INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

                It is unarguable stating that feminism has achieved so much for women across the globe. This means that so much has been achieved and there is more to be achieved because feminists do not think they have won it all. But in all ramifications, women in Africa are better placed today than they were so many years back. In line with this, Peter Bisong et al admit that:

Today, because of the effort of feminism, women around the world are better appreciated and accommodated than they used to be in the past. More women are today asserting themselves in all spheres of life, emerging from where they had long hidden, imparting their hitherto hidden treasures, exposing their abilities which had been hidden for long… to the wheels of societal development. (35)

When the condition of the African woman today is compared to what was obtainable prior to this time, then the veracity of the above postulation would be better appreciated.

When most African states became free from the shackles of colonization, those African women who thought that they too had been truly set free were wrong, because the independence given Africa was meant for the man only and not for the woman. It is in line with this that so many African scholars agree that African women have perpetually had a history of oppression and marginalization before and after African independence, and this is solely because patriarchy is deeply rooted in Africa. Patriarchy is responsible for the wrong notion that a woman belongs to the kitchen. Some African and Asian women have grown up with this notion so they do not find it enthusiastic to attain certain levels such as academic achievement. A woman is brought up to believe she is inferior to men and as such must obey the man without question. This is due to the patriarchal system. This system, through the generations, has made or forced women to the point that “women are shackled by their own negative self-image, by centuries of the
interiorization of the ideologies of patriarchy and gender hierarchy” (Ogundipe-Leslie 34).

According to Harrap’s Chambers Compact Dictionary, patriarchy is defined as a
“social system in which a male is head of the family and descent is traced through the male
line”. In Africa therefore, women are faced with all sorts of dehumanisation ranging from
deprivation, negligence, maltreatment, marginalisation, oppression, subjugation, exploitation,
humiliation and even isolation, all of which emanate from aspects of the people’s culture. In
Africa, for instance, women are seen not heard. They live in the shadow of men from
their maiden homes to their matrimonial homes; hence they are regarded as second class citizens.

From girlhood to womanhood, the African woman has had to contend with many issues
that restrain her ‘being’ as she journeys through life’s winding cycles dictated by culture and
cult. The woman’s role has hitherto been restricted to the kitchen and to other chores that are
akin to her femininity, while the men do the political talking and decision-making that
unfortunately also affect the voiceless woman. Oseni Taiwo Afisi laments that “In many
areas women are still regarded as chattels to be inherited, they are given no formal
education... given out in marriage at an early age. They are forever under the control of either
their husbands or male relatives... they cannot inherit or own property, nor can they participate
fully in public life and the decision-making process within their immediate community” (13).

In reacting to the marginalization of women in Africa and the negative portrayal of women in African male writings, champions among women repeatedly ask if God and nature had made women so clearly inferior to men. In reaction to claims that women are irrational, weak, vicious and sinful, early defenders of women again and again repeated the same beliefs. They claimed women were equal or superior to men, writing, for example, books about heroic, saintly, learned, and otherwise exemplary women.

In another common strategy, some African women have contributed immensely to the development and empowerment of their fellow women. In Africa, female writers have contributed to the endorsement of the female empowerment. Mention can be made of Zulu Sofola (Nigeria), Tess A. Onwueme (Nigeria), Mariama Ba (Senegal), Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), and Bessie Head (Botswana). These writers have used their works as a medium to reflect the complexity of the African world view. These women have proven over the years that they are as capable in terms of producing works that truly represent the African situation in a global context. These women asserted equality less by raising the image of women than by lowering the image of men. Thereby they launched an inquiry into the meaning of equality that continues to the present.

Then out of their social and economic conditions, female writings also depict men as characters embodying irrationality, the same way they accused women to be. These male characters’ depiction in female writings, though not being real, seems to be retrieved from the day-to-day attitude in the society. It is evident that some of the fictional characteristics of male characters in female literature highlight the reality in homes and outdoors. The correlation between drama and reality, and the image of each character in African drams put on view the complicity between the two.  

It is worth noting that some male playwrights have also discussed women in the light of feminist ideologies in their works. Two of such playwrights are Femi Osofisan (Nigeria) and Efo Kojo Mawugbe (Ghana). In Mawugbe‘s play In the Chest of a woman (2008), he presents the woman as a strong character, not a weaker vessel as some have presented them. He showcased how a woman wants and uses power. In the play, Mawugbe asserts that, “in the chest of a woman is not only an extension of the breast and a feeble heart, but a strong desire to possess and use power” (36). This is very instrumental in pushing forward the feminist agenda. He, however, does not regard himself as a feminist, but appropriating the contributions women make to society. Mawugbe knows very well the capability of a woman to transform society.

Feminists have outlined structures that forge forward their agenda of women
empowerment. These structures include style of writing and mode of analysis of a female
writer. Molara Ogundipe-Leslie in her, article “The Female Writer and Her Commitment”,
states, however, that “feminists have posited that the woman writer has two major
responsibilities; first tell about being a woman; secondly, to describe reality from a
woman‘s view, a woman‘s perspective” (23). In describing the reality from a woman‘s view two angles must be considered. These are observation and personal experience.

As stated earlier, the female writer in the bid to achieve her goals with her writing has
the right as to how she portrays her female characters, and not just the right to portray her male characters as being domineering. Mabel Evweirhoma posits that “the female dramatist as a member of society, then, has the choice of portraying her women to suit her authorial goals. She has also the prerogative of making her women conform to the active radical group or present her as docile and submissive” (13).

Subsequently, African female writers have made use of these precepts to diffuse some negative assertions through their works. They have debunked some limitations associated with women. One of these limitations is ‘the place of the woman is in the kitchen’. It is in line with this that Helen Chukwuma avers that “Women in Africa latterly have joined women in other nations in their quest for rights, for opportunity, relevance and recognition” (7). Today therefore, African women dramatists are churning out drama texts not just with the intention of calling on men to abandon patriarchy but are particularly arming women with potent ways of becoming powerful, economically, socially, and politically.

According to Osita Ezenwanebe, “Bondage persists only when the enslaved is not aware of his or her predicament; or being aware, lacks the potentials for freedom (186). This means therefore, that African women’s awareness that they are being marginalized and the conspicuous presence of African female dramatists on the dramatic scene would go a long way in contributing hugely to the empowerment of African women. The belief is that African women drama would not only condemn patriarchy and the oppression of women, but would also empower women by suggesting to them workable ways of breaking free from the bondage of oppression and patriarchy.

Statement of the Problem

Over the years, most African male dramatists have portrayed the African woman in a negative light because the African society is highly patriarchal and views the woman as a very weak vessel who does not deserve certain rights and powers. Given that Africans are highly patriarchal, the chances that African men would abandon the marginalization of women and begin to empower women are very slim because power, it is believed, is not given but taken. This sad fact prompted African women dramatists to begin to churn out drama texts in order to correct the wrong impression created by men and in order to empower the African woman. This study therefore, delves into the dramatic world of Tess Onwueme’s Go Tell it to Women and Irene Salami’s Sweet Revenge in order to examine the potency of the dramatic parameters with which the dramatist hopes to empower the African woman and make her ascend the ladder of economic, social, and political power.

Aim and Objectives

                The central aim of this study is to examine how Tess Onwueme and Irene Salami use their play texts, Go Tell it to Women and Sweet Revenge to condemn patriarchy and effectively communicate empowerment to the African woman. The study also hopes to achieve the following objectives:

To condemn the age-long oppression and marginalization of African women by African men.

To expose and completely condemn the evils of patriarchy.

To announce the urgent need for women to strongly imbibe female education and female solidarity in order to be empowered to break free from the shackles of patriarchy.

To announce the need for both men and women to imbibe gender complementarity in order that together, men and women will move the African society forward.

Scope of the Study

                This research work is limited to the analysis of Tess Onwueme’s Go Tell it to Women and Irene Salami’s Sweet Revenge using the Womanist Theory. The play exposes the evils of patriarchy and the need for women to empower themselves since men are hell-bent on perpetually subjecting them to the background. The researcher hopes to dwell religiously on the content analysis of the play in order to lucidly show that patriarchy, which translates to the oppression and marginalization of women, can only be expelled if women arm themselves with the potent tools with which to free themselves from the chains of men and take centre stage. The researcher’s choice of the study play text is hinged on the fact that the play perfectly conveys the dramatist’s interest, which is to communicate the empowerment of the African woman.

Significance of the Study

                This study will be a valuable contribution to the current global agenda of empowering African women to come out of hiding, break their age-long silence and take the centre stage in order that they too will contribute their significant quota to the development of the African society. More than simply advocating gender parity like most Feminist analyses do, this study establishes the need for women to also imbibe gender complementarity since the struggle to uplift Africa from her throes of woes can only be won when both men and women come together for the same just cause. The study will therefore be a significant contribution to literatures on Feminism and Womanism. The study will also be significant to students of Theatre Arts and Literary Studies, especially those who are interested in Feminism and Womanism in Africa. The study will also be significant to studies in Africa’s Development since Womanism is about empowering the African woman for the growth and development of the African society.

Theoretical Framework

        This study shall be carried out using the African oriented strand of feminism called Womanism. The belief that “African American Womanism as defined by Alice Walker, overlooks African peculiarities” (Ogunyemi qtd. in Ampa 3) prompted African feminists like Chikwenye Ogunyemi to come up with Womanism, a more accommodating strand of feminism for African women.

                Ogunyemi proposes an African Womanism that upholds the peculiarity of the condition of African women and equally supports a need for male-female cooperation. Womanism, being an Afro-centric form of feminism, does not only take concern of gender but also takes class, race, politics, ethnic relationships, religious intolerance, colonialism and neocolonialism into cognizance (Georgiads Kivai 18). Ngozi Ohaeto believes that the “Womanist model or a Womanist is committed to the survival and wholeness of an entire people, male or female” (61). This means that Womanism as a brand of feminism advocates the emancipation of the African woman from patriarchal chains, cultural bondage, and religious enslavement, and equally encourages gender complementation.

African Womanism by Ogunyemi can therefore be said to be an off shoot of the communality of traditional African societies that insist on the complementarity of the sexes and the rejection of the oppression of women. African Womanism is reckoned with as a theory which:

Celebrates African womanhood and valorizes motherhood and mothering as a virtue and with a sense of power of the domain of women. It is a philosophy which sees the woman as woman while recognizing her definite roles which, in themselves, cannot stand without those of the man’s and vice-versa…is opposed to the negation of womanhood for the attainment of a new status or height. (Akoh 140)

Akoh interprets Ogunyemi’s Womanism as a feminist ideology that celebrates the independence of the woman person and at the same time encouraging a healthy gender bonding or gender complementation.

Ogunyemi affirms that Womanism is a “mother-centered ideology with its focus on caring - familial, communal, national and internal” (qtd. in Kivai 18). Womanism arose, therefore, out of a desire on the part of black women to name their experiences and perspective within a specific socio-cultural and political context given the uniqueness and peculiarities of the socio-cultural domain of Africa and the highly chauvinistic nature of African men. It emphasizes understanding of sexist relationships, affiliations rather than dominion, dialogue rather than violence and division, and thus it grossly repudiates absolutism and dogmatism.

Womanism figures womanhood and motherhood in culture as a symbolic means of understanding our interesting world. It stresses the centrality of the African family and upholds the role of mothering in the womanist perspective. As a postcolonial idea, Womanism is couched in the anticolonial and neocolonial discourse and making it a relevant theory in addressing the plight of the African woman who suffers in the hands of men, odd or offensive customs and negative religious dogma and interpretations.

Ogunyemi, recognizing the manifold calamities of the African woman, tries to claim equal space and opportunity in the literary scene for women and acknowledge women as they complete the tenor of human experience an expression. As she does this using the theoretical parameter of Womanism, Ogunyemi equally recognizes and avers that:

Black women are disadvantaged in several ways: as blacks, they, with their men are victims of white patriarchal culture; as women they are also victimized by black men; and as black women, they are also victimized on racial, sexual and class grounds by white women. (67)

Seen in this sense, therefore, Ogunyemi’s Womanism sees the African women as a victim of interlocking forms of oppression. This implies that African women writers should voice the problems of their society and still engage in sexual politics. The fact that only the African women satisfactorily write about their predicament is resonated in James Baldwin’s assertion that “one writes out of one thing only - one’s own experience” (NP). This justifies Womanism as a theory that specifically speaks for African women in their true language and tone.

                The core ideals of womanist interpretation are gender in the context of other issues of humanity relevant to African women. In the womanist realm, African women’s writing should deal with misrule, national politics, corruption, inter-ethnic skirmishes and cleansing, religious fundamentalism, and the marginalization of women by inhumane customs and offensive religious indoctrinations and biased interpretations. Since it also advocates gender complementation, the womanist philosophy equally directs that a black woman writer, aware of heritage of subjugation, should not despise but empower the black man since he is equally a victim of colonial and neo-colonial oppression. In addition, an African woman writer should attack black patriarchy and all other forms of oppression burdening the African people in general.

                Womanism by Ogunyemi is, therefore, an Afrocentric brand of feminism which addresses the particular condition of the African woman, thereby completely putting to rest the age-long dissatisfaction of African women on choice of theory, beautifully summed up by Weeds that:

For years African women have found themselves in a serious ideological predicament. In the absence of viable organized women’s groups they have been invited to embrace feminism as an instrument of emancipation and as a new found source of empowerment and status-building. Unfortunately, the majority of African women on public platforms have rejected feminism for a multiplicity of reasons… the need to reclaim African women, second, they are perplexed over the sexist origins of the feminist movement, third, they have found little solace in the doctrines and mission of the feminist movement, the realities, struggles and expectation of the two groups remain on different planes. The privileges and advantages still belong to the dominant group. (1)

Ogunyemi now successfully gives the ideological privileges and advantages to the African women via her theory, Womanism. She clarifies the Womanist theory as not just an idea but also a method with uniquely African considerations and sensibilities. Womanism affirms the traditional gender structures embracing a holistic view of emancipation without downplaying the oppression of women.

Womanism, unlike Western Feminism aims at a general social and cultural transformation. The starting point is not necessarily men. Rather it engages and interrogates culture and sees it as a platform for critical transformation. Womanism opts for an evaluation of men and women that will enthrone complementarity, instead of equality of the sexes. Complementarity implies an awareness that neither men nor women can exist in isolation.

                While gender peculiarity is accepted (man and woman are not the same), it calls for an urgent redefinition of social roles in the light of the changes in modern society. Womanism is
therefore a call for equity and fairness in the relationship of men and women in order to build a society where men and women co-exist in equal dignity, mutual respect and self
actualisation. It is a protest against, and the quest for freedom from all forms of social and cultural oppression of African women. It makes available to that gender, ways of asserting
her dignity and of gaining self actualisation. Kolawole summarises Womanism when she defines an African womanist as:

Any African woman who has the consciousness to situate the struggle within African cultural realities by working for a total and robust self-retrieval of the African woman is an African or African womanist. Nigerian women writers and gender scholars who sympathise with the plight of Nigerian women and employ their art to liberate them in line with the cultural realities are womanists. (34)

Stella Dia Oyedepo, Akachi Adimora – Ezeigbo, Tess Onwueme, Catherine Acholonu, Mary Kolawole and others are Nigerian womanists who articulate Nigerian women’s yearnings for freedom, build bridges between women and men for a harmonious co-existence and interrogate oppressive cultural practices and norms for a total socio-cultural transformation.

                This study, therefore, intends to employ Ogunyemi’s Womanism in analysing Tess Onwueme’s Go Tell it to Women and Irene Salami’s Sweet Revenge given that the theory understands the peculiar conditions of the African woman and proposes workable parameters for empowering the African woman through drama and literature generally.

Research Methodology

                This study hopes to use Irene Tess Onwueme’s Go Tell it to Women and Salami’s Sweet Revenge as the primary source of data, whose content analysis will be conducted using the Womanist theory.

                Secondary data which include literary texts, journals, articles, magazines, theses, and dissertations will be sourced for in the library.

                The researcher shall also surf the internet for materials that would be added to the library sources in conducting the review of related literature. With all these, and a close womanist drilling of the study drama texts, the success of Salami’s empowerment of African women through drama would be arrived at.

Organization of the Study

                The researcher hopes to conduct this study in four chapters. Chapter one, being the introduction, will detail the background of the study, state the problem, and outline the aim and objectives of the study. The scope of the study, significance, theoretical framework and research methodology will also be handled in this chapter. Chapter two, which is review of related literature, will handle an in-depth review of literatures on the concept of African Women Empowerment, Tess Onwueme’s Go Tell it to Women and Irene Salami’s Sweet Revenge. This shall be done in order to, amongst other reasons, justify the significance of the study. Chapter three is textual analysis. Under this chapter, the researcher will conduct a careful and close content analysis of the study texts, Tess Onwueme’s Go Tell it to Women Irene Salami’s Sweet Revenge. The analysis shall be guided by the tenets of the womanist theory in order to ascertain Onwueme’s and Salami’s success in handling feminist issues in such a manner that the empowerment of African women is achieved. In this same chapter, the other objectives of the study will also be achieved. Chapter four of the study, being summary and conclusion will handle a concise synopsis of all the discussions handled from chapters one to three, making certain to touch upon the most salient points made in the chapters. Finally, the researcher shall bring the study to a close by emphasizing the achievements of the study and equally announcing sthe potency and loopholes of Onwueme’s and Salami’s empowerment of African women through their drama texts.