IMAGES OF WOMEN IN AFRICAN FICTION: THE SACRED AND THE NATURAL IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART AND AKACHI ADIMORA-EZEIGBO’S THE LAST OF THE STRONG ONES

Abstract

This paper took cognizance of the classical Christian religious notions of women as domestic props or mere appendages to men and the contemporary equality theories to examine the images of women in African literature as ‘sacred female and sacred nature’. According to Elinor Gadon, the Catholic dogma proclaims the Virgin as unique of all human beings, Catholic piety venerates her as the mother of Christ, western art images her as a goddess, but all these glory cannot undo the misogyny of Christian theology in which human sexuality and women’s bodies are considered evil. Drawing inspiration from the perspectives on African liberal feminist theory, the paper challenged the dominant opinion that women are marginalized and made to exist on the periphery of life or mere appendages to men. The seemingly less domineering portrayal of women in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart rather than indicating a subjugation of women, seem to echo the Palaeolithic conception of women where the image of women as goddess expresses concrete dual realities of sacredness and naturalness, attributes which obviously do not locate them on the periphery of existence. Again, Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones images a group of women in Umuga society who are not only respected and revered in the general scheme of things but whose powers reach into the realm of the sacred as epitomized in Chibuka, a leader of a masquerade cult. To this end, the study shall deploy textual close reading and theoretical analytical methods to investigate the varying images of women as embodiments of sacred feminine principle and sacred nature. We concluded that contrary to the much-orchestrated idea of women subjugation and marginalization in African fiction, African women in traditional societies are highly respected as life-giving and life-sustaining sacred females Moreover,  traditional African societies accommodate institutional structures for the accommodation of women in Things Fall Apart and women’s self-definition and affirmation in The Last of the Strong Ones.