Language of Gender Discrimination in African Literary Works (a Study of Purple Hibiscus and Yellow-yellow)
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF STUDY
This research aims at identifying the oppression of woman in Africa. With this awareness came an attempt to evaluate the ways in which women have been portrayed in African literature which coincided with the rise of women. Liberation and feminist movement gave the impetus to re-evaluate the role of woman in Africa societies and in literatures.
This research paper is intended to enumerate the roles of African women in politics and oppressive conditions of women in Africa with a view of identifying the problems that have been militating against ways of solving the problems and to highlights the results of the finding up to date especially as it concerns the use of language by African literary writers when female issues are being discussed.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
LANGUAGE USE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE
African literature consists of a body of work in different languages and various genres, ranging from oral literature to literature written in colonial languages (French, Portuguese, and English).
Oral literature, including stories, dramas, riddles, histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and other expressions, is frequently employed to educate and entertain children. Oral histories, myths, and proverbs additionally serve to remind whole communities of their ancestors’ heroic deeds, their past, and the precedents for their customs and traditions. Essential to oral literature is a concern for presentation and oratory. Folktale tellers use call-response techniques. A griot (praise singer) will accompany a narrative with music.
Some of the first African writings to gain attention in the West were the poignant slave narratives, such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), which described vividly the horrors of slavery and the slave trade. As Africans became literate in their own languages, they often reacted against colonial repression in their writings. Others looked to their own past for subjects. Thomas Mofolo, for example, wrote about the famous Zulu military leader, in Susuto.
Since the early 19th century, writers from western Africa have used newspapers to air their views. Several founded newspapers that served as vehicles for expressing nascent nationalist feelings. French-speaking Africans in France, led by Léopold Senghor, were active in the négritude movement from the 1930s, along with Léon Damas and Aimé Césaire, French speakers from French Guiana and Martinique. Their poetry not only denounced colonialism, it proudly asserted the validity of the cultures that the colonials had tried to crush.
After World War II, as Africans began demanding their independence, more African writers were published. Such writers as, in western Africa, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ousmane Sembene, Kofi Awooner, Agostinho Neto, Tchicaya u tam’si, Camera Laye, Mongo Beti, Ben Okri, and Ferdinand Oyono and, in eastern Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, and Jacques Rabémananjara produced poetry, short stories, novels, essays, and plays. All were writing in European languages, and often they shared the same themes: the clash between indigenous and colonial cultures, condemnation of European subjugation, pride in the African past, and hope for the continent’s independent future.
In South Africa, the horrors of apartheid have, until the present, dominated the literature. Es’kia Mphahlele, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Dennis Brutus, J. M. Coetzee, and Miriam Tlali all reflect in varying degrees in their writings the experience of living in a racially segregated society.
Much of contemporary African literature reveals disillusionment and dissent with current events. For example, V. Y. Mudimbe in Before the Birth of the Moon (1989) explores a doomed love affair played out within a society riddled by deceit and corruption. In Kenya Ngugi wa Thiong’o was jailed shortly after he produced a play, in Kikuyu, which was perceived as highly critical of the country’s government. Apparently, what seemed most offensive about the drama was the use of songs to emphasize its messages.
The weaving of music into the Kenyan’s play points out another characteristic of African literature. Many writers incorporate other arts into their work and often weave oral conventions into their writing. p’Bitek structured Song of Iqwino (1966) as an Acholi poem; Achebe’s characters pepper their speech with proverbs in Things Fall Apart (1958). Others, such as Senegalese novelist Ousmane Sembene, have moved into films to take their message to people who cannot read.
CHAPTER THREE
BACKGROUND OF PURPLE HIBISCUS
Purple Hibiscus is a pathetic and complex tale of fifteen year old girl, Kambili and her brother Jaja who grew up under their violent extremist and tyrannical Igbo Catholic father. Their father is a fanatically religion icon who demands ideal from his children all time especially in school, at home and in their religion devotion. Any slightest mistake is met with a great penalty ranging from physical punishments to beatings, whippings and pouring very hot water over their feet. A good example is when Papa finds Kambili with a picture of her heathen grandfather (Papa Nnukwu), he kicks and beats her mercilessly to the point that Kambili is hospitalized.
The autocratic father beats his wife heartlessly that she suffers a miscarriage. It is this suffocating conditions of fear and frightening environment that shape Kambili and make her to sky that she can fondly speak or laugh in the public. Although, Kambili’s father is a fanatic Christian, he gives generously of his immense wealth and is admired by all. The benevolent action of Kambili’s father is rewarded with a chieftaincy title “Omelora” which means the one who does for the community. The religious madness of Kambili’s father is demonstrated in the way he disowns his own father (Papa Nnuk).
CHAPTER FOUR
SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION
SUMMARY
Women from the onset have fallen victim to traditions. This is true but women themselves relegate themselves to the background. This oppressiveness lasted till the present generation because they failed to fight for their right rather than accepted any position or condition they found themselves due to cultural demands. Women aided this movement because they hate themselves forgetting that united we stand and divided we fall since they do not appreciate each others effort, reverse continue to be the case but a tree cannot make a forest, the African male writer could make a new innovation their style of work (women should be regarded as important in the community).
The situation could be super if women can appreciate each other’s effort because they say charity begins at home if you do not praise yourself nobody will ask for you they should learn to promote each other’s effort and remain firm to their decision. If this is practiced, women would rather be emulated rather than criticized.
The males should bear in mind that gender is not curse. Also bear it is mind that women do not detest of their traditional roles but rather would play these roles better if they are going to compromise.
In simple term, feminist seems to reconfigure the society by demonstrating that all along men had enjoyed privileges of existent and woman were excluded from such privileges. Out of biological factors which gave men more advantages, society has tended to centre many rights on men to the disadvantage of women. Men are analytical while women are sympathetic etc. All these categorization are non-scientific and can never be proven empirically. No society has relied on them as the bases for the conferment of position, power and privileges. This account for why women have always been disadvantaged, this is the submission of feminist. The goal of feminism is therefore to interrogate the existing power structure which had been disadvantageous to woman. Feminism manifests itself in all areas of life.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Women should try to form the word ‘go’ to reject some inflicted roles and fight for their right. Give your children equal education chance. Avoid sexual discrimination no child is better than the other.
- African men and indeed the world all over should start to withdraw their statements and write-ups against women. Most African men writers paint women as ‘colourless’. Traditions also had reached its climax for renovation and innovation. Women are not sub-human objects or ignorant, please do correct your pre-conscious minds. Women are not what you think of them rather they are people of elegance.
- The researcher calls on the African patriarchs and traditionalists to always call to mind the theory of Odipus complex which emphasized the close relationship between daughter and their father from experience. 90 percent men have their mothers yet they have delight in oppressing women and daughter of their colleagues. It could be affirmed if every man can consider every female as his mother or daughter (ladies first), things would be better than it is.
- The researcher therefore appeals to African patriarchs to eschew bitterness as culture upholds and cultivate the spirit of tolerance. Women cannot afford or withstand any further oppression. I fervently believe that it is only in an atmosphere of peace and orderliness and development can be achieved.
CONCLUSION
In the two novels analyzed above, we have seen women in the different roles in which they can be found in the society, how well they play their traditional roles and the hindrances they encounter in the course of executing these roles.
Even illiterate women are beginning to look for a way of bettering their situations. They have found means of asserting themselves since it has become clear to them that passivity only serves as acquiescence to this oppressive system of female subordination and segregation. In the affirmation analyzed models, we have seen the women in their roles as daughters, the daughters in-law, sisters, gossips who can even kill joy.
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