Intra Gender Subjugation in Selected African Female Writers’ Novels

Intra Gender Subjugation in Selected African Female Writers’ Novels

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The issue of gender inequality between sexes has remained a topic of serious debate in African literature. A significant percentage of research findings and writings in African literature identify male-induced oppression as central to the perpetuation of female subjugation, thereby down playing the fact that women are also oppressed by their fellow women. There are other forms of discrimination and violence by women against women that are hardly discussed. Tracing the genesis of gender inequality in African literature, it becomes imperative to note that ―by omission or commission, most male writers in the early phase of African literature encouraged the marginalization of women‖ (Kolawale 2), also female characters are made marginal to the plot of the fiction (Charles Fonchingong 135). Elechi Amadi, for instance, portrays his male characters as a dignified group and they constantly pass disparaging comments about their women. Madume, in The Concubine, dismisses his wife with the statement, ―women argue forward and backwards‖ (70). His female characters are treated with disdain, depicted as inferior and subordinate to men. His heroine is all that a man would wish a woman to be. She must be endowed like Ihuoma, with the kind of physical attractiveness that will make a man eager to possess her. Wole Soyinka‘s most prominent characteristics of women is exceptional beauty, a beauty which will be possessed by the man. As his title, The Lion and the Jewel, suggests, the male is associated with the qualities of strength and prowess while the female is 2 bestowed with virtues, ornament or prized possession. Cyprain Ekwensi is not left out, his heroine Jagua Nana in Jagua Nana is presented as a epitome of vulgar sexuality and pornography (Orabueze 134). The male dominant approach is also reflected in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. His famous for the macho image of the protagonists leaves little or no room for the projection of feminine value. Most of the male writers present women as victims of a society regulated by cultural norms and traditional values. Chukukere affirms that the ideal female character created by male writers often acts within the framework of her traditional roles as wife and mother, so strong are social values that the respect and love which a woman earns is relative to the degree of her adaptation to such roles (7).

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