Zulfiqar Chaudhry, Sadia (2014) African women writers and the politics of gender. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5202/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten:Theses http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] African Women Writers and the Politics of Gender Sadia Zulfiqar Chaudhry Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy English Literature School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow December 2013 Sadia Zulfiqar 2013 ii Abstract This thesis examines the work of a group of African women writers who have emerged over the last forty years. While figures such as Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and Wole Soyinka are likely to be the chief focus of discussions of African writing, female authors have been at the forefront of fictional interrogations of identity formation and history. In the work of authors such as Mariama Bâ (Senegal), Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), and Leila Aboulela (Sudan), there is a clear attempt to subvert the tradition of male writing where the female characters are often relegated to the margins of the culture, and confined to the domestic, private sphere. This body of work has already generated a significant number of critical responses, including readings that draw on gender politics and colonialism; but it is still very much a minor literature, and most mainstream western feminism has not sufficiently processed it. The purpose of this thesis is threefold. First, it draws together some of the most important and influential African women writers of the post-war period and looks at their work, separately and together, in terms of a series of themes and issues, including marriage, family, polygamy, religion, childhood, and education. Second, it demonstrates how African literature produced by women writers is explicitly and polemically engaged with urgent political issues that have both local and global resonance: the veil, Islamophobia and a distinctively African brand of feminist critique. Third, it revisits Fredric Jameson’s claim that all third-world texts are ‘national allegories’ and considers these novels by African women in relation to Jameson’s claim, arguing that their work has complicated Jameson’s assumptions. iii Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ v Introduction: Sani Baat — Throwing Voice .......................................................................... 1 Prominence of Women in African Oral Traditions ..................................................................... 1 Invisibility of Women in African Literary Canon ....................................................................... 3 Male African Critics and African Women Writers ..................................................................... 4 Nationalism and African Women Writers................................................................................... 6 African Women Writers’ Entrance into the Literary Canon ....................................................... 8 African Women Writers and the Politics of Gender ................................................................... 9 When a Man Loves a Woman: Betrayal and Abandon(ship) in Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (1980) and Scarlet Song (1981) ................................................................................. 19 Themes of Abandonment in African Women Writers’ Fiction................................................. 19 Polygamy and Islam .................................................................................................................. 20 The Role of Class/Caste in Polygamous Marriages .................................................................. 25 Mother-in-Law and Polygamy .................................................................................................. 27 The Role of Colonial History and Racism in Marital Relationships......................................... 34 The Politics of Feminism in Bâ’s Fiction ................................................................................. 38 ‘It is Immoral for a Woman to Subjugate Herself. She should be Punished’: Changing Concepts of Motherhood and Marriage in the Fiction of Buchi Emecheta ......................... 50 African Women Writers and the Politics of Feminism ............................................................. 50 African Alternatives to Feminism: Womanism, Stiwanism, Motherism, and Negofeminism .. 57 Representation of Female Characters in the Work of Male African Writers ............................ 63 Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen in the Ditch ......................................................................... 64 Marriage in Emecheta’s Fiction ................................................................................................ 69 The Concept of Motherhood in Emecheta’s Fiction ................................................................. 76 Women at War: The Nigerian Civil War in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra (1982), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)......................................... 91 The Politics of Ethnicities and Oil in the Nigerian Civil War .................................................. 91 Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka on the Nigerian Civil War ................................................. 93 iv Nigerian Women Writers and Civil War Literature .................................................................. 97 Emecheta’s Destination Biafra and the Complex Response of a Female Witness ................. 100 Women’s War Narratives in Half of a Yellow Sun ................................................................. 109 Neo-colonialism, Cultural Imperialism and Ethnic Tensions ................................................. 111 Patriotism, Freedom and Corrupt Plutocracy .......................................................................... 116 The Role of Generational Distance in the Portrayal of the Biafran Tragedy .......................... 119 The Desire for National Unity and Civil War ......................................................................... 122 ‘I’m Not One of Them But I’m Not One of You’: Colonial Education and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Women ..................................................................................................... 126 The Politics of Colonial Education in Rhodesia ..................................................................... 126 Colonial Education in a Racially Segregated Rhodesia .......................................................... 131 The Role of Class and Gender in Colonial Education ............................................................ 138 Colonial Education and Internalised Inferiority ...................................................................... 148 Racism and Zimbabwe ............................................................................................................ 156 Do Muslim Women Need Saving Again?: Representations of Islam in Leila Aboulela’s Fiction ................................................................................................................................ 160 Islam and the West .................................................................................................................. 160 Sufi Interpretations of Islam .................................................................................................... 166 Female Characters in Aboulela’s Fiction ................................................................................ 169 The Politics of the Veil ........................................................................................................... 177 Faith and Conversion .............................................................................................................. 186 Shahrazad and Feminism ........................................................................................................ 194 Conclusion: Resisting Books of Not, Writing Books of Something .................................. 204 African Women Writers and Fredric Jameson ........................................................................ 204 Comparative Analysis of the Work of African Female and Male Writers .............................. 209 African Women Writers and Eurocentrism............................................................................. 215 Current Developments and Future Questions ......................................................................... 217 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 221 v Acknowledgements I would like to give special thanks to my PhD supervisor, Professor Willy Maley, for