ABSTRACT
This paper duels on women lamentations over male subjugation. Women’s lamentation over male subjugation has in years filtered into a determination to abnegate sexism. With this stance, their former conciliatory position becomes superseded by a current of revolt against men and tradition as highlighted through semantic compounding and linguistic parallelism in So Long a Letter.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The struggle for women’ right began in the 18th century during the period of intense intellectual activity known as the Age of Enlightenment.
In traditional Africa the woman is an object of constant scorn, degradation and physical torture. In the past, women did not exist as individuals with personalities to defend. They rather existed as mere docile and exotic accompaniments to the males. Throughout that period, women lacked a voice to articulate their dilemma and their points of view. They, thus, accepted their fate without resistance. Such passive stance results from societal conditioning through questionable cultural practices. From birth, through childhood and adolescence, to adulthood, Africans receive from society and others around the messages and feedbacks which launch them into roles and behaviors considered appropriate for males and females respectively. Most often, female are accorded inferior roles and such long years of cultural suppression and intimidation, unfortunately, misled the women into an underestimation of their capabilities and self-worth. Encased in such a cultural mystique, the African women were particularly driven by a community sense since culture obviates individualism. In those days, these women, in addition to experiencing the same oppressive social condition as their male counterparts in a developing world, were subjected to extra repressive burdens arising from the socio-cultural structures of patriarchy and gender hierarchy. These years of subjugation have, however, produced in today’s women relentless questioning of the status quo. They protest against dehumanization, political enslavement and social oppression. They rationalize that the running of the Africa world is not the preserve for males and thus there should be absolute equality of both sexes in all spheres of life. Such a reaction is termed feminism, which is an ideology that urges, in simple terms, recognition of the claims of women for equal rights with men. For instance Cora Kaplan Literary text are constructed from within ideology, and reality They are dependent on the historical culture which surrounds them; so are the literary critical claims about their truthfulness or authenticity determined by the culture from which they arise. Helen Chukwuma specifically contends that African feminism is dedicated and informed from within, the social realities that obtain. One of such realities is the persistence of sexist socio-psychological paradigm despite the efforts to overcome “the rocentricism which informs social life”.