A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2013. / Polygamy is widely practised in African communities. The African social-realist
novel, especially when it is woman-authored, shows female characters as having to
play docile, subservient roles and accept demeaning positions in polygamous
marriages. Although it has been claimed that traditional African marriage creates a
satisfactory situation for women, mainly by means of the security it offers and the
bonds that it forges between co-wives, the narrators of African realist novels almost
always expose only evils associated with polygamy. In most of the texts, co-wives
experience conflict with one another, not bonds. Men are portrayed as egocentric
beings that greedily satisfy their sexual impulses at the expense of women.
Encouraged by their families, they inflict irreparable emotional damage not only on
their accumulated wives but often also on their offspring. While blinded by their
desires, these men engender many unplanned children for whom they usually take
little fatherly responsibility. Consequently, children too are objects of pity in many of
the books. This dissertation, by means of close analysis of select African narratives,
reveals that, despite all the struggles for liberation and democracy, values highly
regarded in modern societies, polygamy is a prevailing sign of male dominance in
African communities today. The dissertation shows that even such male-authored
novels as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Onuora Nzekwu’s High Life For
Lizards fail to recommend a polygamous life to women, while Mariama Bâ ’s So
Long a Letter and Scarlet Song, Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood and
Kehinde, Es’kia Mphahlele’s Chirundu, Lazarus Miti’s The Prodigal Husband, Ama
Ata Aidoo’s Changes, Sue Nyathi’s The Polygamist,SembeneOusmane’s Xala, Lola
Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, Rebecca HourwichReyher’s Zulu
Woman, Miriam KWere’s The Eighth Wife, T.M. Aluko’s One Man One Wife and
Aminata Sow Fall’s The Beggars’Strike all use polygamy to highlight the
incongruence between the ideals of democracy and the facts of life as experienced by
African women. These texts reflect real social problems. They cast light on the
inequalities that prevail in polygamous relationships and imply that the principle of
equality cannot be achieved as long as polygamy exists.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uzulu/oai:uzspace.unizulu.ac.za:10530/1354 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Ndabayakhe, Vuyiswa |
| Contributors | Addison, C. |
| Publisher | University of Zululand |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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