CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKROUND OF THE STUDY

          Feminism as a literary theory is an ideology which tends towards female Liberace in the society. (Joseph 2003:99) describes feminism as an ideology of social commitment to the struggle for female libration in the society through conscious and collective effort.

Feminism Raji (1999:228) says feminism a concerns itself with contemporary agitation by women for social economics, political and cultural equality with male counterparts”. Most feminists are especially concerned with social, political and economic inequality between men and women.

First inaugurated in the sixties, feminist criticism proceeds from the assumption that “the history of all the societies is the history patriarch of male domination and exploitation of women, a situation which women clam has hundred the actualization of women’s possibilities aid potentials in all fields of human endeavour. Just as feminism clamed in murices, feminists behaves that literature represents a very strong infrastructural support of this patriarchal ideology Abram (1998;209) says:

Typically, the most highly regarded literary works on male protagonist to these, the female characters when they play a role are marginal end subordinate…………….and implicitly addressed to male readers either leave the women reader as an alien outsider or else solicit her to identify….and ways of perceiving.

Feminism like Marxism is concerned about societal inequalities. It is also a literary ideology founded on the need to develop a female tradition of creativity to cause awareness on the high of women as the oppressed, deprived, subjugated and unfulfilled gender. It is directed against patriarchal hegemony which according to Josephy (2003) “gives men confidence, subordination the female to male or treats the female as an inferior being:

Marxism recognizes that women are oppressed, and attributes the oppresses to the capitalist/private property system. Thus, it insists that the only way to end the oppression of women is to overthrow the capitalism system (Christian, 1985). Marxism and feminism as schools of thought are different but they have a meeting point while Marxism deals with class stratification between the wealthy and the poor, feminism discussion gender discrimination between the oppressing male and oppressed female. The bottom line is that they are both fighting for the same cause which is liberation of the people from oppression, exploitation and domination.

Feminism as an ideology later, pined a fertile ground in Africa in the 1960’s Obioma Nnaemeka (995) establishes the fundamental purpose of the discussion when she assets that:

Fermium provides the opportunity of evaluating attitudes and misconception about women which have buttressed all along both by African culture and the misogynous tradition of European colonial masters.

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