Representation of Women in African Literature with reference to the novels things fall apart, a grain of wheat and waiting for Barbarians

Representation of Women in African Literature with reference to the novels things fall apart, a grain of wheat and waiting for Barbarians'.

SUBMITTED FOR

International Journal of English: Literature, Language and Skills

PREPARED BY

Divya Choudhary

choudharydivya400@gmail.com

Introduction:

Research means a careful investigation or inquiry especially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge. There are many types of research and one of them is descriptive research which is used in this paper. Liberation and increased literacy since most African nations gained their independence in the 1950s and 1960s; African literature has grown dramatically in quantity and in recognition, with numerous African works appearing in Western academic curricula and on "best of" lists compiled at the end of the 19th century (wikipedia). Women play variety of significant roles in our society from their birth till the end of life. Even after playing her all the roles and the entire job timely in efficient manner in the modern society, she is weak because men are still strongest gender of the society.

Objectives:

The objective of this research was to ascertain the role and the status of the women in the African society. Another objective was to know their perspective towards the society. How women look towards the society and how society look towards women. How they find difficulty to accept each other. What problems they face while they are fronting each other.

The Term Literature and Representation of Women:

In simple words Literature is the mirror of society or we can say that literature is the mirror of our self and it reflects our thinking also. Literature can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction and whether it is poetry or prose; it can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (Wikipedia). Simple definition of Literature is written works such as poems, plays and novels that are considered to be very good and to have lasting Importance. ―Literature is a vital record of what we have seen in life, what they have experienced of it, what they have  thought and felt about those aspects of it which have most immediate and enduring interest for all of us. It is fundamentally an expression of life through the medium of language... it is in life itself that we have to seel the sources of literature...”

An Act to prohibit indecent representation of women through advertisements or in publications, writings, paintings, figures or in any other manner and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. Representations of women in the media have developed and changed with time to reflect the cultural and sociological changes in society. However, female stereotypes continue to appear in some media texts. Representations of women are often defined by how men see women (termed the 'male gaze'), or by how society expects women to look and behave. Many representations of women concentrate on sexuality and emotions. Others focus on their relationships with their children or romantic partners. (Representation of Gender)

“Women’s place in society is thought a lot in contemporary studies. As well in literature, women’s representation is observed and criticized with feminist approach.Like most literature around the world, African literature also portrayed women in different shades. Incomplete and inaccurate female characters littered early African works.”

Imperfect and inaccurate female characters spoiled early African works. The fact, like other literature, African literature was first written by men. Educated African men not only come from patriarchal society but were educated by colonizers, who also come from patriarchal society. Some feminist critics say that male African writers routinely depict their female characters in the category of a burdened and dominated wife who has little if any say in molding her destiny or transforming the system that withdraws and dominates her.

Feminist critics argue that male writers represent female characters as “defined by their relationships to men – someone’s daughter or wife, or mother, shadowy figures who remain on the bounds of the plot, suckling babies, cooking, rooting their hair … they fall into a particular category of female stereotypes of… men attachments, and prostitutes, or courtesans.”

Female characters have not their own identity or story to be called or notable. But they are always showed as less daring than men and always in periphery.

“Black male writers portray women as ‘passive’ mothers with neither individuality nor character or difficulties, accepting their circumstance and thus displaying no spirit of revolt or freedom.” Male writers consistently portray “voiceless submissive and passive woman.”

But still in some cases, as a stereotype, the idea of an ‘African dilemma’ is there with representation of women. African women have to choose between being true to their traditional culture and acceptance the colonizing western culture and having equal rights is an interesting one.

The study of women characters, portrayed in African colonized literature is an interesting, with that, one can know human nature of colonizing, marginalizing or making other race gender religion subaltern.

Does African culture do the same with their women? Do they also colonizing women? How is she portrayed in African literature, how is it capturing their woman characters and men’s behaviour with them?

For that, I picked three famous novels from our syllabus, Things Fall Apart, A Grain of Wheat, and Waiting for Barbarians. The novelists of these novels are well-known and much popular. Let’s see how woman is represented by these writers one by one.

‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe

In telling an African story, it is impossible to do so without mentioning the women who take part in many of the activities in a society. This is why different stories bring out women and their roles in the society although the stories may not be talking about a woman as the main character. Things fall apart is no different in bringing out the role of the women in a traditional African setting. (Role Of Women In Things Fall Apart)

One of the earlier and well-known writers is Chinua Achebe. His novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ is also famed one. He has been criticized for overlooking to represent women almost entirely. Many women in the novel are flat characters who are satisfied with repressive structures like polygamy. Like Okonkwo’s wives. (He is having multiple wives!!!)

While critics are judging Achebe for being too male-focused, there might be many ins and outs for this absence of female representation. One is that, person who reads are partially sighted the beliefs and occasions essentially from Okonkwo’s point of view, who might be supposed to have superstitious gender visions by Ibo standards.

For example when he is sent to his mother’s village, he cannot answer to his uncle why a common name and saying is “mother is extreme” Uchendu, his uncle, answers, “A man belongs to his father land when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is distress and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is around to look after you. She is buried there that’s why we say mother is extreme.”

In these words women as mother is respected.

The portrayal of Okonkwo’s daughter, Ezinma, is the only noticeable rounded female character in the novel. There is an indication in the novel which indicates that Achebe was showing absurd nature of a tough patriarchal society. Ezinma was intelligent enough to eventually run the family the way Okonkwo wanted. As Okonkwo says,

“She has the right spirit”

Okonkwo is unable to think outside of his cultural paradigm, when Ezinma offers to carry Okonkwo's chair to the wrestling match, traditionally a boy's job, okonkwo says, "No, that is a boy's job." Instead of finding a way to let Ezinma run the home, he only comments that, "she should have been boy."
It shows Achebe's deficiency in describing woman character in patriarchal world. Still there was not much female representation in the novel. It is important to realize that Achebe wrote this novel to justify his native culture, where women become victims, to European audiences, who were patriarchal themselves.

Overall, with the exception of Ezinma, Achebe’s female characters in the novel were not rounded or visible. In the novel, Okonkwo carries more space and female characters are marginalized in narrated patriarchal culture.
The name Agbala in the Ibo community means a woman or a title less man. In his early childhood, Okonkwo felt disrespected when called the name Agbala as the peers were teasing him and more so his father who was seen as a weakling. This really tormented him and made him become obsessed with consideration of social status above everything else. Okonkwo struggled so much never to be associated with anything weak as anything weak was likened to a woman and vice versa. Nwoye who is the son of Okonkwo from his first wife is also insulted by being viewed as woman-like just because Okonkwo is reminded of his father when he sees him. In this context we see the woman being looked down upon by the whole Ibo community as a weak being. The men who are not courageous and violent are also seen to be as weak as women meaning that the society's perception of women is that of a person who is not strong and is weak (Role Of Women In Things Fall Apart)

It is therefore, within this kind of community, for instance, that Achebe’s Okonkwo is created. He is described as a fearless young man of great strength, whose fame is known across the nine villages and beyond as one, whose back has never touched the ground in any wrestling contest. As a result of these qualities, though “still young, he was already one of the greatest men of his time.” The society had no time to waste with the womenfolk whose significant contributions to communal matters centered on singing and dancing during ceremonies. The women did not fit much into the heroic cadre of the society at that time and, therefore, were not subject of literary imagination or creativity. Indeed, in such a society, being a woman was like being sentenced to a life of insignificance and subsidiary existence. Perhaps, it is for this reason that Okonkwo’s mother hardly exists while his father, Unoka, an efulefu or worthless man who has never cleared even a footpath of his own, receives a mention even if it was collocation to his son. (Muhammed)

‘A Grain of Wheat’ by Ngugi Wa Thiongo 

In this essay, I will critically analyze and deliberate whether the depiction of

The role of women in Ngugi waThiong’o’s novel differs from what has been

recorded as actual history in the course of the Mau Mau uprising.

For the sake of clarity, it should be stated at the outset that the Mau Mau

uprising is also referred to as the “Mau Mau revolt, Mau Mau rebellion orKenya emergency”, […] a military conflict that took place in Kenya” (1952 to

1960) between Mau Mau Kikuyu and the British regiment. (Koezee)

Ngugi Wa Thiongo is an internationally praised African writer and human rights activist. He has usually championed for the promotion of African women and other marginalized groups in African society.

‘A Grain of Wheat’ is political description talking about Mau Mau Kenyan movement placed in forest. The movement included both men and women against British colonizers. Women played extraordinary role directly or indirectly in that rebellion.

Ngugi pays respect to these women and celebrates their boundless sacrifices, their contribution and struggle for freedom of the native land in this novel, ‘A Grain of Wheat’.

The novel describes daring women as providing the undistinguishable support to the movement. The writer also made use of traditional African values of womenfolk to fight with the opponents.

Wambui, the major character in the novel, is a model of the resistant woman during emergency; she carried secrets from the villages to towns. Incident of Wambui and policeman is very significant in portraying her character.

Charles A. Nama argues that, “ Ngugi’s protagonists occupy a special place in his fiction, especially with respect to their function as defenders and protectors of traditional Gikuyu culture.”

For example when Karanja, Kihika and Gikonyo encounter Mumbi at Gikonyo’s workshop, she is addressed respectfully as Karanja calls her “mother of Men, we have come make us some tea.” Kihika, the Mau Mau conqueror in the novel, refers to the homeland as mother as he proudly says, “With us, Kenya is our mother”.

Female identities and structures become symbolically bound to motherhood and to the nation. We can find privileging of motherhood in Ngugi’s fiction.
In the novel, where Gikonyo has subordination, Mumbi is more confident and skillful of action. Gikonyo's mother, Wangari, refuses to accept defeat when her husband beats and rejects her, accusing her of sexual coldness. She displays undaunted courage when she settles in Thabai with her baby son.
As already described, Wambui introduces the active role role of women in the movement, while Karanja's mother mirrors Nyokabi's disobedience of the traditional female role, as she queries the action of men.

So, Ngugi Wa Theongo enrich African literature with portraying his woman characters strong, courageous and patriotic who equally, sometimes more, than male characters, participate in struggle for freedom.
Ngugi’s this novel is the best example of women’s heroic portrayal and his women characters become inspirational from traditional one.(Choudhary)

‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ by J. M. Coetzee

One of the most daunting tasks that literature of the postmodern period undertakes is negotiating the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer.

‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ set in an uncategorized place and time. It is an allegory about the evils of colonialism. The story is told with point of view of a Magistrate.
To set the stage for the contact zone, Coetzee presents a colony of an unnamed empire, situated on the frontier of a wilderness from which the barbarian natives of the land are pushed to the periphery. This contact zone is also permeated with different utilizations of the gaze. By expounding Coetzee’s novel through Pratt’s contact zone terminology, and analyzing its various demonstrations of the power of the gaze, Waiting for the Barbarians demonstrates how the gaze functions both actively and passively to reinforce cultural discrimination and dehumanization, and comes to the conclusion that any attempt to recognize the other as human will be a failure as long as there is an imbalance of power in the contact zone. (Dyslexacon)

As protagonist of the novel, the magistrate attempts to perform the function of intermediary between empire and barbarian tribesman. The magistrate’s narrow method of interpretation is also applied to the human subject, embodied by the native girl. The narrator says, “It has been growing more and clearer to me that until the marks on this girl’s body are deciphered and understood I cannot let go of her.” He then attempts to explore the marks on her body, adopting the blind girl’s method, reading her like brail. This method proves unsuccessful as well. He asks himself, “is it the case … that it is the marks on her which drew me to her but which, to my disappointment, I find, do not go deep enough? Too much or too little; is it she I want or the traces of a history her body bears?” The only history the magistrate can decipher in the marks on the girl are the marks of his empire. The marks run too deep into her to allow for any evidence of an alternative history to show. What he thought was an endeavor to understand the barbarian is a failure because she has been emptied of her culture and filled with the narrative that was inscribed on her through Colonel Joll’s method of pressure. The magistrate approaches the girl in the same way that he approached the parchment: by seeking to know it by imprisoning it. He concludes, “I have not entered her.” (Dyslexacon)

The magistrate is still unable to understand her because as long as he imprisons her within the confines of his contextual framework, she will be inscribed by his significance. Coetzee asks, “What bird has the heart to sing in a thicket of thorns?” The reality of this is demonstrated by the fact that the magistrate is only able to “enter” the native girl once he views her out of the framework of his contextualization, when they venture outside of the colony. In a conversation between the girl and the men who accompany their journey, the magistrate remains passive listener, and is surprised by how the native girl conducts herself. He says, “I am surprised by her fluency, her quickness, her self-possession.” (Thomson)

 
The novel has one woman character, Barbarian girl, with whom portrayal of woman character can be studied. Actually Barbarian girl is a symbol of colonized. Her relationship with Magistrate is of slave and master. She is tortured by colonizers much. She is not only colonized by empire but as a woman by the Magistrate as well. He uses her body as an object. (Choudhary)The narration never gives the view point of the Barbarian girl, but the magistrate attempts to understand feminine viewpoint. He is even at one point dressed as a woman by his torturers who are servants of the empire. This event can be very symbolical.  The empire and the barbarian culture are symbolically represented by the magistrate and the barbarian girl and their relationship the same. The magistrate sometimes sympathizes the girl but it is also true that he uses as an object, he becomes cause of her sorrows. Sometimes the girl plays a role of catalyst for the change that takes place in the magistrate; she fulfills the role as colonized woman. (Choudhary)Coetzee’s choice to put a girl as symbol of colonized, slave and subaltern indicates woman’s position in society and in men’s mind. Choice of woman instead of man like Robinson Crusoe symbolically shows gender inequality. It also fulfils men’s wish to see women as slave or inferior with portraying these two characters.

Waiting for the Barbarians demonstrates how the gaze can work both actively, by subordinating through the clinical and colonizing gaze, and passively, by witnessing demonstrations of power. It also demonstrates how any effort to understand or to give voice to a colonized people is a failure as long as the colonized is subjected to a context dominated by the colonizer. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians presents an allegory not only of failed transculturation, but also of failed auto ethnography. But is Coetzee daunting the intermediary’s task or calling forth the bird from the thicket? In spite of everything, he is urging us to cut the bird free. (coetzee)

Conclusion

To conclude, it is pertinent to commend efforts made by second generation and contemporary writers for the positive shift in women’s roles in our literatures from the traditional portrayal of the status of women as persons relating always to others and depending on others especially the men, for every decision, to the ‘new woman’ image who possesses a well-controlled determination to get what she wants through her own articulations.It is heart-warming therefore, that this generation of writers have seen the significant contribution of women to society as to want to break historical, cultural and mythical barriers as to represent them in their proper perspectives. Women are no longer accepting representations in our literature as mere biological species but as a social class to be reckoned with.

“Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was? For the first time I feel a dry pity for them: how natural a mistake to believe that you can burn or tear or hack your way into the secret body of the other. The girl lies in my bed, but there is no good reason why it should be a bed. I behave in some ways like a lover—but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate.”

The story however shows some respect for few female figures that seem to be very significant to the society, for instance, the women spiritual leaders. The respect shown to them is not because they are women but because the society demands that they be respected for their important roles in divine intervention. The women also show strong leadership, power and prowess in their work.Although the woman is not the main character in this story, it is clear that she plays a big role and cannot be ignored when talking about the story. The roles discussed above show clearly that the woman plays a pivotal role in Educational, Religious and Social issues. (Role Of Women In Things Fall Apart)

These three famous African novels represent women differently. One has no significant space for women. One made women courageous, strong, and even greater than men; and one made it slave, colonized, inferior. These different portrayals shows women’s role in different situations and different cultures, which is moving not static.

 “It is I who am seducing myself, out of vanity, into these meanings and correspondences. What depravity is it that is creeping upon me? I search for secrets and answers, no matter how bizarre, like an old woman reading tea-leaves. There is nothing to link me with torturers, people who sit waiting like beetles in dark cellars. How can I believe that a bed is anything but a bed, a woman’s body anything but a site of joy? I must assert my distance from Colonel Joll! I will not suffer for his crimes!”(Litcharts)

Works Cited

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coetzee, J.M. 1999. penguin.

Dyslexacon. 27 February 2013. <https://dyslexacon.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/contact-zones-in-j-m-coetzees-waiting-for-the-barbarians/>.

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