ABSTRACT: This research work examines gender discourse in Tess Onwueme’s The Reign of Wazobia and Efua Sutherland’s The Marriage of Anansewa. From the analysis of the two plays, African cultural practices are full of diverse cultural practices and this practice affect the female psychologically and emotionally as seen in Sutherland’s The Marriage of Anansewa how her father uses as a means of solving his economic problem through bride price. According to the author, the consequences of this unhappy marriage, therefore, such practices should be aborted. In the reign of Wazobia, the another uses Wazobia as a female child who fight for the equality of right between the male and female in the Ilaa kingdom because of the violence that impose on them by the men. The study therefore recommended that the efforts by stakeholders such as the government should bring an end of such practices for the betterment of the society.
Gender Discourse in Tess Onwueme’s the Reign of Wazobia and Efua Sutherland’s the Marriage of Anansewa
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
African women literature is of significance for feminist theory because it focuses mainly on issues from women perspectives and experiences such as sexism, gender relationships, marriage, politics, education and employment. In essence, African women literature portrays their quest for emancipation from male domination.
All through the years and for several millennial age from the stone age to the modern age, the struggle for dominance and superiority between the two known sexes female and the males gender have never end. Patriarchy adjustment and described by feminist as the conscious maximization and subjugation of the women folks, deploying ideologies, cultural and metaphysics, sexual abuse, gender oppression of all kinds from western Christianity, Islamism, Buddhism and African traditionalism have spoken with one voice in favors of male dominated world.
Ever since, especially through the emergence of democracy, the struggle by women to negotiate the vice into mainstream of participation in cultural, economical, social, and vocational and even political aspect of the world’s development.
As such, feminine dislocations have become a discourse in our current post-colonial society. This arises out of the tension and challenges in the nineties that characterized feminist works in many parts of the world.
It has its origin from experimental theater groups and various women movement of the sixties and seventies even through the eighties.
These issues concerning women have generated to investigate as forth observe that, “the structure of realism and narrative structures which are implicated in religious to patriarchal ideology”. (19).
However, women have created personal loves within themselves by bringing out the possibilities and limitations set by structure and culture through writings. These days’ women are striving hard to have a say in the society. Gone are those days when you have the women being related to the background?
The notion of the education of women ending in the kitchen does not apply to the women of this age, as they combine motherhood with their respective careers. Indeed, the women of this age have successfully survived and they are found at the top in the society without any gender issues.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
African women authors write on themes that effectively relay their message to gender disparities. Contemporary women writers as exemplified by the two texts used in this study, The Reign of Wazobia and The Marriage of Anansewa write on women’s concerns. The study assumes that contemporary African women writers would depict female protagonist such that, within these recurrent gender themes, they reflect the changing status in current political, economic and social spheres.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The aim of the study is to critically examine gender discourse in Nigerian society in Tess Onweme’s The Reign of Wazobia and Efua Southerland’s The Marriage of Anansewa. The study will also examine feminism and its aims in the society.
Gender Discourse in Tess Onwueme’s the Reign of Wazobia and Efua Sutherland’s the Marriage of Anansewa
1.4 Significance of the Study
The works of Tess Onweme’s and The Reign of Wazobia will be beneficial to students of English and literary studies by exposing the problems of African female writer on gender issues.
The study will also see how cultural practice such as forced marriages, early marriages, female marginalization have been retrogressive to the feminine gender in Nigeria that has situated women as mere shadows of themselves in their immediate society.
