WOMANBEING IN NIGERIAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The ideological debate on the roles and representations of women in Nigerian literature or, more appropriately, the war on gender, is still raging, particularly in the Nigerian literary and intellectual space. The general argument of feminist writers and critics in Nigeria is that the whole feminine history has been man-made. Even ‘history’ as a word and discipline is becoming heavily contested since, in the opinion of the radical feminists, it is simply ‘his story’, hence an urgent need for ‘her story’ which would explore the exploits of the feminine gender. For this reason, charges of paternalism, misogyny and male chauvinism are frequently raised against {male} writers, especially by radical feminists. Anchored on the theoretical postulations of gender studies, the contention in this research is that the quick and radical conclusions about the “improper” representations of women is often done hastily and without a thorough analysis and comprehension of texts and contexts both at the macro and micro level. The prevalent argument herein is that the representation of women in Nigerian literature is much more balanced and complex than is often recognized; and that the relationship between men and women is not exactly that of master and slave in most Nigerian literary texts. Thus, this investigation focuses attention on the enviable roles of women, and the implications of womanbeing in some Nigerian literary texts to show that the ‘norm’ of misrepresentation of women is not always the case in male-authored, Nigerian texts – as radical feminists would have us believe.