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For my father and my mother, For my sister and my brother, For my husband, For my daughter, For my son. ProQuest Number: 10731269 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731269 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 The Changing Faces of Marriage in Selected Works by Anglophone and Francophone African Women Writers by Odile Goubali Talon A Thesis Submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of Tendon, in fulfilment of the Degree ofMaster of Philosophy Tondon, March, 2006 Acknowledgements I have received a lot of support to complete this work. My special thanks to my husband Aristide Talon, without whose tremendous support this work would not have been possible. My thanks also to Dr Nana Wilson-Tagoe for her critical comments and her help—she did not spare either her time or her energy. I am especially indebted to Sheila Stacey for her constant support and encouragement. And to Gabrielle and Axel, Yvette, Maximin and Florence, many thanks for your emotional support. Abstract This thesis explores representations of marriage in the works of Anglophone and Francophone African women writers. It presents a trajectory of such representations from the mid-1960s to tire 1990s, and examines the various social, ideological and literary influences that have shaped these narratives of marriage. The introduction contextualises the stud}? within existing critical scholarship on African women’s writing and representations of marriage. From the evaluation of this literature, it identifies and states the thesis’s problem and assumptions. It explores various theoretical perspectives on gender, feminism and nationalism as frameworks for analysis in the thesis. The body of the thesis makes connections between different contexts and periods of women’s writing and between the different works of individ ual women writers. The first chapter focuses on the early works of Aina Ata Aidoo and Mariama Ba, two pioneer writers from Anglophone and Francophone Africa. It examines the subject of marriage in Aidoo’s play, Anowa in the context of transition and change in nineteenth century Ghana. It explores Mariama Ba’s So Long A Letter as a narrative of decolonisation in which marriage plays a crucial part in delineating the betrayals of decolonisation. In the second chapter, the thesis’s focus on the later works of these pioneer writers aims at exploring the impact of social change and new ideas on the way each writer handles the subject of marriage. The chapter draws out connections between the two texts and considers the significance of their respective Anglophone and Francophone contexts. The third chapter expands the theme of marriage to cover specific political contexts. It focuses on women’s representations of marriage in colonial worlds as in Tsitsi Dangaremgba’s Nervous Conditions and in the oppressive context of apartheid as in Khadi Fall’s Senteurs d ’Hivernages . In its fourth chapter, the thesis examines motherhood as an important dimension of the wider theme of marriage. It focuses on Buchi Emecheta’s Head Above Water and The Joys o f Motherhood, and explores the relationship between her autobiographical writing and her novel. And the thesis’s last chapter tackles issues of displacement and gender as it examines marriage and migra tion in Emecheta’s Kehinde and Calixthe Beyala’s Loukoum: The Little Prince o f Belleville. The thesis concludes by drawing out the different ways in which social and linguistic contexts, changing world situations and varying perspectives have produced similar and contrasting insights and literary forms in the writing of African women between the 1960s and 1990s. Contents PAGE In tr o d tjc h o n ............................................................................................................... 9 0.1 Background 9 0.2 Theoretical framework 23 Ch apter On e ...................................................................................................................31 Marriage, Politics and Nationalism: Pioneer Women Writers’ Discourses 1.1 Writing as a New Discwsive Space: The Early Novels of Ama Ata Aidoo and Mariama Bd 31 1.11 Ama Ata Aidoo’s Critical Dialogue with the Traditional Narrative of Marriage: Anowa 35 1.12 Maniage in the Post Colonial Context: Mariama Bd's So Long a Letter 4 7 1.2 Gender, Marriage and Nation: Anowa and So Long A Letter 5 7 Ch a pter T w o..................................................................................................................67 Changing Contexts and Changing Perspectives on Marriage: A idoo’s Changes and B a’s Scarlet Song. 2.1 Aidoo's Changes: Experiencing Alternatives to Marriage 72 2.11 Education, Agency, and the Paradoxes o f Women’s Struggle for Self-affirmation. 77 2.12 The Modem Marriage and the Larger Social World in Changes. 83 2.2. Bd's Scarlet Song: Marriage, Gender and the Politics o f Race 88 Ch apter Th r e e............................................................................................................103 New Trends in Writings about Marriage: Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and Khadi Fall’s Senteurs d'Hivemage 3.1 Dangarembga's Nemous Conditions: Marriage as a Nervous Condition 105 3.11 Marriage and the Double Burdens o f Women 109 3.12 Radical Moves for Women's Agency: the Unmarried Woman and the Challenge o f the Status Quo 113 3.2 Fall's Senteurs d' Hivernage: from Apartheid to Independence, Marriage and Gender Relations as a ‘Nen>ous Condition ’ 118 3.21 Apartheid, Race, and the Mind of A Young Girl 121 3.22 The Traditional and the Modern: Islam, Gender and Education 127 Ch a pter F o u r.................................................................................... 132 Marriage and Motherhood in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys o f Motherhood and Head Above Water 4.1. Marriage and Motherhood in Autobiography: Head Above Water 133 4.2 From Autobiography to the Novel: Connecting Head Above Water with The Joys of Motherhood 149 C h a p t e r F iv e................................................................................................................165 Marriage and Migration: Calixte Beyala’s Loukoum The Little Prince of Belleville and Buchi Emecheta’s Kehinde 5.1: Calixthe Beyala's Le Petit Prince de Belleville: African Marriage ‘a la frangaise. ’ 169 5.2: Maniage in Exile: Dislocation and Simultaneous Dimensions in Buchi Emecheta ‘s Kehinde 187 C o n c l u s io n B ibliography Introduction The thesis examines changing representations of marriage in the writing of Anglophone and Francophone women writers. Focusing on a selection of works from the 1960s to the 1990s, it explores selected texts in their different historical and linguistic contexts, showing how these impact on, and shape, the different representations and perspectives of the waiters. Its particular focus on women’s writing is based on the assumption that this body of writing has been instrumental in widening the ramifications of marriage as a theme; has challenged existing assumptions; has provoked new questions; and created new fonns of representations in African literature. 0.1 Background As a subject in African literature, marriage features prominently in imaginative texts and in literary criticism. In both contexts, historical conditions, ideas of the time, and the writer’s or critic’s perspectives play central roles in the shaping of themes and critical analysis. In the early years of modem African literature, a period dominated by the creative work of male writers, marriage featured as a subject of imaginative writing, but it was often contained within the larger themes of nation formation and the post-colonial condition, and was either presented as part of a general re-writing of community and the nation or incorporated into the critique of the political elite in independent Africa. For instance, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) gives a lot of space to the rituals and ceremonies of marriage, but such ceremonies function largely as ways of exploring cultural meaning and validating a way of life that had been considered barbarous and uncivilized. Within this larger space of men’s public actions, marriage as a socio-cultural institution that shapes women’s social, economic and psychological conditions was until the contemporary vrnting of African women never given centre stage in the creative explorations of literature. In Ayi Kwei Arm ah5 s The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), written a few years after Achebe’s novel, marriage is seen mostly in the context of the novel’s main theme: the corruption of values in the new nation and the loss of political, moral and spiritual direction. Here the narratives of the two marriages in the novel are linked thematically to the corruption of the ideal national vision. The marriage of Koosam and Estella epitomises the greed and crass materialism into which the socialist ideals of the national struggle have sunk. The protagonist’s marriage is presented in equally symbolic tenns as a projection

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