CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The issue of feminism springs up from women’s consciousness of their situation in the society and various oppressive acts against them.
In traditional Africa the woman is an object of constant scorn, degradation and physical torture. In the past, women did not exist as individuals with
personalities to defend. They rather existed as mere docile and exotic accompaniments to the males. Throughout that period, women lacked a voice to
articulate their dilemma and their point of view. They, thus, accepted their fate without resistance.
In those days, these women, in addition to experiencing the same oppressive social condition as their male counterparts in a developing world, were
subjected to extra repressive burdens arising from the socio-cultural structures of patriarchy and gender hierarchy. These years of subjugation have, however,
produced in today’s women relentless questioning of the status quo. They protest against dehumanization, political enslavement and social oppression.
They rationalize that the running of the African world is not the preserve for males and thus there should be absolute equality of both sexes in all spheres of
life. Such a reaction is termed feminism, which is an ideology that urges, in simple term, recognition of the claims of women for equal rights with men.
The term feminism usually refers to a historically recent European and American social movements founded to struggle for female equality. Feminism by this
designation has become a global political project.
African female writers have come a long way from the 1960’s when the few women that published fiction could be counted on one fingers and they were
hardly noticed by critics or if noticed at all, were not taken seriously. At the end of the twentieth century, it was no longer out of place to talk about
generations of female African writers or categorize female authors as ‘established’ or ‘emerging’. Nadine Gordimer, a female writer from South Africa had won
the noble prize for literature in 1991. two years later, the African continent lost a leading female writer Flora Nwapa of Nigeria. A novelist, short story writer,
and poet, Flora Nwapa held in her hands on her death bed on 17 October 1993, the first printed copies of her three new plays; sycophants (SIC). A pioneer
African Female Novelist, she had published poetry and short stories before revealing her talents as a playwright, etc.
The phenomenon of female change was not limited to creative artists. African women scholars too, were no longer satisfied to have somebody else define for
them the aesthetics of female writing, or patronizingly describe for them the dynamic and intrinsic reality of being a woman in the African socio-cultural and
political environment. this issue of African literature today is entirely devoted to African writers and the presentation of women in African literature. This in itself is a recognition of
two important facts: first, that African women writers, as a number of articles in the collection point out, have been neglected in the largely male authored
journals, critical studies and critical anthologies and secondly, that the last ten years or so have seen a tremendous blossoming of highly accomplished work
by African women writers and it would have been in excusable to continue to ignore them. The second fact partly, though not entirely ores an explanation for the first. If the critical attention has been scanty, it is partly because up-to the end of the 1960’s the literary output of African women was also rather scanty. This is most probably due to a number of well known historical and sociological factors. Writing and education go hand in hand and for all kinds of sociological and other reasons the education of women in Africa lagged far behind that of men. Adetokunbo Pearce’s article on Efua Suther Land’s plays
suggest precisely how public the role of the dramatist could be and usually is, but African societies have been slow in according to women this ‘senior’ position and public exposure.
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