Unleashing Neglected Potentials: Women’s Self-awareness and Empowerment in Flora Nwapa’s One is Enough

Abstract

This article examines the portrayal of women's capabilities in Flora Nwapa’s 1986 novel One is Enough, focusing on their neglected potentials such as aggression, autonomy, and daring acts that help these female characters make personal decisions that are inconsistent with conventional limits often placed on a woman's free will and potential to engage in economic entrepreneurial activities. Guided by African feminism and radical feminism, the article examines how both female and male characters are depicted as victims of patriarchy, on the one hand, and how female characters emerge as radical, sometimes even threatening patriarchy in the face of shifting social relations, on the other hand. The article argues that Nwapa’s novel marks a radical shift in literary knowledge regarding the characterisation of African women in African literary discourses, suggesting that self-awareness unlocks their neglected potentials that catalyse their entrepreneurial spirit. Implicitly, the novel calls for a new perspective on how the female subjects should be viewed and treated, considering that some aggressive female characters fight with men and resort to unconventional ways of earning income, such as selling commodities on the battlefield and soliciting financial help from acquaintances through intimate relationships while disregarding traditional conventions and etiquette.