Struggle for Survival: Female Masculinisation as Presented in Macgoye’s Coming to Birth and Victoria and Murder in Majengo

Abstract

In the patriarchal world,courage, vigor and strength are qualities often ascribed to men. In her two novels,Coming to Birthand Victoria and Murder in Majengo, Marjorie Oludhe MacGoye seeks to demystify this assumption by assigning these qualities to her female characters. This paper therefore aims at juxtaposing the female characters with the male characters in view of identity formation and fight for equity in society. Of major interest is how the female characters rise against the odds to live a life that rises against the societal misconceptions and limitations to a full life of value to the men and society at large. This is in the light of their contributions to fellow women and the society they live in.The tenets of deconstruction, a theory proposed by Jacque Derrida whichseeks to unravel the various meanings of given texts, isused in the explication of the given texts.