Abstract
Zaynab Alkali has published two novels - The Stillborn and The Virtuous Woman. Both novels reconstruct female experience in the journey to consciousness in sexist society. Alkali's is a welcome new voice in African creative writing and her relevance cannot be over-emphasised, for she is a lone female voice from Northern Nigerian that has undertaken to expose the reality of woman's life in a male-dominated culture. Through her novels, Alkali has led the Northern Nigerian woman out of her silence by giving her a voice to speak out in protest against male hegemony and domination, to tell the world of her troubles, of society's insensitivity to woman's predicaments and her individual struggles for survival, self-definition and self-realization in patriarchal culture.
Introduction
Although she is operating from a christian background, Alkali's literary vocality in a predominantly Muslim society that views writing as "a male privilege and the incarnation of power” (Sabbah 6), is in itself a daring departure from the Muslim ethic of female silence and inertia, and is an act of feminist protest which has earned her some vitriolic criticism (Alkali, "Keynote Address"3). This paper examines Alkali's exploitation of the journey as a trope for female growth in The Virtuous Woman.
Content
Mobility is fundamental in the construction of consciousness. Alkali in her novels - The Stillborn and The Virtuous Woman - inscribes mobility (physical and psychological) as the starting point of female consciousness in Muslim culture that imposes immobility on the female. Chioma Opara (158-66) and Theresa Njoku (177-78) have variously examined the salutary effects of movement on Alkali's women, especially in their search for identity.
The female hero in Alkali's The Virtuous Woman is Nana Ai. Alkali exploits the framework of the journey to plot woman's quest for the ideal of autonomy. It is a physical and psychological journey that explores the female predicament in the process of growing up.
The female hero in Alkali's The Virtuous Woman is Nana Ai. Alkali exploits the framework of the journey to plot woman's quest for the ideal of autonomy. It is a physical and psychological journey that explores the female predicament in the process of growing up.
Conclusion
Despite the short time span of the journey (two weeks) woman, in the person of Nana Ai, has attained remarkable psycho-emotional growth signified in the fact that, while she begins the journey in tears, she ends it in laughter, while she begins the journey leaning on the male (her grandfather) for support, she ends it taking control herself. She is thus transformed and is ready to undertake a new journey, to launch into a new beginning, and so The Virtuous Woman ends with a journey that is continuing in a new dimension. The journey has educated Nana incipiently in the gender politics that define female existence in her society.
This process of education has also equipped her incipiently for self-definition within this politics, thereby setting Nana up as Alkali's model for the encouragement of adolescent girls in the Muslim Northern Nigerian context.
This process of education has also equipped her incipiently for self-definition within this politics, thereby setting Nana up as Alkali's model for the encouragement of adolescent girls in the Muslim Northern Nigerian context.
References
Alkali, Zaynab. The Stillhorn. London: Heinemann, 1983. The Virtuous Woman. Ibadan: Longman Nigeria Limited, 1987. Keynote Address. 2nd Annual Conf. of West African Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. U of Calabar. 7 Dec. 1989. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Trans. and Ed. H. M. Parshley. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
Ladele, Omolola. "The Novels of Zaynab Alkali: Another View". The Guardian. 29 Aug. 1987. 13 Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male - Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society. Cambridge: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1975. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam. Trans Mary Jo Lakeland. Reading: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. Inc., 1991. Mohsen, Safia K. "The Egyptian Woman: Between Modernity and Tradition". Many Sisters: Woman in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Ed. Carolyn J. Mathiasson. New York: The Free Press, 1974. 37-58. Njoku, Theresa U. "Personal Identity and the Growth of the Nigerian Woman in Zaynab Alkali's The Stillborn and The Virtuous Woman". Feminism in African Literture: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Helen Chukwuma. Enugu: New Generation Books, 1994. 176-88. Opara, Chioma. "The Foot as Metaphor in Female Dreams: Analysis of Zaynab Alkali's Novels”. Literature and Black Aesthetics. Ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu. Ibadan: Heinemann, 1990.158-66. Sabbah, Fatna A. Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. Trans. Mary Jo Lakeland. New York: Pergamon Press, 1984.
Ladele, Omolola. "The Novels of Zaynab Alkali: Another View". The Guardian. 29 Aug. 1987. 13 Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male - Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society. Cambridge: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1975. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam. Trans Mary Jo Lakeland. Reading: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. Inc., 1991. Mohsen, Safia K. "The Egyptian Woman: Between Modernity and Tradition". Many Sisters: Woman in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Ed. Carolyn J. Mathiasson. New York: The Free Press, 1974. 37-58. Njoku, Theresa U. "Personal Identity and the Growth of the Nigerian Woman in Zaynab Alkali's The Stillborn and The Virtuous Woman". Feminism in African Literture: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Helen Chukwuma. Enugu: New Generation Books, 1994. 176-88. Opara, Chioma. "The Foot as Metaphor in Female Dreams: Analysis of Zaynab Alkali's Novels”. Literature and Black Aesthetics. Ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu. Ibadan: Heinemann, 1990.158-66. Sabbah, Fatna A. Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. Trans. Mary Jo Lakeland. New York: Pergamon Press, 1984.