SOURCE:

Faculty: Arts
Department: English Language & Literature

CONTRIBUTORS:

Odinye, I. E.
Ogbazi, I.

ABSTRACT:

This research titled “Violence and the Girl-Child in Selected Novels of Buchi Emecheta, Yvonne Vera, Nuruddin Farah and Ikechukwu Asika” examines violence and the girl-child as explored in Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price (1976), Yvonne Vera’s Under the Tongue (1996), Nuruddin Farah’s From a Crooked Rib (1970) and Ikechukwu Asika’s Tamara (2013). The study investigates the portrayal of various forms of gender-based violence such as domestic violence, cultural violence, rape, sexual harassment, human trafficking and forced prostitution in the selected novels. The selected novels depict various ways violence has impinged on the growth, development and the rights of the girl-child. The study employs the theory of feminism and psychoanalysis to analyse and discover how violent experiences inhibit the physical and emotional growth of the girl characters by causing mental disturbances such as fear, anxiety, depression and neurosis. The study also analyzed various ways the childhood experiences of the girl characters have been undermined, subverted and corrupted. This is achieved by exploring some stylistic and literary techniques such as plot, use of language (imagery, symbolism, irony, motif), setting and narrative technique. The study discovered that violent childhood experiences of the girl characters in the selected novels affect their physical and psychological development leaving them frustrated, demoralized, depressed, unfulfilled or dead. The study also discovered a salient problem – the girl protagonists in the female-authored novels neither recover their identities nor escape the neurotic consequences of their experiences, because mutual relationships between the oppressors (males) and the oppressed (girls) are almost not existent; while those in the male-authored novels are not totally overwhelmed by their experiences, but are pushed by circumstances to negotiate spaces and accommodate their oppressors. The above findings are strongly connected to gender differences as the female novelists seem to be more sensitive and passionate towards the plight of their female characters and may have personally experienced violence in one form or the other.