GENDER AND POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION IN NIGERIAN WAR NOVELS

Abstract

Female critics of earlier Nigerian literature written by Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Wole Soyinka and J.P. Clark have accused them of stereotyping women and giving them marginal and inferior roles in their works. They also claim that women in works like Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana (1960) Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero (1964) and Clark’s Song of a Goat (1961) pander to satisfying the needs of men in a condescending manner. According to Nwapa (2007:528) “the focus has been on the physical, prurient, negative nature of woman.†Ogunyemi (1988:60) claims that the (Nigerian) literature is phallic, dominated as it is by male writers and critics, who deal almost exclusively with male characters and male concerns.†Similarly, the novels of the Nigerian civil war written by men have not been spared of such criticisms by these critics who believe that male authors of the civil war novels privilege the activities of men and gloss over women’s invaluable roles in the war. Arising from the foregoing and considering that literature is a veritable tool for the representation of human experiences, this study critically examines the conception and representation of women in some Nigerian war novels written by male and female authors. It reveals, among others, that the author’s gender has a great influence in their representation of women in their works which in turn affects their objectivity.