CULTURE: A VESSEL FOR FEMALE SUBORDINATION IN THREE AFRICAN NOVELS
Abstract
Since the dawn of time, women generally have had fewer legal rights and status in society than their male counterparts. The continuous subordination and suppression of women are further aggravated by traditions, cultural beliefs and religions of most societies which favor patriarchy. Using the radical feminist approach, the present paper attempts an exploration of patriarchy as an aspect of culture which helps to subordinate women as highlighted in Nawal El Saadawi’s A Woman at Point Zero (1983), Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979), and Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon (1995). It also examines the steps taken by the women to free themselves from the “chains” of male domination and oppression. The study revealed that cultural practices such as polygamy, female genital mutilation and sexual abuse facilitate the abuse, subjugation and oppression of women in the novels under study. The study has implications for the theory of feminism and literary criticisms.
Article visualizations:
Keywords
References
A. Primary Texts
Darko, A. (1995). Beyond the Horizon: London: Fontana.
Emecheta, B. (1975). The Joys of Motherhood. Heinemann Publications
Nawal, El Saadawi. (1975). Woman at Point Zero. London and New York: Zed Books.
B. Secondary Texts
Beauvior, D. S. (1974). The Second Sex. Vintage Books: New York.
Burke, P. J., Stets, J. E. Pirog-Good, M.A. (1988). "Gender Identity, Self-Esteem, and Physical and Sexual Abuse in Dating Relationships." Social Psychology Quarterly 51:272-285.
Kambarami, M. (2006). Femininity, Sexuality and Culture: Patriarch and Female Subordination in Zimbabwe. Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre. University of Fort Hare, South Africa.
Cobuild, C. (2010). Advanced Illustrated Dictionary. Harper Collins Publishers Ltd: Great Britain.
El Sadaawi, N. (1975).A Woman at Point Zero Trans. Sherif Hetata. London: Zed.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International difference in work-related values, Newbury Park, C.A: Sage.
Malti-Duoglas, F. (1995). Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics: Berkeley: University of California Press.
McDowell, L and Pringle, R. (1992) Defining women: Social Institutions and Gender Divisions. Oxford: Polity Press.
Stigamot, O. (2008). An Annual Report 2008. Reykjavik: Stigamot.
McKee, A. (2005). The Objectification of Women in Mainstream Pornographic Videos in Australia. The Journal of Sex Research. Vol. 42(4), pp. 277-288.
Mead, M., M´etraux, R. (1953).The Study of Culture at a Distance. University of Chicago Press
Mitchell, J. (1971). Women’s Estate. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Russell, D. E.H. (1998). Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny, and Rape. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Spence, J. T., Sawin, L. L. (1985). Images of Masculinity and Femininity: A
Reconceptualization. In Virginia E. O'Leary, Rhoda Kesler Unger, and Barbara Strudler Wallston (eds.), Women, Gender, and Social Psychology. pp. 35-66 Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008). Culturally Speaking. Culture, Communication and Politeness. London: Continuum.
Sultana, A. (2011). Patriarchy and Women’s Subordination: A Theoretical Analysis. In the Arts Faculty Journal: pp.1-17
Therborn, G. (2004). Between Sex and Power- Family in the world, 1900-2000. John Urry (Ed.), London and New York: Routlege
Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing Patriarchy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Weitz, R. (2003). The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, appearance and behavior: New York: Oxford University Press.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejsss.v0i0.82
Copyright (c) 2018 Doris Nyanta, Gabriel Kwame Ankrah, Opoku Kwasi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.
Copyright © 2016 - 2023. European Journal Of Social Sciences Studies (ISSN 2501-8590) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.
