Re-Appropriation of Gendered Representations & Roles in African Literature: A Feminist and Psychoanalytical Study of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o & Wa Mirii’s I Will Marry When I Want

Abstract

In most African scholarly literature, the concern has predominantly been about the contribution to the feminist literary contribution in postcolonial African literature has been characterised by the ostentatious literary interrogation of poverty of the authentic feminine depiction in charcters intertwined with the absence of female authorial representation. Many scholars have researched ideologies surrounding representations of women characters and their roles in various novels and dramas; however, these investigations most of them are at a micro level and in this study we argue that at a macro level, representations of women’s role in these dramas and novels have been limited. This study contributes to filling this gap through the analysis of two African literary works-Chinua Achebe’s Novel, Things Fall Apart (1985) and Ngugi wa Thiongo and Mirii, I will Marry when I want (1977). The scrutiny and analysis of the dual texts herein is embarked on through the feminist perspective as well as African and womanist perspectives.Thus, the article reveals that authors assign strongly masculine expressions to their Male characters much more frequently than to their women characters and argues that these differentiated representations  is a reflection and representative of the deepening crisis of male heroism and gender stratification, deteriorating patriarchal order and structure of society of which cannot be divorced from the cultural and religious mode of production.Linguistic data are presented that both unsettle the constructed image of women as sexual beings and question the historically assumed relationship between gendered language and authenticity. The second part is devoted to the definition of gender roles in these African literary works and the depicted views of marriage in African societies. The study adopted a qualitative exploratory research design to find and identify these poignant representations of women. This study uses feminism as a theoretical lens while drawing on African feminism and womanism as principal lincpins.The findings highlight a number of challenges ascribed to women as a result of these kinds of portrayal of women.