Ambivalent Narratives of Traditional African Womanhood as Normalising Discourse in Ama Ata Aidoo's The Dilemma of a Ghost

Abstract

SummaryFeminist critics of African literature have observed that the domination of African literary outputs by male writers has led to romanticised and negative portrayals of the female character in contemporary African literature. Male writers have been accused (and often rightly so) of valorising and projecting the female character as not only docile and passive, but largely dependent on menfolk for her basic sustenance and survival (Ajayi 1997; Nfah-Abbenyi 1997).According to these critics, African literature written by men has predominantly robbed the female character of the power of agency, often idealising and romanticising her as fragile and weak. The female character is often conflated with Mother Africa as she is also presented as the ultimate symbol of human fecundity. In those rare instances when she has been credited with the power of agency, she has been portrayed as rebellious, evil and constitutive of mortal threats to stability and social equilibrium.Be that as it may, a considerable number of contemporary African women writers have striven to circumvent these negative portrayals of the female character. They seek to offer more dynamic representations of female subjectivity in African literature. In this paper, however, I argue that Ama Ata Aidoo's The Dilemma of a Ghost presents the reader with striking narratives of traditional African womanhood, which are at once nearly equally progressive and regressive. I argue that whereas Aidoo's play challenges traditional patriarchy by subverting certain discriminatory female stereotypes and normative perceptions of women that are prevalent in traditional African societies, the play nevertheless exudes an ambivalent attitude towards female emancipation. I also argue that this ambivalent attitude unwittingly reinforces the very negative images of the female character which Aidoo sets out to subvert.