The social institution of marriage and the culture of paying bride price are interlinked and form an important part in the lives of African men and women. Like other communities, the African society has its own series of events that takes place before and after marriage such as the hunting of bride by going to the prospective bride’s hut before marriage and the inheritance of a widow and her family by the brother-in-law after the death of the husband. The traditional society of Africa strictly follows the culture of paying “bride price” by the groom’s family failing to which consequently lead to the death of the bride in her first childbirth. The African men and women strongly hold this belief no matter how modern the society has become in order to avoid death. In the light of these social practices and taboos prevalent in the African society, the paper is an attempt to analyse the reflection of the African system of marriage and the very culture of paying bride price in Buchi Emecheta’s novel The Bride Price,The Slave Girl and The Joys of Motherhood
Keywords: African women, bride price, marriage, traditional and patriarchal society.
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In this context, the novel The Bride Price can be best studied and analysed from the womanist perspective as expounded by Chikewenye Okonjo Ogunwemi and Alice Walker. Just as feminism is against the discrimination of women based on gender, womanism is against the discrimination of women based on both gender and race. The term “womanist” is generally considered to have first introduced by the famous Afro-American novelist Alice Walker in her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. As Walker skilfully contrasts the difference between the terms “feminism” and “womanism” in terms of
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Gender Equality Throughout America’s history, women have struggled to obtain basic human rights, gender equality, and general respect from men. These issues continue on into our current day-to-day life and will seem to continue for many years to come. In American literature, there are two women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth, amongst many, who voiced their struggles as women in America. Stanton’s piece, “Declaration of Sentiments”, is a revised version of the “Declaration of Independence”, and it outlines the many rights women have been withheld from.
Critical Lens Essay #2 In the 19th century women begun to rise up against gender roles and social expectations that have had oppressed women throughout history, women yearned to be just as equal as men. Authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a feminist author during the 19th century, would create characters and stories that would get her message across as shown in one of Gilman’s most famous stories “The Yellow Wallpaper” which touches upon a woman’s mental and physical health as well as the main character’s oppression which holded her back for a long time. The main character from “The Yellow Wallpaper” expresses throughout the story how she wishes to break free from all that is holding her back and live the life she has always wanted.
The work is not yet complete, and is evident by looking at the domination of women throughout the centuries, specifically the 19th and 20th century, which was the height of the women’s rights movement. By analyzing two literary works from two different eras, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late 19th century and “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” written by Adrienne Rich in the mid-20th century, one can conclude that while there have been improvements to women’s rights, there is still discrimination prevalent. Although set in two different time periods, the main
The domination of men over women is often characterized by physical and psychological victimization of women and enhancement of their misery. This male domination is not limited to any particular region or particular period but it is globalised problem of all the times. Many women writers enter the literary scene to motivate women and fight against male domination. Walker is one among these sort of writers. Alice walker in her novels portrays the world view of women and their worthy roles, as mother, sister, daughter, wife and beloved.
As with all theories, this feminist approach to Louise Halfe’s “Body Politics” does not come without its flaws. While it can be argued that this poem criticizes the performativity of feminine gender roles in a patriarchal society, this cannot be proven definitively without knowing the author’s original intentions. Furthermore, the poem does not give its readers enough information to conclude that the society the women live in is in fact a patriarchal society. This becomes evident, as there is no reference to any masculine figure – so any assumptions about the masculine-dominant culture are purely speculative. It is possible that Halfe wrote this poem in an attempt to challenge the gender binary, however one stands to question how successfully she is in doing so.
Chapter 3 focuses on how slave owners appropriated their slaves’ reproductive lives to increase their own wealth. With high mortality percentages and low birthrates among slave societies, women with proven childbearing capacity were seen as pragmatically and symbolically valuable. The fourth chapters looks at how this commodification of African women’s wombs and offspring affected them and the community, redefining motherhood, childhood, and other family dynamics. This chapter challenges the ahistorical assumption that all reproductive experiences are primarily shaped by basic commonalities, and instead suggests, “the many ways in which childbirth itself is situational and demands historicity” (10). Similarly, chapter 5 seeks to explain that while reproduction was an essential component of enslaved women’s symbolic and pragmatic work, it should not overshadow the often-backbreaking labor they were forced to undertake in the field.
Many aspects of their lives have men as the prominent heads of their households, but women also have some importance in many of the concepts. In the novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe presents the idea of how Igbo culture and religion define the roles for each gender and examines how unequal roles in society can lead to conflicts between each gender in order to illustrate how they can lead to permanently damaged relationships. The main driving forces behind gender role beliefs in Things Fall Apart are a result of the ideologies set by the Ibo people. Their culture dictated men as stronger people who did more work, while women were dictated as individuals who were weak and inferior because they did household activities.
“To the Ladies”, written by Lady Mary Chudleigh, is a poem that expresses feminism, and gives women a taste of how they would be treated in a marriage. Chudleigh displays this poem as a warning to women who are not married yet, as she regrets getting married. She uses such words that compares to slavery, and negative attitudes toward future wives to warn them. Back in this time period when the poem was published in 1703, women were known as property of men and you won’t have an opinion or a say so. The poem expresses a life of a naïve woman, who is bound to marriage by God, and she cannot break the nuptial contract.
From the outset, literature and all forms of art have been used to express their author’s feelings, opinions, ideas, and believes. Accordingly, many authors have resorted to their writing to express their feminist ideas, but first we must define what feminism is. According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, feminism is “the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state”. As early as the fifteenth century is possible to find feminist writings. Centuries later, and although she never referred to herself as one, the famous English writer Virginia Woolf became one of the greatest feminist writers of the twentieth
Love, Trust, and Family Renowned film critic Roger Ebert has praised Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding for the way that it “leaps national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature.” Indeed, despite the many differences that seem to divide people, there are also aspects of life that are present in the lives of everyone that can be used to relate and understand those with a different background. Throughout the story, the creators allow their audience to relate to a traditional Indian family through the emotions they share with the characters and the way that they deal with issues involving, love, trust, and family while still understanding the many differences between traditional American culture and the culture of those within the film.
“Everyday Use” is one of the most popular stories by Alice Walker. The issue that this story raises is very pertinent from ‘womanist’ perspective. The term, in its broader sense, designates a culture specific form of woman-referred policy and theory. ‘womanism’ may be defined as a strand within ‘black feminism’. As against womansim, feminist movement of the day was predominately white-centric.
Mary Wollstonecraft is a key figure in the early beginnings of the women’s rights movement. Wollstonecraft, born in 1759, in London, England, experienced firsthand the inequality and oppression expressed towards women during this time. Throughout her life, she fought against her odds and worked to create equality between genders. In her most well-known work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, Wollstonecraft argues a simple point: women should be as educated as men and be treated with the same respect. Her arguments are straightforward and understandable, which is why they have made such a huge difference in the way women have been viewed and treated.
This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a
Women have less to say about what they need or want but they have to pay much and also to face the results when the men around them botch. It is dreary to see these frail willed men delineated in the novel who failed to stay up for women, who recognize an overall population where women are set backs of their