The Travails of the African Woman: Reflection of Adebayo Abayomi’s Stay With Me and Akachi Adimora-ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones
Chapter One
Objectives of the study
This study has the following objectives:
- To examine the pains of a barren woman in Africa tradition context
- To evaluate how the selected novels promote ideas of equality, immanent value and self- determination.
- To analyse and interpret how the selected novels employ proofs of persuasion to appeal to the
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Concept of feminism
Different scholars have defined the term feminism. Bersey and Moore (1989, p. 116) define feminism as a “specific kind of political discourse; a critical and theoretical practice committed to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism”. Sadek (2014) defines feminism as the movement for the social, political and economic equality of men and women. It is maintained that women and men are treated differently by society and that women have been isolated from participating fully in all available social arenas and institutions. Feminism is the movement seeking reorganisation of the world on the basis of gender equality in all human relations. It is a movement which rejects every differentiation between individuals upon the grounds of gender and that seeks to abolish all gender privileges and burdens, and which strives to set up the recognition of the common humanity of women and men as the foundation of law and the custom (Kramarae & Treichler, 1996, p. 158). Mcfadden (2011, para. 3) says that feminism is the rejection of patriarchy and is also a celebration of freedom for women everywhere. Feminist theory seeks to analyse the conditions which shape women’s lives and to explore cultural understandings of what it means to be a woman. Feminists refuse to accept that inequalities between women and men are natural and cannot be avoided and that they should be questioned.
African feminism
African women’s writing emerged in the 1970s mainly with the aim of overturning and avoiding pejorative male representation of African womanhood. Feminist writers and activists sought to demonstrate that they were relevant to the African context and in particular that they did not want to imitate their Western feminist counterparts (Mekgwe, 2008). Therefore, African feminist literature concerns itself with the liberty of all African people. Although it has taken the overriding notion of emancipation from the global feminist movement, African feminist discourse shows concerns that are situated in African cultures, questioning the features of traditional African cultures without criticising them because these might be viewed differently by different classes of women (Mekgwe, 2008).
According to Sadek (2014, p. 172), unlike Western feminism, African feminism does not work against men but rather accommodates men. Chukwuma (2007) also notes that African feminism is not anti-male nor anti-mother. Male is not ‘the other’, as Nnaemeka (2004, p. 378) says that “Each gender constitutes the critical half that makes the human whole. Neither sex is totally complete in itself. Each needs a complement of the other, despite the possession of unique features of its own.” Chinweizu (as cited in Chukwuma, 2007) is in agreement with the interdependence of men and women and argues that:
Because every man has a boss, his wife or his mother, or some other woman in his life, man may rule the world, but women rule men who rule the world. Thus, contrary to appearance, woman is boss, the overall boss, of the world. (p. 2)
The above quotation indicates that African men are complemented by women and that women are ready to work together with men to achieve their desired goals. African feminism seeks to involve men in the transformation process, which has led Mekgwe (2008, p. 16) to support the perspective that if African feminism is to succeed as a humane information project, it cannot accept separatism from the opposite sex. Avoiding male exclusion becomes one of the defining features of African feminism. For example Amaka in Nwapa’s One is Enough, after the failure
of her marriage, told her mother: “No mother I have said goodbye to husbands. Her mother replied that is better. Goodbye to husbands not goodbye to men. They are two different things?” Even though she is divorced, she still needs men in her life. Sadek (2014) is not surprised at this phenomenon since most African women are also committed to the institution of the family and certainly do not want to do without their men. However, they do not want to be maltreated and are readily interested in working out guidelines that defend women and get rid of the preconceptions against them.
Apart from power dominance, African women voice the importance of their roles as mothers and career women and they characterise African feminism as family orientated, arguing that African feminism entails the creation of space for women to participate in the management of the well- being of their societies (Attanga, 2013, p. 308). Similarly, Oyewumi (2005) argues that African feminism does not focus on male dominance with female subordination or on fighting battles with men, nor on fertility rates and poverty, but also challenging the status quo, describing the ways patriarchies in Africa prevented them from realising their full potential. On the Africa continent, millions of women and girls have been and are being prevented from reaching their full potential as human beings, whether that be the possibility of being writers, artists, doctors and other professions outside traditional roles assigned to women. The African feminist approach then is one that makes an attempt to educate, empower and elevate these women to a position where they can own their power not against men, but alongside them (Azodo, 1997, p. 201).
Furthermore, Attanga (2013) indicates that Africa in itself is very diverse and therefore talking about “African feminism can also be interpreted to mean feminism in Africa” which essentialises Africa by implying that all African women live under the same condition and face the same challenges. Attanga (2013) is of the opinion that feminist scholars should be careful not to treat
Africa as a single entity because women of the North face different problems to those in the South of the Sahara. For example, Moroccan women face problems that relate more to Arab women in the Middle East as opposed to Black women living South of Sahara. The diversity of Africa and its women’s experience complicates an attempt to formulate and theorise an African feminism.
Additionally, Davies (as cited in Da Silva, 2013) points out that African feminism is also about the necessity to overcome the gender disparities brought by colonialism. According to Attanga, (2013) and Nnaemeka (1998) African feminism is very dependent on temporal scale shaped by political eras. These eras are pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Africa. Because of these eras there are African feminisms. Thus, African feminism should not contain a monolithic view of the continent, but rather a pluralism (African feminisms) that encompass the fluidity and dynamism of different cultural beliefs, historical forces, localised cultural beliefs and localised women movements (Attanga, 2013 & Nnaemeka, 1998). Akin-Aina (2011) clarifies that African feminisms are still changing continuously based on the context in which they are wrought. It is crucial that African feminists pay close attention to the continent’s history following colonisation but also the present struggle under neocolonialisation and neoliberalisation; all these periods contribute to changes to African feminisms. Thus, Nnaemeka (1998, p. 9) states that to meaningfully explain the phenomenon called African feminism, it must be documented in an African environment. African feminism must not be treated in a reactive sense but as proactive. It has life of its own that is rooted in the African environment. It has a specific place of origin, which is Africa. African feminism must be built on the indigenous for any development to make progress in Africa. Ake (as cited in Nnaemeka, 2004) highlights that:
CHAPTER THREE
THE PAINS AND AGONY OF A BARREN WOMAN IN AFRICAN CULTURE A PERSPECTIVE OF ADEBAYO ABAYOMI’S STAY WITH ME
The childless protagonist of Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s Baileys-long listed debut is so desperate to get pregnant that she breastfeeds a goat. It happens at the top of “the Mountain of Jaw Dropping Miracles” in southwest Nigeria, surrounded by drooling bearded men in green robes whose leader, Prophet Josiah, has been recommended to the barren Yejide by a pregnant customer at her hairdressing salon. The goat must be white, he has instructed, and it must be pulled up the mountain single-handedly by the miracle seeker, arriving at the summit “without wound, blemish or a speck of another colour”. There follows some frenzied chanting, singing and dancing around the swaddled animal beneath a blazing sun, until eventually, despite her initial scepticism, as Yejide relates, “the goat appeared to be a newborn and I believed”.
It’s a comic scene, and it reminds the researcher of the kind of high superstition Nigerian mother often brings to bear on the subject of having children. If you drink through a straw while pregnant you will have a boy. Don’t do “that yoga” with a baby newly in your tummy or you will kill it.
In Nigerian society a childless woman is a tragedy, and considered to have probably brought it on herself. And it is not just her apparent inability to conceive that Yejide is up against. Her husband, Akin, has been coerced by his mother, Moomi, to take a second wife, in the hopes that he will get her pregnant instead. “You have had my son between your legs for two more months and still your stomach is flat,” Moomi tells Yejide when the new wife is also not yet pregnant. “Close your thighs to him, I beg you … If you don’t he will die childless. I beg you, don’t spoil my life. He is my first son, Yejide.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ANALYSIS OF AKACHI ADIMORA-EZEIGBO’S THE LAST OF THE STRONG ONES
Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo defined the historical novel as a novel in which the setting, events and characters are taken from the past. The novel is an imaginative reconstruction of the history of Umuga, a town in the South-Eastern Nigeria. The novel revolves around the lives of five influential women who flourish alongside their male counterparts in the leadership of their town. The story relates the struggle of a people to free their community from the clutches of British colonialists. While striving to protest against the British, these women take turns to tell tales about their lives. Through a group effort, they resist a disruptive order that threatens their tradition and humanity. The author embarks on a journey of role re-evaluation and redefinition of womanhood within the context of the Igbo culture. The journey of role re-evaluation and redefinition of womanhood is not only found within the context of the Igbo culture but also found in the Ghanaian culture.
In Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons, he sets the machine of female emancipation in motion by making women revolt against the stereotypical image of men as hunters and women as gatherers. Women in his text were now seen as “storming the tool shed”. By trying to change the statusquo i.e. the pre existing culture, the women end up disengaging themselves from cultural trammels.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Conclusion
The two novel analyzed in this study are from Adebayo Abayomi’s Stay With Me and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones.
Based on the analysis of Adebayo Abayomi’s Stay With Me, it was revealed that a woman without a child in African tradition faces a lot of intimidations, subjugations and endless pain. This is because according to the African view, the ultimate purpose of marriage is procreation – to produce children who will continue the heritage and name of the family so that the family does not diminish or die out. Barrenness and sterility are considered a threat to the continuity of human life and existence. Childlessness has major emotional and social implications for affected persons, especially in settings where fertility is highly valued. Childlessness is a terrible situation in most African matrimonial homes because of the social importance places on procreation in the African worldview. Children are so important that in traditional life the inability to bear children is considered a great calamity, and the woman who fails to bear children suffers humiliation and sometimes even ridicule or abuse Children are the glory of marriage, the more there are the greater the glory.. In the minds of African people, a large family earns its head great respect. If the first wife has no children, or only daughters, it follows almost without exception that her husband will take another wife, partly to remedy the immediate concern of childlessness, and partly to remove the shame and anxiety of barrenness. To be productive, in terms of having children, is one of the essential attributes of being amature human being. The more productive a person is, the more they contribute to the society at large Ngcangca (1987:5) observes that marriage enhances the status of both men and women in the community. It gives them new rights and a measure of respect.
When a woman gives birth to her first child, her status changes. She enters motherhood and she is considered to have fulfilled the main function of marriage, and this gives her a better social standing in the community. Fertility is the backbone of marriage. If the couple is not able to produce children, the blame is usually on the woman; In Nigeria the title of “Barrenness ”are conferred to a women who do not bear children but there is no such word like a” barren man”. This is because the man is looked upon as the dominant partner in marriage and is seen to have no shortcomings. It is the woman who has to meet the demands of both the male and the community.
Going further from the analyze of the two novels from the view-point of Liberal Feminism, womanism. These works, no doubt, forges ahead to examined how women characters are created and developed, particularly female assertiveness and empowerment. The Last of the Strong Ones as a historical text that portrays women as frontlines anti-colonialism activists who fought with their teeth and nail alongside their male counterparts to ensure their freedom from every form of oppression and marginalization.
Recommendations for future researches
In view of the findings of the study outlined above, the study recommends that:
Furthermore, using Nnaemeka’s (2004) nego-feminism, future studies can be based on comparative studies of men and women literary writers. This will help to determine whether both genders see patriarchy as oppressive and promote the sense of equality and complementarity in private and public arenas.
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