Gender Discourse in Chika Unigwe's "Night Dancer"

Document from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Africa, grade: A, University of Nigeria, language: English, abstract: From time immemorial, different societies all over the world have roles/statuses assigned to males and females. There are different images as regards men/women. And male/female relationship is conservatively established. All these gender issues are portrayed through the agency of language, discourse. In this essay, Feminist theory is used in studying gender discourse as it appears in Chika Unigwe¿s Night Dancer. This work establishes that the society of the text is highly patriarchal. Hence, the female character who breaks this stranglehold of patriarchy faces societal stigma.
Literature is conveyed through the instrumentality of language which explores universal themes. One of such themes portrayed in literary works is gender. According to Wodak, ¿gender [is] not only being constructed and performed through language but also accomplished, achieved, enacted, and effected by language¿. In constructing gender via language, literary works from the classical periods don¿t have equal positions for males and females. This is because the societies in those works are patriarchal. The subordination of women in the West is reflected in a lot of literary works.
In African literature as well, female characters are created to fill a subordinate status in the family cum society. For instance, Nwajiaku states that ¿Most African societies are patriarchal in constitution. This implies a male- dominated social system, where women are only tangential within the scheme¿ (345). This ¿male-dominated social system¿ is prevalent in early male-authored literary works of African literature. For instance, in Achebe¿s Things Fall Apart, A Man of the People, No Longer at Ease, women are shown as appendages to their husbands. They are expected to be quiet and subdued and their primary concerns are their children.