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IN NOVELS by AFRICAN WOMEN Catriona Cornelissen a Thesis

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IN NOVELS by AFRICAN WOMEN Catriona Cornelissen a Thesis NEGOTIATING CULTURES: MODES OF MEMORY IN NOVELS BY AFRICAN WOMEN Catriona Cornelissen A Thesis submitted in confomity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Department of English, University of Toronto. @ Catriona Cornelissen 1997, National Library Bibliothèque nationale H*H of-& du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services seMces bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, me Weilingtori OtEawaOIJ KfAW Ottawa ON KiA ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence aJlowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or seli reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. NEGOTIATING CULTURES: MODES OF MEMORY LN NOVELS BY AFRICAN WOMEN by Catriona Cornelissen Graduate Deparunent of English, University of Toronto. PhD, 1997. ABSTRACT The dissertation examines the transmission of cultural values in a selection of African womenfs texts, written in English and published between 1966 and 1986. Focusing on a range of works by Kenyan, Nigerian and South African women, the study explores modes of memory and examines the way writers represent, reaffirm and re-position cultural authority during post- colonialism. The dissertation examines autobiographies, histories and fictional narratives, modes by which mernories of the past are formally and consciously structured and recorded, but the study also examines the way in which language, customs and traditions convey cultural values and attitudes, often beyond the conscious control of the writer. The welter of African and Western cultural influences of both past and present provokes an on-going interaction through which the writers in this study interrogate the contesting of cultural authorities. Since women's roles are largely dictated by cultural expectations, the dissertation includes examination of the writers' attitudes to those customs relating to marriage, polygyny and child-rearing, and analyzes their solutions regarding these issues. The works of Charity Waciuma, Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa and Rebeka Njau, discussed in Chapter One, depict the difficult process of renegotiating the authority of cultural memories, an on-going process in any society, but one intensified by the imposition of Western colonial influences. Their works reflect and question, to varying extents, the cultural expectations imposed on wornen, while simultaneously advocating the benefits of readjusting and/or reaffirming established custorns. By contrast, the selected works by Buchi Emecheta, examined in Chapter Two, depict abrupt confrontation cultural influences, and sej ect es tablished traditional customs being stultifying women, hindering sel:-development. Chapter Three examines the challenge the works of Miriam Tlali and Bessie Head pose to the cultural authority of the apartheid system. While Tlali finds solutions in the public arena, and calls for collective, political action, Head suggests that solutions may be found on the personal level, through relationships, self-analysis and self-acceptance. The study also examines how the works of Niriam Were, Tlali and Head advocate the need for men to change their cultural attitudes towards women. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE WORKS OF WACfUMA, OGOT, NWAPA AND NJAU Charity Waciuma Grace Ogot Flora Nwapa Rebeka Njau CHAPTER TWO CULTURAL BONDAGE: EMECHETA CHALLENGES THE AUTHORITY OF MEMORY Buchi Emecheta CHAPTER THREE WERE, TLALI AND HEAD RENEGOTIATE CULTURAL LOCATIONS Miriam Were Miriam Tlali Bessie Head CONCLUS ION BIBLIOGRRAPHY INTRODUCTION Since f 970, the production of Af rican womenr s literature writcen in English has grown rapidly. However, before 1970 few African women had published.L Flora Nwapa' s Efuru (1966), Grace Ogott s The Promised Land (1966), and Charity Waciuma' s Daughter of Mwnbi (1969) were the first works written in English by African women to gain widespread recognition. These three early texts explore themes depicted by their male predecessors, themes of cultural conflict and economic change, during post- colonialism. However, Nwapa, Ogot and Waciuma extend these themes into new areas of social life, especially gender roles. In the 1970s, writers such as Buchi Emecheta, Rebeka Njau and Miriam Were enlarge a3d develop the themes of their African women predecessors yet further, while South African writers, such as Miriam Tlali and Bessie Head explore these themes from the perspective of apartheid. By placing women in the centre of their texts, they are able to construct alternate versions of history. By representing their pasts, whether in fictional, historical or autobiographical narratives, these writers create the opportunity to define themselves from their own points of view. In this work, 1 analyze how modes of memory transmit cultural values and attitudes which inevitably reflect the on-going process of self- definition. Memory plays a crucial role in the process of self- definition. Without memory the world would be unintelligible, for to imbue any perception or any experience with meaning, we have to relate it to a prior context. While al1 consciousness is rnediated through memory, most of what we commit to memory is done so subconsciously. Language, behavioral patterns and customs are learnt and reiterated largely subconsciously, and such learning and reiteration reflects the particular culture of which we are a part. In Rernembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, P.C. Bartlett argues that while there is no proof that the social group has a mental life over and above that of its individual members, there is no doubt that the group functions in a particular way which directs the mental lives of the individual members (298, 300) . As a result, the individual may be seen as the product of his or her cultural history. Paul Connerton concurs with Bartlett, stating in How Societies Remember that "the narrative of our life is part of an interconnecting set of narratives; it is embedded in the story of those groups £rom which individuals derive their identity" (21) . Personal memory and cultural memoxy are thus not clearly separated. We internalize the cultural memories of which we are a product, and our pasts, both culturally and individually, determine who and what we are. Salman Rushdie endorses this theory in Midnight's Children. Events before Saleem's birth are important factors in depicting who and what he is, and Rushdie demonstrates the irnpossibility of separating the individual and political histories. Political events have an inescapable impact on Saleem's development, and become part of his life, just as he, as an individual, has an impact on politics. Any social interaction is dependent upon social or cultural mernory. A memory can be cultural only if it is capable of being transmitted, and to be transmitted a memory must first be articulated. There are many modes of transmitting cultural memory, and its articulation may not necessarily be verbal; gestures, attitudes and stereotyped images may transmit cultural noms. Furthemore, Bartlett ' s experiments on the transmission of mernory within different cultural groups prove that not only must memory be conventionalized to be transmitted, but that different cultural groups will conventionalize in differing ways, in accordance with the conventions of their cultures. "Mernories of people in different cultures will Vary because their mental maps are different" (125). As Chandra T. Mohanty states, any "map" is constantly being "re-drawn as Our analytic and conceptual skills and knowledge develop and transforrn the way we understand quescions of history, consciousness and agency" (Third World Women 3). Thus the mental "maps" we draw are necessarily charted in our own discontinuous locations in time and space. At the same time, these locations depend on what and how we rernember. With new experiences and influences, the individual is constantly re-assessing the authority and location of cultural rnernory, for the contradictions and confrontations of different cultural influences of past and present create tension, and exert pressure upon the manner in which we interpret Our lives. This tension is not necessarily binary or even oppositional. It may be multifaceted. However, re-negotiation is a constant as the individual copes with these changing influences. The control of a societyls cultural memory is a means of retaining power and authority. Connerton, in How Societies Remernber claims : The more total the aspirations of [a] . regime, the more imperiously will it seek to introduce an era of forced forgetting .... the mental enslavement of the subjects of a totalitarian regime begins when their memories are taken away. When a large power wants to deprive a small country of its national consciousness it uses the method of organized forgetting . (12 We witnessed an era of enforced forgetting in South
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