Nuances of Gender, Femininity, and Masculinity in 'Down 2nd Avenue' Humairaa Mayet College

Set across post-union, pre-apartheid South Africa, Down 2nd Avenue follows Eseki – Es’kia Mphahlele – as he recalls the days of his youth. Throughout the narrative, focus is placed on gender, femininity, and masculinity. This focus, however, is inextricably linked to the gendered and racialised power structures present in the South Africa of the 1930s which placed black women in a position below black men; at the bottom of the hierarchy. In this essay I will critically discuss the notions of femininity and masculinity proffered by the narrator, specifically those commenting on the role of women, overt hypermasculinity, and cases in which these are inverted or shoved aside.

From the very beginning, women are illustrated as being subservient to men. In Maupaneng, a village in Limpopo where Eseki spent a considerable portion of his childhood, men would meet to loiter and converse and “[t]he only time women and girls were allowed to come near was when they brought supper” (5). Women were expected to be docile and serve the needs of their men, typically by bringing them food and seeing to their necessities. The most pressing role of women was often to tend to the house and children. This included cooking, cleaning, and the rearing...