Femme Fatale Poetics in Elechi Amadi’s the Concubine and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood

Abstract

In this article, we focus on unravelling the femme fatale poetics in Elechi Amadi’s and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s, The Concubine and Petals of Blood, respectively. It is premised on the knowledge that the femme fatale is a shifting personage in interpreting feminist politics beyond national borderlines and the social procedures that frame relational contradistinctions of gender and its convergence with sexuality. It is believed that the term femme fatale refers to an archetypal female personality whose wicked features compel her to either unknowingly be destructed or consciously seek retribution. In light of this, Jung additionally submits that a femme fatale is often depicted as a lady who is stunningly gorgeous, has a sexually enchanting voice, is a thought-provoking figure, and has multiple character traits. She is both attractive and intelligent, and she frequently articulates in a soft voice and dresses in unconventional and attractive ways to attract men’s admiration. In line with Jung’s submission, the central concern of this paper is to unravel how the femme fatale has become a source of anxiety in the male domain. This article reveals that the femme fatale quest for individual sexual equality is emphasized as the fundamental source of conflict between patriarchal and feminist conceptions. Therefore, this article concludes that in order to solve the puzzling conundrum paused by the femme fatale, a need for a gender-equal regime should be advocated among all the gender cadres. The principal assertions made in this study serve to highlight an adequate solution to the problem of essentialism by the post-modern and post-feminist view context concerning the modern femme fatale as a threat to male dominance. This work was carried out by the use of close textual analysis to gather sufficient data for the phenomena under investigation and description of the significant claims.