CHAPTER ONE

1.1 INTRODUCTION

According to Cambridge dictionary, society is defined as a particular community of people who share the same customs, law etc. It is also defined as the state of being with other people. (1129).A girl child is described as a female child between infancy and early adulthood. During this period of the development of the girl child, she is under the custody and supervision of adults who may be her parents or guardians and siblings who are older and more mature than she is. The girl child is easily influenced by her experiences as she develops. She models her behaviour during this development process though observations and imitations of those she depends on, and her physical, mental and emotional development start and reach their peak within this stage.In attempting to establish the relationship between the society and the girl child, we ask certain pertinent questions relating to how she child is received and related with in her contemporary society. What are the struggles, challenges and oppression faced by the girl child? What are the factors that foist on the girl child such challenges and oppression?From the family circle to the public sphere, the girl child has suffered much hardship and has been greatly dehumanized. This is due to the fact that she isxregarded as inferior to her brother. She is devalued and as Buchi Emecheta portrays her, she is a second class citizen in a society ruled by male chauvinism. In especially most African societies, the girl child has been consigned to an inferior status for which she constantly wears a daunted image. This inferiority is as a result of the patriarchal ideology in the society which bestows undue self importance on the male child. The result of this is that, men do everything to undermine the women in order to arbitrarily institute value and ideologies in the society. The African society and the diaspora is a society with a tradition that bestows importance to the male folk, neglecting the female folks. This patriarchal ideology has influenced the way the girl characters are projected by male writers in their literary texts. In most literary works, female characters always wear one of these images: prostitute, girlfriend, courtesans, and workers and are evident in these novels: Clara is Obiâs lover in Chinua Achebeâs No long at Ease: Elsie in A Man of the People by Achebe is Odiliâs girlfriend and later becomes chief Nangaâs girlfriend; and also in ChimamandaâsHalf of a Yellow Sun, we see Olama as Odenigboâs lover. These images of female character credits Chukwummaâs assertion.The female character in African fiction… is a facile lack luster human being, the quiet member of a household only to bear children, unfulfilled if she does not, andxihandicapped if she bears only daughters… Docility and complete submission of will is demanded and enacted from her. (Chukwumma 1990; 131)They construct the girl character as a passive and inconsequential object. The male writers communicated a picture of the girl child as one whose destiny is subject to the whims of her male folk.Our primary source will be used in carrying out this research. Attention will be paid to the womanist tenet that throws some light in the oppression of the girl child as portrayed in African literature. Womanism is referred to as the blackâs concept of feminism. Coined by Alice walker, it is meant to account for the survival of the black people. (Walker 1984;89) Womanism upholds respect for the family units by Africans both in the continent and in the diaspora. Womanism is communal in its orientation and goes beyond the husband and wife context. This ideology of womanism caused Africans and African-Americans to present the struggle of the black woman in her society. This is presented through the text of Toni Morrison and KaineAgary: The Bluest Eye and Yellow Yellow respectively.

Writers are mostly influenced by their environment and circumstance in history which helped to shape their society. We should agree that Toni Morrison and KaineAgary portray their society through their work. With reference to Morrisonâs The Bluest Eye and KaineAgaryâs Yellow Yellow, it wil

l be just toxiistate that the oppression and hardship faced by the girl child is as a result of the dreadful and traumatizing encounter between Africans and the white racists. It is believed that the encounter between the whites and Africans has left Africans in the continent and the diaspora with disconcerting problems. These issues are as a result of the dreadful means in which the encounter occurred: Slavery, colonialism. A short detailed review on the historical background of both authors will be the peg to tie the goat as Achebe would put it. Toni Morrison is the pre-eminent African-American female writer, while KaineAgary is one of Nigeriaâs leading contemporary writers.