PHD-Department of Kiswahili & African Languages

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Browsing PHD-Department of Kiswahili & African Languages by Subject "African women"

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    Narrating gender heterodoxies: a new historicist analysis of selected novels by African women
    (Kenyatta university, 2021-04) Muneeni, Jeremiah Mutuku; J.K.S. Makokha; Esther K. Mbithi
    This thesis analyses generational transmutations among women characters in four novels by African women writers whose temporal setting is a trajectory of a century. The transmutations have taken place within the three major African epochs mainly; precolonial, colonial, postcolonial and contemporary Africa with regards to African women. The study is based on the reasoning that the African women writers’ presentation of women characters through several generations in the same novel resonates with what is happening outside the fictional Africa. The study uses New Historicist Literary Theory and Feminism specifically African Feminism strand. Using cross-sectional textual analysis, the study examines The River and the Source by Margaret Ogola from Kenya, Kintu by Jennifer Makumbi from Uganda, Threads of Gold Beads by Nike Campell-Fatoki’s from Nigeria and Ancestor Stones by Aminata Forna’s from Sierra Leone. The premise of the cross-sectional analysis is that the four generations of women characters represented in each of the four novels by authors from different African countries is a representative of what is happening in Africa regarding women’s successive gain of emancipation from patriarchy which is in line with the changing world. Consequently, the basis of choices of the four novels is threefold; novels with four generations of women characters, novels written by contemporary African women, and novels that are historical in nature. The main objective is to demonstrate how women’s position in the society has changed from that of a subjugated victim of patriarchy during the pre-colonial time to that of empowered members of the society enjoying a considerable amount of inclusivity, equality and equity in contemporary time. The study concludes that interplay of different factors including Westernization in form of formal education and religion has, to a greater extend, diluted the structures used by patriarchy to subjugate women. The contemporary African woman is free to make career choices, make decisions on her marriage life, and has defeated the proclivity for male gender. In view of this observation, the study argues that, the journey towards gradual inclusivity of women into important spheres of life is better told by African women writers since they present a true picture of the situation of women across time as opposed to their male counterparts who tend to incline towards patriarchal ideologies hence misrepresenting women in their writing. Thus gender heterodoxies that characterize some pre-colonial African women gain traction gradually climaxing into a largely liberated contemporary African woman.