The African female voice : the conflict between traditional culture and western education values in the African novel

Abstract

The principal aim of the dissertation is to analyze the portrayal of the role of African women in modem society by a number of African writers, namely Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Bessie Head. The study of the authors' writing will focus on the treatment of the consequences of the colonial process, namely, the impact it made on traditional culture and the role of the female in this post-colonial change. The research will further attempt to identify the writers' concerns as shown in their texts. Thus the dissertation will address the controversial issue of whether the African woman writer's ideology is nationalist or feminist or both. The motivations and principles to which they are committed to in their writing has led to a great deal of negative discussion and so this thesis will attempt to come to terms with these ambiguities and provide a more positive and clear understanding of their texts. It will additionally show how West African literature tends to be concerned with the two separate worlds of integrity and social pressure that strive to exist simultaneously in a country that has become intercultural during colonization and even after African independence. Another trend that is particular to the African novel is that which portrays with a sober viewpoint personal relationships and the desolation and confusion in society which followed the Nigerian Civil War. My intention is to identify the place the African woman has in this fragmented world.