The African Literary Text ‘The Lion and the Jewel’ by Wole Soyinka From Feminist Perspectives

Abstract

The portrayal of women in African literature continues to be a subject of active attention in the field of literary criticism. This paper aims to analyse the representation of African women in The Lion and The Jewel by Wole Soyinka. The study adopts a feminist criticism approach to explore the increasingly gender-sensitive perspective depicted in this literary work. The primary objective is to highlight the inaccurate depiction of women in male writing and how they are striving to draw images of women and their agency in society. Findings showed the gap between genders by presenting them as unequal in all spheres of life. The prevalence of male supremacy and sovereignty is still a reality in some of the African patriarchal societies and women still suffer at the expense of men, as patriarchy still exists especially in rural areas where some cultural practices marginalise women.