A New Feminist Reading of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives

Abstract

Emancipation of women in the African male-dominated society is a goal that has not been successfully reached today as tradition and religion are still negatively used to relegate them to the background. Ever since the eighteenth century birthed the ideology of feminism and spread it to Africa in the 1980s, a crop of African female writers like Buchi Emecheta, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Flora Nwapa, Bessie Head, Zulu Sofola, and indeed very many others have emerged using it in their writings to fight this background relegation. In recent times, the African women have taken their crusade beyond the pages of books to brace the fight on the street with various associations demanding for their full emancipation. While we may say that the conditions of the African women have improved considerably at the emergence of the feminist ideology and the out-door crusade of the activists, a large number of women in the society still suffer discrimination and are violated: a painful arbitrary deprivation of their fundamental freedom. Being that as it may, there appears to be a fundamental error in women themselves and that is why the patriarchal society continues to succeed. It is this fundamental error that this paper focuses on in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives and refracts as a new feminist reading away from the previous readings of either brooding in complaints or engaging in outright confrontation against patriarchy. The situation can be salvaged without brooding and without confrontation and this paper tells how.