Women as muted voices and silenced subalterns in Razinat Mohammed’s A Love Like a Woman’s and Other Stories
Main Article Content
Abstract
Women, especially in northern Nigeria have become the silenced “subalterns” due to misconceptions about the Islamic religion especially on issues of polygamy, domestic violence, segregation, exploitation, dehumanization and various types of abuses meted on them. This paper seeks to examine how female characters are depicted in Razinat T. Mohammed’s A Love like a Woman’s and Other Stories and the various mechanisms that have situated them into the position of the silenced subalterns. Anchoring on Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” the paper argues that women in A Love like a Woman’s and Other Stories are doubly marginalized and are constantly silenced by men due to the northern tradition and the misinterpretation of the Islamic religion. This paper posits that women are continually held in a vicious cycle: from birth through death, they are given defined roles. More so, the paper surmises that at adolescence, women in Northern Nigeria are forced into early marriages, bastardized under polygamy, politically dehumanized and sabotaged economically in a male-dominated society.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
How to Cite
References
Abrahams, M. H. A. (1993). Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th Edition. Forthworth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
Babajo, A. (2007). Recent Trends in the Short Story in Northern Nigeria. KADA: Journal of Humanities, 1(1), 70-75.
De Beauvior, S. (2001). The Second Sex, Rice Phillip Waugh Patricia (Eds.). Modern Literary Theory. London: Arnold.
Durix, Jean-Pierre. (1987). The Writer Written-The Artist and Creation in the New Literatures in English. Connecticut: Greenwords.
Emenyi, A. I. (2005). Intersection of Gendered voices. Lagos: Lagos Concept.
Foucault, M. (1971). The Order of Things:An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon.
Freidan, B. (1963). The Feminine Mystique. England: Penguin.
Head, B. (1977). The Collection of Treasures. London: Heinemann.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row.
Hooks, B. (1984). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre. Boston: South End Press.
Isaiah, A. (2012). The Perspective of Tradition and Religion in Northern Nigerian Women: Zaynab Alkali’s The Virtuous Woman” Yerima Ahmed and Aliyu Saeedat (Eds). Gender Politics: Women’s Writing and Films in Northern Nigeria. Ibadan: Kraft, 86-93.
Kolawole, M. (1997). Colonialism and African Consciousness. New Jersey: African World Press.
Millett, K. (1989). Sexual Poltics. London: Virago Press Ltd..
Mohammed, T. R. (2006). A Love like a Woman’s and Other Stories. Ibadan: Kraftgriots.
Mohanty, C. T. (1991). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship’ Colonial Discourses: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Talpade Chanda M.ohanty (Eds), Russo Ann, Bloomington: Indian University Press.
Wa Thiong’o, N. (1971). Writers in Politics. London: Heinemann.
Nutsukpo, M. (2015). Language, Gender and Women’s Writing: Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at point zero and God Dies by the Nile. Issues in the Study of Language and Literature. Kamalu Ikenna, Tamunobelema (Eds.), Ibadan: Kraft.
Olaniyi, A. (2016). Reconstructing Feminist Narrative for the 21st Century African Literary Interpretation. The example of Adimora – Ezeigbo’s Snail Sense Feminism. Journal of Literary Society of Nigeria.
Opara, C. (2013). A House Integrated: Reflections on the Nuances of African Feminism. Ojukwu Chinyelu (Ed.) Critical Issues in African Literature: Twenty-First Century and Beyond. Port Harcourt: Port Harcourt Up, 241-261.
Ogude S. E. (1991). African Literature and the Burden of History: Some Reflections. African Literature as African Historical Experiences. E.rnest Emenyonu (Ed.). Ibadan Heineman.
Osofisan, F. (2001). Literatures and the Pressures of Freedom: Essays, Speeches and Songs. Ibadan: Concept.
Sani, H. (2001). Women and National Development: The Way Foward. Ibadan: Spectrum.
Selden, R. etal. (2005). A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. Fifth edition. London: Person.
Smith, B. (1982). Towards a Black Feminist Criticism Hull Scoth and Smith. New York: Women of Colour Press..
Spivak, G. C. (ibid). Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism. Critical Inquiry.
Spivak, G. C. (1987). French Feminism in an International Frame. Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York, Metheun.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Cary, Nelson and Grossberg Lawrence. London: Macmillan.
Spivak, G. C. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present. Havard: Cambridge.
Tadi, N. Y. (2017). Beginning Literature. Zaria: A.B.U. Press.
Umar, A. (2019). Female Dignity and the Quest for Justice in Selected Northern Nigerian Female Authored Novels, East African Journal of Education, Humanities and Literature, 1(1), 98-104.
Weldon, C. (2007). Postcolonial Feminist Criticism’ in A History of Feminist literary Criticism. Sellers Susan, Plain Gill (Eds). U.S. Cambridge, 282-300
Whitla, W. (2010). The English Handbook: A Guide to Literary Studies. Oxford: Backwell.