The New Achebe Women and other Matters: A Critical Analysis of Selected Stories from Chinua Achebe's Girls at War and Other Stories

Abstract

Chinua Achebe, one of Africa and indeed the world's finest writers have often been accused of writing his women in silence, subservience, servitude and total submission. Achebe's women are often seen but not heard and sometimes like in the case of Ojiugo in Things Fall Apart, are beaten for negligence. The uncomplimentary portrayal of women by Achebe however, first assumed a gradual change in Girls at War and other Stories and by the time he wrote Anthills of the Savannah, his women are possessed agency. Girls at War and Other Stories is Chinua Achebe's collection of short stories selected from different periods of his writing career. The titled story adopts a new a pattern of female character portrayal in Achebe's writing. This paper, deploying the theory of realism, takes time to study female characterisation in this collection of short stories while noting the acquisition of agency and the centrality of the women in the stories and also takes on other critical issues in the society including corruption and vote buying in a crooked democracy. It concludes that like everything else, culture can change, and if literature mirrors the society, it needs to also change to reflect the times.