WOMEN DEPICTING WOMEN: INSTANCES FROM NOVIOLET BULAWAYO’S WE NEED NEW NAMES

 

 Elizabeth A. Omotayo¹, Omolola A. Ladele² and Charles O. Ogbulogo³

¹Doctoral Student, Department of Languages and General Studies, Covenant University, Ota. Ogun State. Nigeria. / Chief Lecturer, Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ilaro. Ogun State. Nigeria. sunmbo_omotayo@yahoo.co.uk; elizabeth.omotayo@federalpolyilaro.edu.ng. orcid:0000-0002-1634-417X.

²Assoc. Prof., Department of English, Lagos State University, Ojo. Lagos State. Nigeria. theresaladele@yahoo.co.uk

³Prof., Department of Languages and General Studies, Covenant University, Ota. Ogun State. Nigeria. charles.ogbulogo@covenantuniversity.edu.ng

 

Abstract

The general belief is that when men write they seem to throw women under the bus by portraying them as characters that are weak, emotional, voiceless and subjugated by society in their fiction. It is taken that it is difficult for men not to write this way because of the cultural imperatives that seem to promote patriarchal tendencies in our social relations and the way the two genders engage on issues. Using the postcolonial feminist theory, this paper attempts to draw inferences from NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013) to show that subjugation of female characters certainly exceeds the commonly known assumptions. It postulates that the cognitive dissonance and the ‘subjectification’ of women as espoused in most literary works are unintended outcomes of ‘arrogant minds’ and not direct products of primary intentions. The novel which is set both in the United States of America and the author’s home country, Zimbabwe, and one that traverses the protagonist’s childhood experiences through adolescence to adulthood is a good resource to demonstrate how females at various phases of life typify their gender. The work intends to show that the accusation of subjugation of women by male writers should be seen through the prism of power influences, wherein, females are treated as subalterns only because they lack all forms of relevant power. What this portends is that the portraiture of female characters in the fiction of female writers may not be a far-cry from how they are depicted in that of their male counterparts.

Keywords: depictions, female characters, patriarchal, postcolonial feminism, subalterns