Women and the Gendering of Space in Narratives of Kenya: A Reading of Grace Ogot, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’ and Rebeka Njau.
University of Exeter ; English and Creative Writing, 2023
Online
Hochschulschrift
Zugriff:
The condition of women and the social space they occupy have been two critical areas of interest in postcolonial debates and narratives. This thesis explores selected fictional, historical and autobiographical narratives of Kenya to assess the role of patriarchy on resource control – through colonial authorities, missionaries and cultural institutions – and how that affects women. The thesis considers the period from that of heightened anti-colonial struggle to recently won independence – periods that overlap and entangle with one another as the power structures shaped by British colonialism were replaced with those mired in neo-colonial practices. Combining this historical approach with an engagement with debates on space (Krishnan, Lefebvre, Soja) and the theoretical postulations of entanglement (Bakara, Mbembe, Nuttall,) the thesis examines the condition of women and their level of participation in social, political, and economic spaces. Furthermore, the thesis draws attention to how both domestic (private) and public spaces serve as locales where the exploitation, oppression and subjugation of women were perpetuated. The fictional narratives on which the thesis focuses include two collections of short stories by Grace Ogot: Land Without Thunder (1968) and The Other Woman (1976); Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s novels: The River Between (1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967), Petals of Blood (1977) and Matigari (1987); and Rebeka Njau’s novel, Ripples in the Pool (1975). The thesis draws attention to the ways in which Njau and Ogot’s fiction benefits from their writing from a vantage point as Kenyan women. It explores their presentation of female characters which assert their agency and are assigned central roles, alongside being given voices to decry their situation and enable them to reject the victimhood society throws at them. Putting Ngũgĩ’s novels into dialogue with the works of these two female contemporaries then enables new readings of Ngũgĩ’s work that cast light on the ways in which he reinscribes narratives of .
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Women and the Gendering of Space in Narratives of Kenya: A Reading of Grace Ogot, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’ and Rebeka Njau.
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Yana, I ; Wallis, Kate ; Poyner, Jane |
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Veröffentlichung: | University of Exeter ; English and Creative Writing, 2023 |
Medientyp: | Hochschulschrift |
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