Paper -206 Assignment

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 Name :- Aditi Vala

MA Sem :- 04

Batch :- 2020-2022

Roll no. :- 01

Enrollment No. :- 3069206420200018

Paper No. :- 206(The African Literature)

Topic :- The Figure of Postcolonial Women in Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Petals of Blood 

Email id :- valaaditi203@gmail.com

Submitted to :- S.B.Gardi Department Of English,MKBU

Introduction :

Petals of Blood is a novel written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and first published in 1977. The novel primarily explores the skepticism of change following Kenya's independence from colonial authority, wondering to what degree a free Kenya just replicates, and hence perpetuates, the oppression that existed during its colonial rule. Other topics covered include capitalism's problems, politics, and the impacts of westernization. Education, schools, and the Mau Mau rebellion are also utilized to bring the characters together, as they all have a shared heritage.It is particularly evocative of Kenya's post colonial socio political context. It provides a wealth of literature in which socio-political processes, such as post-colonialism, are documented.One of the major themes in Ngugi’s novel is the deceptiveness of any notion of an epistemological rupture between colonial and post-colonial society. 

Postcolonial theory has begun to go side by side with the feminist theory after 1980s. The main concern of both these theories is to show the problems of colonized women who are under the exposure of both colonialism and patriarchy. That is, double-colonization of the third world women torn between patriarchy and colonialism has started to be questioned. Postcolonial feminist critics have begun to deal with the suffering of colored women and examined the race, class and gender in relation to the problem. Here,going to discuss about Figure of Postcolonial Women in  Petals of Blood novel,

Women in African Societies and Kenya :

In African societies, both patrilineal and matrilineal family types can be seen. Patrilineal family was a common family type in African societies. In this family  system,  a  person’s  rights  and  responsibilities  are  dependent  on  who his/her father, and men were always seen as permanent figures of households. Children are thought to belong to their father . In this type of family, women have a more passive role in the rule of the family and have fewer rights when compared with the matrilineal family. When a woman marries someone, she has to go her husband’s region and live there for the rest of her life. To be a real member of the family, she has to show her fidelity and endeavor to her husband’s relatives. Bearing many children and working on land are the key factors to be accepted by the other members of the family. 

 

During the colonial period, women were affected in a great way, because they lost their control on their lands and had no right to farm or earn money. As a result, they became dependent  on the men from the economic aspect. This situation made the patriarchy more intensive. As the colonization was going on, the role of women in society, especially on land, declined day by day. As a matter of fact, women were locked into  the house. And, the dominance of the men in the society started to rise. After the  end  of colonization, that  is  the period  after independence of Kenya, some girls had to chance to go to school, but these were a minority of the  community.  These  girls  were  the  daughters  of families  who  had  good relationships with colonizers during the colonial period. The majority of the females did not have the same fortunate as these girls, since they were not sent to school. Moreover, many young females were pushed to marry at a young age. Furthermore, the age of marriage was lowered to twelve. Following that, several social organizations began to fight against the condition of young girls. Female consciousness began to emerge towards the turn of the twenty-first century. Women will continue to fight for the injustices that Kenyan women face in the future. Women have made significant progress, as seen by the presence of women in Kenya's parliament today. They also have the most female members of parliament since the country's independence.

 

The Women Torn Between Patriarchy and Colonialism :

 

Women  are  generally  ignored  in  postcolonial  writings,  because  early postcolonial writers were mainly male. So, postcolonial texts were male based works. Therefore, we  never  witnessed women figures and their  sufferings so much in early postcolonial writings. Many critics argue that western patriarchy is the main cause of this situation, which penetrated into the colonized regions and societies with the colonization. Tony Affigne mentions this problem: it is a kind  of  system  which is  “deeply embedded  pattern  of social  hierarchy—a Western system  of patriarchal  power,  in the  family, community, and  polity, perpetuated through socialization, law, and physical force”.

 

The women in colonized societies have experienced oppression from both the colonizers  and patriarchy.  This  “double  colonization”  is a  basic concept which should be analyzed in postcolonial theory. The term “double colonization'' was first  used by  Kirsten  Holst-Peterson  and  Anna Rutherford  in  their  works  A Double Colonization: Colonial and Post-Colonial Writings. This theory points out that the native women in colonized societies are oppressed doubly by the colonization  and  patriarchy,  because  of  their  womanhood.  Combahee  River Collective points out that, We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women's lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history  of rape of Black women  by white men as a weapon  of political

Repression.

 

After the  colonization, family structures of the colonized societies also changed. Instead of extended families, nuclear family became dominant. And as a  result,  the  power  of the  women  in the  family diminished slowly.  When a woman did not become pregnant, she lost all her value in the family. We see this in Buchi  Emecheta’s  Joys of Motherhood.  After learning  his wife is not pregnant, Amatokwu says:

 

What do  you want me to do?” Amatokwu asked. “I am a  busy man. I have no tim to waste my precious male seed on a woman who is infertile. I have to raise children for my life. If you really want to know, you don’t appeal to me anymore. You are so dry and jumpy. When a man comes to a woman he wants to be cooled, not scratched by a nervy female who is all bones .

 

 As it is clearly seen, if a woman cannot bear a child, she has no value for the family. The main reason of this is colonization and its effect which made man  more  dominant in  the  colonized  communities. Before colonization, women were more productive, they could work on the land and farms even if they did not bear children. In any way, colonization made them disabled and helpless. On  the other side,  patriarchy gained power  and men  became  more dominant. That is, the oppression that women suffered was doubled. Women had  to struggle  with both colonialism  and  patriarchy.  They  became  more dependent on  the  male, and could not struggle for  their rights. Women were started to be seen as  a sexual object by the colonizers and native men of  the society. And also, some women were forced to earn money by means of their body. We see this situation in Petals of Blood. The main character of the novel,Wanja, becomes a prostitute as a result of the patriarchal and colonial problems.Traditions and also social  structure play an  important  role  in her sufferings.Wanja explains her sufferings: “In the evening you are supposed to give them yourself and sighs in bed” . “Them” refers to the colonizers in this line;  she  points out the  problems  of  all oppressed  women  in a colonized community.

Ngugi also calls attention to the lack of romanticism and shyness of women in the postcolonial period. Because of the traditions and rough conditions of the period,  women  do  not  have  enough  courage  to  tell their  feelings. In  the works of Ngugi, the hard conditions, in which they live, have been emphasized,too. That is, the double-colonization of women is an undeniable fact of the postcolonial world,  and Ngugi  is  good at depicting their problems in a clear way.

 

The Figure of Postcolonial Women in Petals of Blood :

Petals  of  Blood  is  the  fourth  novel of  Ngugi,  and in  this  novel,  he concentrates  on  the status  of  women  in  postcolonial  Kenya.  To  reflect  the condition of women, he chooses the character of Wanja, who is a prostitute. He makes it clear that she is the product of all combined forces.Prostitution  as a  system became  dominant during  the colonial  period.Native women were oppressed and humiliated by the white colonizers, such as polies, soldiers and officers. Prostitution started to be seen in bars throughout Kenya. It became a different kind of tourism. Wanja tells one of her experiences:

 

He took  me to  a house in Nairobi west. He made me some coffee and gave me some tablets and showed me a place to sleep. I must have slept through the night and through the following day. He let me stay for another night and I told him my story and he asked me a few question: would I know the house? Would I recognize him? Then he looked at one place and said: It is no use. This

is what happens  when you turn tourism  in to a national religion and  build it shrines of worship all over the country. I did not ask him what he meant, but I know he sounded angry. The following day he took me to Machacos bus stop and I felt like crying now with gratitude because he had not so  much as tried anything on me, and had treated me without any contempt.

 

Wanja is a barmaid, who works under bad conditions and experiences the harsh sides of this disgusting system. One day, she exposed to the bad behaviors of a German man, who wants to have sexual relation with her. Wanja tells: And the  man  was now  fumbling  with  my clothes  and the  animal was growling and wagging its tail and the man was trembling. The watchful feeling became stronger and stronger, struggling with the deathless, and the animal was

about to lick my gingers when  somewhere  inside me I heard my  own voice exclaim: “Oh,  but you  know I  left my  handbag in  your car”. The moment I heard my voice I knew that the deathless was defeated and I was returning to life. He remarks: “Don't worry; I will get it for you”. I said: “No, a woman's bag contains secrets, so could he take me to the car?” It was my voice all right but commanded by I didn't know who inside me..... I stood up. He led the way to

the door. The animal followed behind. And now I was silently praying: give me more strength, give me more strength. He went out first and I quickly shut the door so that the animal was shut in Even now I can't tell where I got signs from.I flew and flew through the trees and the grass undergrowth and I only looked back once when I reached the main tarmac road.

 

From the expression of Wanja, the exploitation of women by the white settlers is clearly understood, and this has been done under the name of tourism. This can be called the victimization of the colonized women. To reflect this humiliation, Ngugi consciously chooses the  profession of barmaid consciously. By  doing this, he shows the lives of barmaids suffering from the colonizers and their own people. Related to this, Wanja says:  We  barmaids  never  settle in  one  place. Sometimes  you are  dismissed because you refused to  sleep  your  boss.  Or your face may become too  well known in  one place. You want a  new territory. Do  you know, it  is so funny when you go to a new place the men treat you as if you were a virgin. They will outdo one another to buy you beers. Each wants to be the first. So you will find us,  barmaids, wherever there  is a  bar in Kenya.  Even in  Ilmorog.

Although  Ngugi  reflects  Wanja  as  a  strong  and successful  woman  in some cases,  she thinks of her femininity as  a handicap, because, in her society, which is dominated  by males, women  are seen as objects and  subaltern creatures. Wanja thinks that if you are a woman your fate is to marry someone or be a  whore. She asserts that “If you have a cunt, if you are born with this hole, instead of being a  source of pride,  you are  doomed to either  marrying someone or else being a whore”. Ngugi points out the factors which force  Wanja to  the  prostitution.  Through  the image  of  Wanja, Ngugi stresses the  condition of all exploited women  in  Africa, especially in  Kenya.

 

Though prostitution is seen as  a humiliating job,  it is the final destination of many  women  in postcolonial  regions.  Even Wanja  thinks that  there is  no difference between a worker and prostitute. She says  “What is the  difference whether you are sweating it out on plantation, in a factory  or lying on your back,  anyway?” . With  the statements of  Wanja,  Ngugi  calls attention  the destructive  effect of  capitalism, that is, for  him,  there  is no difference between the exploitation of women as a prostitute or men as worker; they  are  victims  of  the  capitalism.  The  only  difference  is  that  women  are exploited because of their sex.  Through the character of Wanja, Ngugi draws the picture of postcolonial Kenya and Africa. The story of Wanja  is a kind of apologue, which tells the story of Kenyan people, especially the Kenyan women.

 

A woman in Petals of Blood shouts to the colonizers “Let us pull out their penises and see if they are really men” Munira also compares himself with the resisting women. He thinks that “I had not shown the courage shown by Ilmorog women, or by the worker who protested, or  by all those  men and  women  in the  country  who were openly criticizing the whole thing at the risk of their lives”

 

Conclusion :

 

In  his  novels,  besides the  concepts  such  as  nationhood,  betrayal,  and resistance, Ngugi portrays the postcolonial women figures in various types of characters. In Petals of Blood, we see a strong character with her wounds in her heart. Wanja is the major female character of the novel, who is a barmaid and also  a  prostitute.  Ngugi  depicts  her  as  an  intelligent  woman  figure,  who  is admired by all men. She has the capacity to overcome all difficulties, even after

she  was  raped,  she continued  to  live  as  she  wanted,  which  is  an  abnormal condition  for  the  postcolonial  women.  That  is,  Wanja  can  be  defined  as  a courageous, active, and awe-inspiring woman figure.

 

Through the image of Wanja, Ngugi reflects the soul of Kenya, and also Kenyan women. The life of Wanja mirrors up to the lives of all Kenyan women, who are exploited and oppressed by several factors. That is, the sufferings of Wanja,  and  Kenyan  women,  do  not  result  from  only  colonialism,  but  also patriarchy and  gender  discrimination  play an  important  role  in  the plight  of native women. As a  matter of fact, the first  fall of  Wanja  is because of  her exploitation by  a Kenyan  man,  who seduced her and left her alone after her exploitation. We see several examples of this kind of exploitation in Petals of Blood, and especially on the character of Wanja. Kimeria, Mzigo, and Chui are the exploiters. One day Joseph, brother of Abdulla, becomes ill, and upon this, Wanja and Karega search for help in the city. After lots of trials, a man accepts them to help. This man was Kimeria, who seduced Wanja in her teenage years and left her alone. Although several years have passed, Kimeria again wants to exploit Wanja in return for medication for Joseph. That is, Wanja cannot escape from her destiny and sleep with Kimeria to save Joseph. This extract also shows us  that  colonialism  is not  the  single cause  of  the  oppression  of  women,  in addition to colonialism, postcolonial women have been oppressed by their own citizens. 

 

 

Work Cited :

 

Akter, Sharifa. https://www.uap-bd.edu/recent-paper-publication/AIJRHASS14-587.pdf.

Bolat, Eren. March 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276124239_THE_FIGURE_OF_POSTCOLONIAL_WOMEN_IN_NGUGI_WA_THIONGO'S_PETALS_OF_BLOOD_AND_A_GRAIN_OF_WHEAT.