Gender and Power in Selected Works of Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie: An Analytic Reappraisal

Musibau O Lawal

doi:10.36892/ijlls.v2i2.319

Abstract

Indeed, gender and power discourses as ideological concessions have been investigated and reviewed from various perspectives by different scholars in the works of Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie. This paper offers a reappraisal of the views of the scholars essentially on the issues of gender and power in the selected works of Achebe and Adichie, viz: Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and There Was a Country and Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. The work, therefore, gives a reappraisal of the thoughts of scholars and presents a coalescence of their views, offering a distillation and filtration of the ideas they proffer on the selected works and projecting a comparatively valid arbitration and settlement where the views of the scholars are going inordinately radical and amorphous.The paper views that the opinion of the scholars on the discourses of gender and power specifically on the selected works of Achebe and Adichie are incongruous and asymmetrical while some of the views are inordinately on the verge of radicalism. This work, however, proffers a comparatively balanced perspective on the diverse views of the scholars with a view to navigating an even horizon.

Highlights

Gender and power are prominent thematic preoccupations in Chinua Achebe’s and Chimamanda Adichie’s literary works
The major objective of this work is to examine the various views of scholars on the discourses of gender and power, weigh the pros and cons of their ideas and proffer a comparatively even assessment of the scholars’ opinion
This work makes a coalescence of opinion and views of scholars on the issues of gender and power of some selected works of Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie, sieving the ideas of the scholars and offering an even appraisal of the writers’ thematic preoccupations

Summary

Introduction

Gender and power are prominent thematic preoccupations in Chinua Achebe’s and Chimamanda Adichie’s literary works. The point now is that while some of the scholars are providing instances of Chinua Achebe being an unrelented masculinist and the radical femisnists amongst them are preaching equality between the male and the female and are putting forward argument for male subjugating the female gender in Adichie’s works, none of them has really proved that it is the women that, most of the time, rule the men. As it is fervently argued by Volume 2, Issue 2, 2020

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Methods

Conclusion