Costumes as an Expression of Character: A Study of Selected Short Stories

Abstract

Short stories are narrative works that have a limited cast of characters and focus on a single event. Most African writers construct their stories using the following three aspects of the narrative structure: setting, plot, and character. One could counter that despite the prominence of these features; costume remains a rather underrepresented area of inquiry in literature. Its intricacies are sometimes neither explained nor used to reflect the roles and behaviours of characters in the story. This endeavour, like a few others, takes a unique and captivating approach to examining the significance of costume in character development. It draws on literary theory to analyse a collection of short stories written in Sepedi and isiZulu. The aim is to determine whether there are any notable differences in how costume is used in these languages and to what extent it conveys meaning in the text. The paper adopted a qualitative methodology and integrated documentation as a stand-alone data collection strategy. The results show that, while authors have similar writing styles, they differ in their use of costume to convey symbolic cultural meanings, gender disparities, and religious practices. These findings show that costume plays an intrinsic communicative role in stirring readers' emotions and helping them envisage characters' behaviour and social realities in the text. This work is notable because it presents a novel approach that could add depth and knowledge to literary analysis in African literature.