Images of women in Efuru by Flora Nwapa and The Concubine by Elechi Amadi

Abstract

A study of critical works on African literature produced in the last few decades shows that gender has become an important issue.The first African literary works to be published were produced by men. And for several years literature was a male preserve. African male writers did not pay much attention to the presence of women in their texts. In fact, their primary aim was to write back to the west in an attempt of rehabilitating the image of Africa which had been denigrated in western texts. They described the traditional African way of life, and depicted the functioning of African communities with an emphasis on the positive aspects of culture. Yet, in their texts centrality was exclusively given to men. Women were either absent or confined to the margins. Besides, men tended to depict women according to some stereotypes that resulted from the fact that they used women as symbols for representing Africa; they idealized women as nurturing mothers. When African female writers appeared on the literary scene, they sought to challenge the stereotypes of representation of female characters in male authored texts. Their purpose was to correct the false images that had been prejudicial to the development of women. In order to counterbalance the negative pictures, they created positive female characters. Besides, they constructed their plots around strong and intelligent women whose quest for self-actualization created a new path to be followed by the female reader. The present work is meant to probe into the characterization of the female figures in the two novels The Concubine by Elechi Amadi, and Efuru by Flora Nwapa. It is intended to study and compare the way in which the two authors depict women in a traditional African society. The similarities as well as the contrast between their two attitudes will be hopefully used to draw a conclusion as concerns the functioning of gender in the work of an African female writer and an African male writer. In his first novel, Amadi gives centrality to a female character as the main protagonist of The Concubine is a woman. Yet, he seems to conform to the stereotypes of female representation as this protagonist, Ihuoma, appears to be a passive character. She is a beautiful woman who is respected by her people because she conforms to the requirements of society. Besides, it is her motherly character that attracts Ekwueme, the main male protagonist. It seems that for Amadi, her passivity, her silence, and her image as a mother are the characteristics that give value to Ihuoma. Flora Nwapa, on her part, appears to hold a different position. In Efuru, she makes it clear that strength is the most important feature that a woman can enjoy. Her eponymous heroine, Efuru, is very active. She is a woman who dares to take decisions which challenge the status quo. She is a successful woman who achieves financial prosperity by working in trade, and despite the fact that she cannot have children, she is respected by her community. All in all, Amadi and Nwapa adopt opposing attitudes towards their female characters. The male writer reinforces the requirements of patriarchy by conforming to stereotypical representations of women while the female writer challenges these stereotypes, and creates positive images of women.