Gender and Cultural Representations in the Sesotho Novel

This article examines gender representations in older Sesotho novels - the first one, Moeti wa Botjhabela, having been published in 1907. The objective is to observe whether or not there have been gains in the narrative of gender equality. Rereading the older Sesotho novels makes one understand them from a different perspective, and they give one a glimpse, albeit broken and fragmented, of the gender relations of the community that they narrate. A novel is a powerful social instrument of represen-tation because it uses literary devices such as characterisation, plot and setting to construct shared meanings within a cultural space. In this regard, the ideas, con-cepts, feelings and actions of the characters that such a novel constructs stand for real issues in the culture that the writer knows well, and in this regard a novel (re)- produces certain cultural notions. The Sesotho novel, like other Sesotho art forms, is thus seen as a creation that serves Sesotho cultural representation.