisiting the Question of why Abused Wives Stay in Marriage in Reneilwe Malatji’s Short Story “Love Interrupted”

Abstract

This article is an African feminist analysis of the short story “Love Interrupted” by South African writer Reneilwe Malatji in terms of how it deepens our understanding of why abused wives stay in marriage. Drawing on African cultural conceptions of marriage, motherhood and family relationships—as elucidated in African feminisms—the analysis unravels several reasons why women stay in marriage despite persistent abuse: 1) they stay to meet cultural expectations of a good wife; 2) they stay because of feelings of indebtedness to husbands who married them at great cost; 3) they perceive marriage as the sole means of accessing and maintaining respectability in society; and 4) they stay out of a sense of responsibility towards children born to perpetuate the patrilineal line. Malatji’s story shows that these reasons do not exist in isolation of each other but rather inform and reinforce each other. Thus, this article argues that the intricate connectedness of these reasons illustrates the ubiquity of cultural gender roles, values and beliefs in compelling women to manage abusive marriages rather than end them.