A critical analysis of the portrayal of women in selected Shona novels

Abstract

This thesis is an exposition of the portrayal of women in selected pre- and post- colonial Shona fictional works. The exegesis of the selected Shona novels is guided by Afrocentered perspectives which are Africana Womanism and Afrocentricity. The thesis contributes to the growing body of knowledge on women’s studies and discourses on gender. Remarkably, it marshals the contention that the various novels under examination project contrasting and contesting images of women. The first category of narratives espouses fictive renditions of women as the very source of all problems that bedevil society, especially man and other unsuspecting women. These narratives pander to the whims of the colonial state wherein the woman figure is cast in very pejorative and condescending terms, a position that is consistent with Victorian values in which the woman was just a nonentity. Interestingly, daring and courageous women who challenge the colonial state’s subjugation of their integrity are mercilessly thrashed with the writer’s moral whip. This engenders narrow moralization that blames the woman character for all evil rather than the system that fashions and conditions behavior. This category therefore advances and champions the endemic victim-blame syndrome that largely epitomizes Shona written literature in both the colonial and post colonial dispensations. The second category of novels examined in this study attempt to provide a contextualized portrayal of women characters. In other words, the narratives firmly locate the individual woman in a context that is dominated and controlled by social, economic and historical forces. For that reason, they demonstrate that the Shona woman’s performance space has been poisoned by a combination of toxic factors that engender de-womanisation, de-personalization and de-feminization. Such narratives transcend the endemic victim-blame syndrome as they expose the social and economic factors that inform and fashion behavior. Remarkably, these narratives provide a vision and version of reality that is ennobling and empowering. Given the centrality of women in development, literature is expected to play an important role in terms of raising consciousness. Literature is studied in schools, colleges and universities and therefore cannot escape scrutiny when it comes to the depiction of women.