WOMAN’S PROTEST AND LIBERATION IN SOME SELECTED IGBO NOVELS

Abstract

For generations past and even present, women have always lived and are still living with the
idea that they suffered, suffer and are still suffering both in the hands of men, their fellow
women, their customs and traditions and even from nature. This issue has always elicited
protest from women, though with caution. This notion is worse in African traditional society
of which Igbo is one. This essay is motivated by the desire to showcase how women in Africa
(Igbo) view these problems and their struggles to annihilate them. The work deploys
deprivation theory and expository method of analysis to produce a thesis within the ambit of
‘feminism’ which postulates that women are not as brainless and as docile as they are taken
to be. The data for this research are sourced from four Igbo novels: Uwa bu nke onye, Mmadu
abu Chukwu, Oge Chukwu ka mma, and Onye chi ya akwatughi written by three Igbo
authors: Obiageli Nsolibe, Stella Agwuna and Chinedum Ofomata. It was observed that
African(Igbo) women are undergoing one torture or the other emotionally and most often
physically, and that they protest these conditions while taking some as natural and, seeing
them from the point of view of “women’s worldâ€. It is also observed that they fight for their
liberation from these suppressive conditions in whatever way possible within the norms of
the society. To have a conducive society for men and women, I suggest that men should
involve women as elemental part of the society who deserved some respect and should be
treated fairly.