Woman, the Visitor: Re-Presenting the Female Authorial Voice

Abstract

Thoughts of self-pity overcame me. Why should the boys be playing and enjoying themselves while I alone laboured for their greedy sakes? It was not fair. Why could they not be given some of the work so that I too might have a bit of tun? I had a right to play as well as anybody else.1'I Had a Right to Play as Well as Anybody Else'In an act of transgressive resistance that foreshadows an autonomy discernible in certain mature African women, Elvania Namukwaya Zirimu's short story Hen and the Groundnuts proceeds to show tite character of the child asserting her independence at a young age through play by abandoning her duties and so subverting normative female behaviour. By way of contrast to traditional African thinking relating to the positioning and identity of women, the subtitle of this chapter refers to the perception by some of the discrimination of African girls and women, and their consequent preoccupation with, and right to, equality. In responding to this issue and the effect of the social construction of traditional African female identity, Zirimu's character, the female child ?Other', highlights this major concern of African women, opposing female oppression as constructed by Ugandan patriarchal society. The African female's ?natural' progression through the cycle of life involves being a bride, then a wife, and then bearing children. Zirimu foregrounds how the female child is constructed and located diffe1 rently from the male child, whose right it is to relax, play, and enjoy, while his sister toils over domestic chores, preparing the meal he is waiting to eat.2Zirimu locates herself in the text with regard to her assessment of the African female's position in a patriarchal society. In direct contrast to highly artificial3 representations of African women confined by traditional culture, as evidenced in such texts as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart or Okot p'Bitek's Song ofLawino, and a dominant Western discourse that privileges prejudiced and partial representations of non-Westem culture, Zirimu's chosen location offers an insight into an alternative and transgressive depiction of the position of the African girl and her interpellation into normative womanhood. Accordingly, this chapter analyses how Huxley, Kimenye, Macgoye, and Ogot locate themselves in their respective texts, in relation both to dominant Western discourse and to their construction of the African female with respect to Said's notion of strategic location.4 In transgressing against cultural norms to reposition themselves and their readers in relation to their texts, these writers invite discussion of how their location of themselves as ?Other' to the dominant modes of textual representation affects their creation of textual matter.The writers' repositionings as ?Other' in order to write from a (black) ?African' woman's perspective is a deliberate stance that situates them in opposition to patriarchy, thus indicating their involvement in cultural politics. The central motif for the selection of texts is the narrative theme of the African woman's journey from girlhood to womanhood via figure of the ?bride'. An examination of Huxley's Red Strangers prompts one to ask why she adopts an alternative perspective and grants more attention to male than to female characters; is Huxley thereby repositioning the African woman to any degree, if at all? This in turn provokes inquiry into the degree to which she manages to realize a location different from that dictated by the dominant ideology. Kimenye's Runaway Bride (1994) and Kayo's House (1995) both exhibit strong, autonomous female characters, and Macgoye's Victoria and Murder in Majengo (1993) has a protagonist who uses prostitution as a way out of her role of junior wife. The writers' textual location indicates some degree of sympathy for autonomous female African characters, which in turn highlights their chosen political stance in opposition to patriarchal structures in certain African societies. …