THE SOCIETY AND THE GIRL CHILD IN THE BLUEST EYE BY TONI MORRISON AND KAINE AGARY’S YELLOW YELLOW (ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
ABSTRACT
The research work reviews the historical encounter between the whites and Africans and argues that the challenges or problems evident in the black society at present are as a result of the white man’s racism, exploitation and imperialism. It also looks into the social values and system of meaning that promotes male dominance and demeans the woman.
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 is regarded 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 Obi‟s lover in Chinua Achebe‟s No long at Ease: Elsie in A Man of the People by Achebe is Odili‟s girlfriend and later becomes chief Nanga‟s girlfriend; and also in Chimamanda‟sHalf of a Yellow Sun, we see Olama as Odenigbo‟s lover. These images of female character credits Chukwumma‟s 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, and handicapped if she bears only daughters… Docility and complete submission of will is demanded and enacted from her. (Chukwuma 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.
