Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Department of African Languages in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2001. / This study looks at the portrayal of women in siSwati drama. The main aim is to reveal how women are portrayed in siSwati drama. In real life women are usually portrayed negatively. This is due to cultural directives that reveal woman as inferior beings. This affects our young children who read books and perceive women as useless. A child reads and has the idea that a woman is unfaithful, useless, a pretender, and dependant and has no job opportunities. If a child is a boy he grows with a negative connotation that a woman has no power. This affects our young girls because they do not develop confidence. There is a belief that the place of a woman is at home where she is expected to do all the household jobs. Our culture too, perceives women as inferior, forgetting that there are women who are single and those who are breadwinners who maintain their homes. This study looks at the presentation of women characters in different siSwati drama books. It reveals the impact of Western culture and African culture to women. It is found that patriarch dominates over women. It also looks at the views of different people about the portrayal of women in siSwati culture.

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With the publication of her novel, My Brilliant Career, in 1901, Miles Franklin became the darling of the Sydney literati. Great things were expected of the little girl from the bush. But five years later, nothing had eventuated; her talent, Miles thought, was barely recognised in Australia. In the hope of gaining greater writing opportunities, she shipped to Chicago where she became involved in social reform. It was hard work and ill paid, and though she bewailed the fact that it sapped her writing energy, she nonetheless felt a commitment to the cause such that she remained for almost a decade. In her spare time, though, she continued to write -- and not just prose. More and more she wrote for the theatre, attempting to push into a world of which she had always dreamed. Blessed with a beautiful singing voice, she had long desired to be on the stage. This was impossible, though; her voice, she believed, had been ruined by bad training in her youth. To write for the stage, then, though a poor substitute, was at least in the field of her original ideal. Miles' plays, though, are not remembered today, and are little thought of in scholarship, are considered, in fact, to have failed. This gives the false impression that they were always little thought of. Her correspondence, however, reveals that at least five of the plays were produced, indicating a certain level of success. Miles Franklin's theatrical work, then, is surely worthy of further examination. This thesis looks at five of the plays in the light of Miles' life and in the light of the society in which she found herself. In turn, it uses the plays to reveal something of the nature of the playwright herself and to show that Miles Franklin's theatrical writing did not fail as once thought. In addition, it provides a complete bibliography of the plays (inclusive of locations), lists the duplications as they appear under alternate titles and provides synopses of a large number. This will make up for a gap in Miles Franklin scholarship and will facilitate other scholars in accessing the plays. This thesis, then, is an introduction to a new facet of Miles Franklin scholarship.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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