Selfhood and character development: a study of agency in selected texts of african literature
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Date
2025-10
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Kenyatta University
Abstract
This study investigated the role selfhood of individual female characters plays in the development of agency. It argues that since male hegemony is acknowledged by feminist scholars as an all-powerful governing principle of androcentric power arrangements, there comes with that admission an pervasive implication of women’s collusion and cooperation in their own subjugation. The study analysed three novels of African authorship using a feminist standpoint theoretical framework in a research that was purely library-based. Very relevant to this project was the theory’s tenet of epistemic advantage, which charges oppressed groups with the responsibility of making their own revolution given their superior understanding of social relationships by virtue of their insider-outsider social location. In its findings, the thesis reveals two major kinds of feminine responses to patriarchal control. Chapter two details those two categories of femininity: the non-agentive female characters who are, in effect, casualties of domination relationships, and their agentive counterparts who manage to surmount the same powerful forces. Chapter three establishes that agency is neither natural nor given; actors invest personal volition, effort and commitment in the pursuit of this ideal. In chapter four, the study verifies that the traditionally devalued selfhood of women contains both limiting and enabling possibilities for the exercise of a situated agency which can outsmart any systemic constraints against humanist ideals; and that individual will and active involvement determines the level of success which an actor gets to realise. The study therefore, concludes that women’s sense of self would be a most critical tool to harness for any social justice project keen on realising meaningful and lasting outcomes in favour of women’s emancipation and empowerment.
Description
A research thesis submitted to the school of law, arts and social sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of doctor of philosophy (literature) of Kenyatta University, October 2024
Supervisors:
Dr. Esther mbithi
Dr. Yuvenalis mwairumba