Citation: Niyi, A.K. & Olamilekan, O.A. (2026). Space and the Buffers of Gender Freedom in Selected Novels of Nigerian Female Novelists. Tasambo Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture, 5(1), 190-199. www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2026.v05i01.019.
SPACE AND THE BUFFERS OF GENDER
FREEDOM IN SELECTED NOVELS OF NIGERIAN FEMALE NOVELISTS
Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
& Oluwatoyin, Adam Olamilekan
Department of English and Literary
Studies, University of Ilorin.
Abstract
Over the years, feminist writers
have achieved a convergence that identifies the typologies of oppression
against women. The contexts of such deprivations have narrowed down to the
domestic space and the diaspora, with the scale of success in favour of novels
set in diaspora spaces. This article
examines the intersection between space, gender oppression, and institutional
mediation in selected novels by Nigerian female novelists. Although few novelists, such as
Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo in Children of the Eagle (2002), achieved a relative
success in their contextualisation of women’s struggles within the domestic
space, many writers, such as Buchi Emecheta in Second Class Citizens (1974) and
Yejide Kilanko in Chasing Butterflies (2018) and A Good Name (2021), have
situated the ordeal of the African women within the diaspora landscape. The
article is a qualitative study that draws on Alice Walker’s Womanist theory to inform
its conversation on the prevalence of gender deprivations in selected Nigerian
novels. After chronicling the typologies of gender novels in Nigeria and the
identification of the marriage context as the habitat for gender deprivations,
the article submits that most novels that use the domestic setting rarely
succeed in their commitment due to entrenched patriarchy. This is in sharp
contrast to novels that use diaspora settings where women can overcome similar
crises on account of identified resources. The conclusion of the article is a
call that awakens the consciousness, in the homeland, to the urgent need of
establishing and activating the institutions that are sensitive to women’s
rights and freedom. The article
contributes to feminist literary scholarship by foregrounding space as a
critical determinant in narratives of gender freedom and by highlighting the
urgent need for responsive institutions within traditional societies.
Keywords: diaspora, gender, oppression, radical, resistance,
traditional
Introduction
The Nigerian literature has always
revealed the relevance of cultural values in many dynamic ways. This is because
it concerns the intersection of gender and cultural beliefs and values. The
background delves into popular folk cultures in Nigeria, which proves the
importance of women in the sustenance of the folk culture and art through oral
forms associated with women. The latitude that the folk culture gave to the
Nigerian woman demonstrates her peculiar association with oral art
compositions, such as lullabies, marriage rites, and folktales, in the poetry,
the dramatic and narrative modes, respectively. The Nigerian women operate on
the same wavelength as their male counterparts in areas of creativity and
artistic genius. There appeared to be an understanding among genders on the
need to protect the “integrity and calm” of the space, as, even in their
involvement with folk compositions, the reflection of the oppression faced by
women was hardly noticeable. This, inadvertently, portended that women were non-
responsive to the depraved conditions of their gender in the folk era.
The assessment of the experience of
contact in the late fifties, through the works of novelists, such as Chinua
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and
Arrow of God (1964), and Elechi Amadi’s The
Concubine (1966) and Great Ponds (1969), initiated the fracturing of
the relative calm that existed in the folk era in respect of gender roles. This
is because although its most pivotal objective was to chronicle the impact of
colonisation in the African space, one of which was the erosion of the African
cultural credentials, early African novelists ended up exposing an aspect of
the culture that relegated women. The
presentation of the ordeal of the Nigerian woman was not visible at all in the
works of first generation of Nigerian women writers, such as Mabel Segun, Catherine Acholonu and
Omolara Ogundipe- Leslie, whose writings mostly engaged in nursery literature
and subjects that include the mother-child relationship, the dignity of
motherhood, among other harmless concerns that are unrelated to gender rights
and freedom. However, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru
(1966) initiated the sensitivity to the plights of women in the Nigerian
cultural environment. Even though the novel can be considered as having quite a
minimal impact, the following decades witnessed a surge of interventions by
Nigerian female writers on the theme of female gender consciousness. By
interrogating the ordeals of women in the selected texts of this study, this
article prioritises spatial context and distils its centrality to the success
of narratives with concern for gender freedom.
A Literary Review of Nigerian Female Writers
An overview of writings by female
Nigerian authors shows distinctions that reveal the intersection between
approach and setting. The first instance, which can be described as the
traditional, is seen in works of Flora
Nwapa's Efuru (1966) and Zainab
Alkali’s The Still Born (1984). The novels on gender that resort to the
traditional approach are merely concerned with revealing the manifestations of
the deprivations against women. These deprivations were explored in folk or
native settings to amplify that the isolated gender infractions are patriarchy-induced.
The helplessness of women under those conditions is harnessed in such a way
that renders the objective of liberating women impracticable and obtuse.
However, in a rare and different approach, Akachi-Adimora Ezeigbo’s Children of the Eagle (2002) projects
the native setting but introduces a radical approach in her alternative that
exposes the oppression of women and the possibility of overcoming the abuses in
a native setting.
Buchi Emecheta makes one of the most important impressions
in the radical mode by crossing village settings with the cosmopolitan in her
titles, such as Second Class Citizens
(1974), The Bride Price (1976), and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). The
radical approach to female gender deprivation emphasises the intersections
between folk and cosmopolitan (Nigerian city) settings, the prevalence and
dimensions of the oppression, and how the (female) victims have attempted to
resist the infractions. For instance, Emecheta’s Second Class Citizens (1974) aligns with the radical perspective
that takes the conversation on gender oppression to diaspora space. This
engagement with outside spaces has continued to be refined with contemporary
Nigerian writers, such as Yejide Kilanko, to affirm the current characteristics
of contemporary radical writings on gender literature in Nigeria as an
experimentation with space and settings in the negotiation for freedom.
In another vein, Emenyonu’s (2004)
assessment of the interventions and the strides noted that:
The rapid
upsurge of writing by African women in the last two decades of the twentieth
century was a most striking phenomenon in the development of modern African
literature. It was not only apparent in the quantity and variety of output but
also in the quality of craftsmanship of the writing. There have been remarkable
innovative stylistic experimentations as well as thematic expansions into
uncharted waters, alien domains and incursions into hitherto taboo subjects (p.
xi).
The reference to “hitherto taboo
subjects” in this excerpt emphasises the awakening of Nigerian women writers
and also the disaggregation of the literary space which had confined women to
stereotyped roles. In the preceding years, the somewhat “decolonisation” of the
Nigerian woman has taken a multi-layered dimension. Nwajiaku (2004)
tries to open one of the layers by unravelling the ideological vent which has
been introduced into the emancipation struggle by female theorists:
…the enhanced need for
self-re-definition and self- evaluation has located the African female at a
crucial ideological spike. This assertion becomes even more credible when one
considers the intensity, complexity and quality of the multifarious activities
birthed in the last decade of the twentieth century… The acclaimed reaction to
‘mainstream western feminism’ has engendered continuing discourse among African
female scholars [however], the African literary scene [has become] a
conglomeration of heterogeneous theories being propounded to define the
consciousness of the African female. Evinced by such concepts as
Ogundipe-Leslie’s stiwanism… Acholonu’s motherism, Hudson-Weems Africana
womanism as well as African feminism, gynism, gyandrism, African womanism [and
Akachi Adimora’s Snail sense feminism] (p. 55).
The approach of using literature and
theory to address identified gender imbalance is further justified by Kolawole
(1997), who explained that Africans “are deconstructing imperialistic images of
the Africans, rejecting liminal and negative images of women that are prevalent
in African literature by men and they are reacting to mainstream western
feminism, having broken the yoke of voicelessness, these women are speaking
out” (p. 193). While conversations on gender deprivation continue, it is
salient to audit the approaches and forms of female deprivation in Nigerian
literature in order to track the interventions writers have presented. This
position is reinforced by Sani and Tsaure (2016), whose study of Abubakar
Gimba’s Sacred Apples reveals how marital institutions,
cultural norms, and regional ideologies, particularly in Northern Nigeria,
operate as sites of gender-based contestation that circumscribe women’s
autonomy while simultaneously provoking subtle forms of resistance.
The justification for this study,
therefore, rests on the fact that although studies have documented the
prevalence of gender oppression, little attention has been paid to how spatial
contexts shape women’s capacity for resistance and liberation. Most critics
tend to treat space as a neutral backdrop rather than as an active determinant
of female agency. This oversight hinders a fuller understanding of how women’s
struggles are mediated not only by patriarchy but also by the availability or
absence of supportive social institutions, legal frameworks, and communal
networks.
This article addresses
this critical gap by interrogating how traditional
and diaspora spaces function differently in narratives of female
gender oppression and resistance. Drawing on selected novels by Nigerian female
novelists, the study argues that space is not merely geographical but
ideological and functional to the effect that it shapes consciousness,
superintends, and determines the effectiveness of resistance strategies. While
traditional settings often constrain female agency through rigid cultural and
religious norms reinforced by weak institutions, diaspora narratives more
frequently foreground possibilities for intervention, negotiation, and survival
despite having their own limitations.
Theoretical
Framework and Methodology
The
interrogation of the selected works in this article is premised on Walker’s
(1983) framework of feminism called womanism. Walker’s womanism is a kickback
at the limitations and marginalization of the black woman by mainstream Western
feminism, which fails to adequately consider the race, cultural, and historical
experiences of Black women in its emancipation. Womanism accounts for the
intersectionality and interconnectedness of gender, race, communal lore, and
humanity, establishing values and women’s rights as self-defined, racial pride,
and survival of the entire people, including men and women alike.
The
cornerstone of Walker’s womanism is inclusivity, recognizing women’s lived
experiences within culturally specific and often marginalized spaces, including
domestic and communal spheres. Thus, Walker’s womanism domesticates feminism to
capture the socio-cultural realities of Black women. Womanism is particularly
relevant to African and diasporic contexts because it acknowledges women’s
struggles without dismissing the significance of family, motherhood, and
communal responsibility. As Walker asserts in her cited thesis, a womanist is
“committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female” (p.
xi). This emphasis allows for a critique of patriarchy but does not accommodate
the rejection of cultural identity. Critics are familiar with the fact that
Walker’s womanism is a diversion from Western feminist passion, which has paid
little attention to the ordeals of Negro women in the West.
Womanism,
therefore, extols critical self-examination, racial pride, the communal spirit
that is concerned with children, the male gender, humanity at large, and the
peculiar experiences of women in isolated spaces. If womanism, in search of a
customized theory, was a theory that responded against the ideals of Western
feminism, then domestication is one of the critical tenets of the theory. This
has since compromised the strength of the theory because attempts at theorizing
the peculiar concerns of women in society have produced other variations of
womanism, so much so that the theory is seen as independent of its scions. In
their assessment of the “conflict” between Western feminism/ womanism and its
fall-out with African womanism, Oloruntoba-Oju & Oloruntoba- Oju (2013)
stated that, “The theme of specifically African womanhood identity is at the
centre of the debate between Western feminist perceptions of womanhood and
African womanist perceptions. It is the core of the disagreement and the famed
retort that “Western feminism does not apply to the African culture” (p. 10).
This explains why, in Nwajiaku’s (2004) thought earlier cited, we have seen
diverse brands of ‘womanism’ in Africa, such as stiwanism, motherism, African feminism, gynism,
gyandrism, African womanism, Snail sense feminism, among others, have been
identified.
These theories remain a subset
notwithstanding their claims to a new course, as they have merely taken a
strand of Walker’s (1983) womanism, domesticated and expanded it. In essence, Walker’s womanism provides
the best lens for analysing how women negotiate oppression, assert agency, and
seek liberation within and sometimes beyond communal structures.
The Traditional andthe Radical Approaches and the Setting as
an Option
Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (1966) exemplifies one of the perspectives on the traditional
approach to gender deprivation in the evolution of the Nigerian novel. Nwapa’s novel explores themes of love, marriage, motherhood,
and the complexities of gender relationships in the Igbo society, with Efuru's
journey reflecting the challenges faced by many women in traditional societies
who seek to find their own identity and purpose outside of their roles as wives
and mothers. With the trauma and anguish suffered by the protagonist for not
having children, Nwapa interrogates the concept of childlessness in marriage,
which usually subjects women to ridicule in typical African societies that see
childlessness as a curse and women as solely responsible for the condition.
Another traditional perspective is seen in Zainab Alkali's The
Still Born (1984), where the novelist projects the miserable plight of
women in the northern part of Nigeria through the representation of three young
dreamers whose lives take a toll because of the societal conventions and
structures in place. The novel articulates the themes of aborted dreams,
shattered illusions, and cultural conspiracy against women in northern Nigeria
through the characters of Li, Awa, and Faku. Alkali exposes how conservative
traditional patriarchy has contributed to the unfavourable socio-cultural
position of women in her society. In the retort of Garba, Li's grandfather,
that says "one can acquire many wives and they will all slave for
him", Alkali reinforces issues and negativities of polygamous marriage in
Africa or northern Nigeria and its attendant oppressive condition propped up by
culture and religion
Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo, The Last of the Strong Ones (1996),
captures the role of women during the colonial era in Umuga within a
predominantly patriarchal society. The novel extols, in the female characters,
the virtues of confidence, assertiveness and independence as pivotal to
defiance and resistance against gender discrimination in a patriarchal society.
Through her representation in four characters, Ejimnaka, Onyekozuru, Chieme,
and Chibuka, who serve as the voice of all women and the author's mouthpiece.
Adimora-Ezeigbo explores the plights and triumphs of women. Despite the
constraints of tradition and gender norms, these women assert their worth and
challenge the prevailing status quo on inheritance.
Throughout the narrative, Adimora-Ezeigbo brings to the fore
the complexity of the women's lives, resilience, strength, and determination to
change the narrative. Another similar situation is presented in her Children of the Eagle, where the
idealised“eaglewoman”, Ugonwanyi, took charge of her daughter’s ordeal to
confront the tradition of inheritance in Igboland, which excludes female
children. Adimora-Ezeigbo’s stories canvass for negotiation, complementarity
and reconciliation as demonstrated in the cited texts where, with the
indomitable spirit of women, certain barriers such as women sitting in council
with men and the right to property, were negotiated. In the exemplified novels that present a traditional approach to the
discourse, the marriage context is the hallmark of the identified oppression.
Similarly, culture and religion are isolated as the critical factors that
empower the deprivations that the victims, apart from the exception in
Adimora-Ezeigbo’s title cited, are unable to navigate. It is unclear whether
the failure of novels that sought to engage gender hostilities within the
native settings that motivated Buchi Emecheta to pioneer the writing of stories
that try to apprehend the ordeal of women within the homeland cosmopolitan
setting and the diaspora.
Gender Conversations in the Novels of Nigerian women writers
and the Transition from Folk to Cosmopolitan Settings
Buchi Emecheta’s The
Joys of Motherhood (1979) is a radical shift that presents fluxes in
settings with the village and city experiences. The manifestation of crises
within the marriage context is still retained in the novel, where we have Nnu
Ego as the protagonist in her two marriage encounters. Despite keeping her
virginity before marriage to Amatoku, Nnu Ego became barren, leading to the
crash of the marriage. Her second marriage takes her out of the village to
Lagos, where Nnaife resides. Significantly, the shift in setting demystifies many
taboos and corrects some traditionally held views. For instance, Nanife, who is
the supposed breadwinner of the family, is a weak man, while the fertility of
Nnu Ego, affirmed in her giving birth to children across sexes, proves the
point that men can also be responsible for fertility problems in marriage.
However, Nnu Ego’s death, after her struggles over her male children, elicits
questions that find an answer in the ironic crafting of the title that
challenges vices against women, such as the commodification of women and skewed
marriage rites or customs, taboos, polygamy, levirate marriage, barrenness and
the responsibility of women to their children.
The commodification of women
receives better attention in Buchi Emecheta’s Bride Price (1974). After
the sudden death of her father, the movement of Aku-nna and her brother
Nna-nndo from Lagos to their village, Ibuza becomes inevitable as their mother,
Ma Blackie, is to be willed out to Okonkwo in accordance with the traditional
levirate rites, who happened to be next in line to their deceased father,
Ezekiel. Okonkwo’s calculation of the economic gains on the bride price that
would be paid on Aku-nna precipitates the crisis. On the one hand, the
intelligent young girl, Aku-nna, is in love with her teacher, Chike but that
relationship will not reach fruition on account of the latter’s inherited slave
status. On the other hand, Aku-nna is not in love with the anointed suitor,
Okoboshi. The frustration of Okoboshi caused the incident of kidnapping of
Aku-nna, but after being rescued, Aku-nna eloped with Chike to the city. The
kidnapping saga, exposes other vices against women in the novel such as rape,
commodification of women, polygamy, levirate marriage and taboos targeted
against women. Although complications of childbirth, pretends to justify the
efficacy of taboo and the sacredness of traditional marriage rites, the
catalyst to the tragedy includes the fact that Aku-nna married at a too tender
age, making her pregnancy premature, the pressure to survive in the city and
the absence of medical care during her pregnancy period are also responsible
factors that caused Aku-nna’s demise.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (2003), is
concerned with how violence and abuse are often used to maintain power and
control over women, particularly within the patriarchal structures of Nigerian
society. One way Adichie presents gender-based violence is through the physical
abuse that Kambili, Jaja, and their mother suffer at the hands of her father,
Eugene. Eugene, a religious and authoritarian figure who rules his house with
an iron fist, physically assaults Kambili and her brother Jaja for the
slightest mistakes. The devastating effect of this abuse undermines Jaja and
Kambili's self-confidence and contributes to the fear of their father. Adichie
also portrays how gender-based violence is intertwined with other forms of
oppression in Nigerian society. Neither Beatrice nor Kambili nor Jaja talks
about the abuse they suffer at the hands of Eugene, which reinforces the
patriarchal structures that keep women and children silent and unable to seek
help. Even though the extrajudicial killing of her husband by poisoning is
avant-garde and un-African, the escapist and seemingly cowardly approach
suggests the counter of violence with violence as a panacea for domestic
violence.
In the relationship between
Francis and Adah in Second Class Citizen
(1976), Emecheta highlights the multiple deprivations women suffer at home and
abroad. We find an enterprising woman, Adah, who worked very hard to sponsor
her husband abroad and maintain the family front while Francis was away. After
her diplomacy with her mother-in-law paid off, Adah is able to join her husband
in the United Kingdom, but soon discovered that her new society has its own
doses of discrimination against women anchored on race and sex. Adah’s fight
becomes two-pronged as she faces, on the one hand, a society that relegates
blacks and, on the other hand, an abusive and irresponsible husband, a prodigal
and jealous man who is unappreciative of her efforts to get a career and maintain
the family. The novel draws to a close with Francis’s fatal decision to burn
Adah’s intellectual property and Adah’s consequent move for divorce. With the
burning of Adah’s intellectual property, Emecheta parodies the importance of
knowledge as an indispensable ingredient of women liberation in the world.
Yejide Kilanko’s two novels Chasing Butterflies (2018)
and A Good Name (2021),
retain the condition of women in marriage settings in a diaspora environment.
In Chasing Butterflies, the marriage of Tomide and Titilope has been
under siege of domestic violence and intimidation. As expected, the victim is
Titilope, who, for even trivial reasons such as not making an egg scramble for
Jordan, Tomide’s son by a black American woman, Holly, gets assaulted. The
assault instils fear so much that Titilope is unable to report the abuse to her
parents in Nigeria and Bunmi, their close family friend. This is obvious from
Tomide’s outburst when an incident of abuse was noticed by Bunmi:
Why did you tell Bunmi I was beating you?"She flinched
when Tomide pounded a fist on the counter. "Stop Pretending!" "…
When her fingertips grazed his skin, Tomide swung his arm back. His fist landed
on the side of her head. "How dare you touch me?" "Her head
crashed into the kitchen cabinet. The glass door shattered. Titilope whimpered
as a shard pierced her cheek before it landed on the floor." "… She
cowered as Tomide moved towards her…. The second blow across the face knocked
her to the ground…. Sprawled on the cold ceramic tiles, blood from the cut on
her face pooled beside her head (CB, pp. 42-43).
In Rockville, the United States of
America, the domestic abuse of Titilope continued until the matter was brought
to the attention of the police by TJ, Titilope’s four-year-old son. With Tomide
in prison custody, Titilope’s mother surprisingly tries to “save” the marriage
of her daughter with the counsel that she returns to the marriage by
“forgiving” her husband, in her counsel that is warped in the traditionalist
view that supports violence against women:
If I had left you, children
behind, your father’s new wife would have used your polished skulls to drink
palm wine while her children took your rightful places. I’ve always told you- a
good mother does not run from her children’s home. She stays and fight. (CB, pp. 124- 5)
Like Adah in Buchi Emecheta’s Second
Class Citizens (1974), Titilope continues to overlook her husband’s
inadequacies as a divorcee and a serial abuser, her efforts to pass her
professional examination at the CPA are unappreciated by Tomide until the
relationship hits an inevitable crash.
The United States setting is
retained in a similar situation and is presented in the ordeal of Eziafa
Okereke, a first-class graduate in computer science. Eziafa’s struggles to make
ends meet abroad are unknown to his relatives back home, especially his mother,
who is mostly concerned about his bachelor status. Unfortunately, Eziafa is a
man who is ruled by the caprices of his mother. He is lucky to meet a Nigerian
American born lady, Jovita Asika, who apparently is his perfect match, but the
objection of his mother to the relationship, on account of an age-long
community strife, scuttled the promising relationship. Eziafa then travels back
home to marry Zina, a secondary school student full of life and ambition. But
for parental pressure, Zina, who is chosen among other suitors, would not have
married Eziafa because she is already in a relationship, and the age gap
between her and Eziafa is wide. She also noticed that Eziafa has lost one of
his fingers to a factory accident, making him an “incomplete man”.
After settling for a nursing
course against her will and the decision to be on birth control medication to
concentrate on her studies, Zina completes her course, but that changes the
power center in the home. Zina is caught in a promiscuous affair, Eziafa is
unable to work and get money as a cab driver, consequently, domestic violence
sets in, which leads to Zina’s murder. The novel ends with Eziafa in prison
awaiting conviction while the nemesis of greed erupts back home as Eziafa’s
building in Oji becomes the target of arsonists. Kilanko involves other women
in the novel who face one aspect of violence or the other, but also uses the
novel to underscore the importance of mutual respect in a marriage
relationship, in the marriage between Felix and Nkolika and its parallel in
Bunmi and James, in Chasing Butterflies.
The conservative idea that women have no emotion and can adapt to any man, like
the other, which holds that women have to be moulded into what fits men, comes
under criticism in the novel. Taboos on marriage skewed against women, such as
the decision on who to marry and the choice of remaining in a relationship, are
also demystified. Above all, scientific evolution has come to the aid of women
who may choose to have children without necessarily getting married, as seen in
the case of Jovita. Kilanko’s summary on the sensibility of women in all
relationships read in Titilope’s explanation of the butterfly nature in Chasing Butterflies:
Look up, Mum, Butterflies! Titilope's jaw dropped at the
sight of what looked like thousands of orange and black Monarch butterflies.
"Where are they going?" She wondered aloud. The woman beside her
spoke up. "Mexico. It's their annual winter migration. They get to cross
borders without visas or passports" Titilope turned to face her.
"Isn't it amazing how they know when it's time to leave for a safer
climate?" The woman had a faraway look in her eyes. "It is. We can learn
from them. (CB, 110).
By implication, women, like butterflies, are exotic beings that are supposed to be appreciated and
cherished. They are also very sensitive and respond to being hurt by retreating
or running away.
Diaspora Settings
and Mediation Options for Female Gender Abuse
The aggregation of novels that are sensitive to the
oppression of women in Nigeria, the consonance remains with the position across
writers of the prevalence of violence against the female gender. The marriage
context is the most fertile ground for the manifestations of such abuses, which
are sustained by cultural beliefs, religion and ignorance, the three major
enemies of women's freedom. The novels set in traditional milieus hardly
achieve any success because of the fact that these three factors have suppressed
the agitation for gender liberation.
In the alternative, Nigerian writers have been able to
explore how women in diaspora spaces have been able to navigate the gender
problems in their relationships. The tacit link between silence and exposure
determines the result of a crisis in the text. Titilope believes that keeping
quiet about her abuse, lying about the injuries on her body, and convincing
herself that she does not need to be saved protects her from further harm. In
addition, the stigma of divorce and the fear of being labelled as a bad parent
prevent her from taking any action to remedy her situation. The cultural
orientations of the average African woman are to remain silent while facing
threats in abusive relationships. In Chasing
Butterflies, Titilope would have been killed but for the intervention of
her son. However, the chances of success of speaking out in traditional
settings are slim on account of the non-existence or prostrate state of
institutions that will remedy the abuse or restore sanity.
It is noticeable that the guarantee for gender freedom is in
the utilisation of established frameworks and institutions that support gender
liberation. The precursor to this lies in the foundation of marriage choices.
The standard is set in the example of Eziafa and Zina in A Good Name, where the novelist alludes to love, age compatibility
and shared vision as the preliminary factors that a woman needs to consider
before marriage.
The novels are unequivocal about the fact that no
relationship is insulated from crises. In the traditional setting, the
predominant crisis revolves around procreation and the sex of the child. The
relationship crises in contemporary works have also included infidelity,
selfish motivations or ambition, inherited patriarchal mindset about the role
of the opposite sex, domestic violence and others.
The novelists who explore diaspora
settings have proved the importance of complementary gender relations. For
instance, Yejide Kilanko projects the concept of
a complementary relationship between men and women as espoused in African
feminisms through the characters of James and Bunmi in Chasing Butterflies
and Felix and Nkolika in A Good Name. We must understand that men
compliment women as women complement men; it is crucial to recognise the
importance of women being valued on an equal footing with men. In contrast to
Tomide and Eziafa's rigidity on traditional gender roles, James and Felix show
understanding, empathy and are disposed to accommodate and reach compromise in
their relationships. They reject notions of superiority and embrace a more
egalitarian approach in their relationships. Felix, as an example, even offered
counsel to Eziafa on the need to adjust when his marriage started going
haywire, his words read: “All I know is that, for our marriage to work, we must
learn from each other and make compromises. Whether we are living abroad, or at
home…There is nothing new about making life easy for the people one loves. Biko,
learn to bend a little” (AGN, 291).
Yejide Kilanko draws a comparison between families where
mutual respect and love exist and the others where the men assume absolute
authority without regard for their spouses. The marriages of James and Bunmi,
as well as Felix and Nkolika, emphasise that the key to a peaceful home lies in
upholding the principle of complementarity. Felix adds up the philosophy behind
the principle by saying to Francis about his wife: “I won't lie. The woman
makes life sweet. We complement each other. She has flaws like I do. Marriage
is never perfect. To make it last, one must work hard and accept both the
challenges and joys” (CB, 290).
The possibility of women coming
together to help themselves is also well nurtured in novels of diaspora
settings. The attraction is to find women with similar experience who can
render counsel to their gender victims in moments of crisis. In A Good Name the Zina's relationship with Nomzamo,
Elinma and other women in her workplace mitigates the pressure in the home,
just as Titilope finds refuge in the Sunbeam organisation in Chasing
Butterflies. The rehabilitation that the Sunbeam gives Titilope accentuates
the fact that women need not sink in crisis conditions if they have access to
useful support.
The
consciousness about gender rights is also very important. In Second Class Citizens and A Good Name, the radicalisation process,
for Adah and Zina, takes a path that is achieved through education. The
reference to education in the text refers to formal and informal tutelage, the
protagonists got their consciousness through the western education they
received but the principles of how to use that education to achieve liberation
lie in the instructions they received from their friends, counsellors or
acquaintances. Above all, the instructions are able to achieve the intended
purposes because the societies mirrored have entrenched values of equity, not
only this, the institutions are alive and running. In a typical traditional
setting, the infraction committed by Francis on his wife’s intellectual
property would have passed as a minor domestic quarrel, Tomide would still be walking
free, and Eziafa might have been able to twist the narrative of murder in his favour.
Conclusion
Across
the examined texts, a clear pattern emerges: gender oppression transcends
space, but the possibility of
resistance does not. Traditional settings are characterised by rigid
norms and institutional absence, while diaspora spaces offer mechanisms however
imperfect for intervention and survival. Space thus operates as an ideological
force that shapes women’s options, consciousness, freedom and outcomes. This
analysis reinforces womanist thought by demonstrating that women’s liberation
need not reject community but requires institutions that protect dignity and
equity. Gender freedom, as depicted in these novels, is less about diaspora or
migration itself and more about access to responsive systems that recognise
women’s rights.
This article
has been concerned with selected novels by Nigerian female novelists that have
engaged the theme of female gender oppression in their works. The article
identifies the consensus among the writers who see female gender oppression as
a common phenomenon that is not limited to space. The engagement with
traditionalist and radical perspectives proves that while novels set in
traditional milieus have achieved little success, the titles that project
diaspora settings are more positive in their methods of changing the narrative.
The novels set in the diaspora, which have been studied, have proved that the
demystification of fear and age-long taboos, gender consciousness, and more
cooperation among women, among others, are very crucial to the success of the
advocacy for gender balance. The challenge, however, remains with traditional
societies, especially in the third-world nations, where, despite the approach
towards cosmopolitanism, institutions that can rapidly support or aid gender
freedom are nonexistent. In all, the exploration of alternative diaspora
settings is a chastisement that seeks to reawaken women and respective
institutions to keep the global pace in the struggle for gender freedom.
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