Assignment: 206 African Literature

 Name – Janvi Nakum 

Paper No - 206 

Paper Name : African Literature 

Roll no- 11 

Enrollment no –4069206420210020 

Email id – janvinakum360@gmail.com 

Batch- 2021-2023(M.A. Sem – 4) 

Topic : A Feminist Perspective in Ngugi Wa Thiong’s Novel  “Petal of Blood” 

Submitted to – S.B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja  Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar 

University 

Impact of British Colonization on Woman in Kenya 

The African people became slaves of the imperialistic Western world. They influenced  patriarchal ideologies into the educational system and encourage boys more to join school than girls. They also supported men to oppress women, Male domination made the African women powerless and disabled, socially, politically, and economically, and caused gender conflict which undermined the stability of Kenyan society. It becomes an obstacle for the development of the country. There are historical evidences that African women during precolonial era had economic independence. They had actively participated in social, cultural, religious and political activities and functions. The rule was expected to improve the condition of women in African societies by raising their living and educational standards and free them from farm labour, but colonialism didn’t liberate them, In fact, it diminished the rights, the woman had enjoyed during pre-colonial era. Eleanor Burke (1922-1987), an American anthropologist in her book Woman and Colonization asserts that the relation between men and women were equal in many fields of basic life, but due to colonialism women were ignored and oppressed. 

Feminist Interpretation of Naugi Wa Thiong’s Novels 

Naugi views that colonialism obviously and postcolonialism are responsible for oppressing African woman. He clearly shows the problem of patriarchy and its impact on women in precolonialism, colonialism and post colonialism Kenyan society through his novel. Naugi believes that the British colonial administration was responsible for destroying the social, political and economic structure of the African society. The Kikuyu life style was deteriorated by the emergence of colonialism. The land was confiscated and given to the white people. The economic life was destroyed and Kikuyu people were forced to work as labours on their own land and asked to pay taxes. Naugi asserts that all Kenyan workers and farmers have the same national aim which was to ask the white men to leave the land. Naugi points that the culture of colonisation is the culture of domination and exploitation. As a result, the Mau Mau revaluation in Kenya occurred to make the country independent. It was the climax of conflicts between Kikuyu and the British colonialists. Josiah Mwanagi, a Kenyan socialist politician in his book “ Mau Mau” explains that the British came with missionaries and traders to colonize Kenya.

 Kenyan people knew that the British had come with knowledge, education, medicine, farming, and industry which were welcomed by the people of Kenya. Josiah shows the grievances of Kenya people towards Europeans. He also states that Europeans used Kenya as their slaves. Most of Naugi’s novels show that woman struggle to get rid of male domination in many different areas, such as social, economy and politics. They also aim to present the real image of Africa. He also tries to Reform the image of the African woman in literature because some African male writers present the woman in negative way and wrote about woman from Eurocentric point of view. Some feminist writers such as Ousmane , Nuagai and Nurudian present through their novel the positive and negative aspects of the African woman while some others like Cyprian and Amadi present the negative aspects only, they consider woman as lustful and seductive. Ngugi portrays patriarchy as a prevalent phenomenon that exists under the skin of society. He shows out how woman been used in sexual, physical and mental way. Rape, verbal and physical violence of woman and low payment had caused the oppression of woman in the African society. The role of colonialism is also responsible to deprive women from their rights. Roopali Sircar (1995) asserts: Several anthropologists like Leacock and Gough have concluded that in societies where men and women are engaged in the production of the same kind of socially necessary goods and where widespread private property and class structure has not developed, woman’s participation in production gives them access to and control of the products of their labour. It also gives the woman considerable freedom and independence. But where the colonizers introduced cash crop cultivation, women were displaced by men. Women were also deprived of technology with men alone given access to machinery. This reduced woman’s contribution, relegating them to the domestic sector. Naugi perceives woman from feminist perspective. Most of his novel focuses on woman’s issues and Kikuyu culture to reveal woman’s major contribution in liberating the society from male domination in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras. He also attempt to show woman characters and their significant roles in the patriarchal system as well as the impact of colonialism on the roles of female character. 

Petal of Blood 

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's novel "Petal of Blood" and its emphasis on the exploitation of African  women based on race, class, and gender. Ngugi portrays female characters such as Mariam and Nyakinyua, who face exploitation at home and in the larger society. Mariam rebels against her husband's exploitation and seeks cultivation rights from Munira's father, who tries to exploit her sexually. Nyakinyua, on the other hand, is an influential female character in the community, narrating the history of Ilmorog and inspiring the villagers to work towards a bright future. Wanja, Nyakinyua's granddaughter, starts as an active woman who forms a group to cultivate and weed the land, but later becomes a barmaid and ultimately a prostitute due to neocolonial and imperialistic conditions. Ngugi portrays her as an example of Kenyan women's exploitation by capitalist structures. Despite both positive and negative aspects of female characters in the novel, Ngugi shows how society drives women to helplessness and tragedy. 

Fallen Wanja in Petals of Blood 

Petals of Blood also sheds light on the treatment of the African women in the corrupt patriarchal society of neocolonial Kenya, it shows how these women are either muted or prostituted in this period. Women were colonized by their men before the colonizers colonize them. They were passive, ignorant, treated only as sex gratifying objects. They were completely possessed by men as any other object they own. According to Marxist feminists, women should be treated equal to men (Delaney 206). Ngugi compares the African woman to the land which is a very critical issue in his novels in the political and social domain. Land which was once owned by the African man before it has been robbed by the colonizer before independence and by the neo-colonizer in post-independence era. It is for the sake of land the natives offer their heavy sacrifices to redeem this land. The importance of land comes in parallel with the importance of African women. The real situation in neo-colonial Africa is illustrated clearly in Karega’s statement: 

We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of  inequality and justice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil, some can  send their children to schools and others cannot…in such a world we are all prostituted (Thiong'o 286). 

Ngugi’s fiction shows how the land emerges a docile female figure. The possession of a land is like the possession of a woman, so as figuratively the land was once raped by the settlers, the woman is also raped, prostituted and possessed. In his novels, Ngugi shows how African women are made commodities for the colonizers and the tourists. Wanja is a very good instance for such a trade in which she as a prostitute participated when she opens a whorehouse and hired young girls to work in. in this way Wanja plays the role of the victimizer over the victimized and an oppressor and an exploiter. Ngugi intends his women protagonists to profess in prostitution not to condemn them and judge them publically rather to condemn the corrupt situation which forced these women into prostitution. A woman is a human being she was granted a voice by God, but in the patriarchal and corrupt society she is not allowed to speak. She is mute just like the land. She is oppressed, exploited and harassed. Gayatri Spivak in her essay Can the Subaltern Speak ?explains why the subaltern woman’s speech is not heard. It is due to the factor of noise or most probably their speech does not make any difference in changing their situation. It is power that makes any speech heard as long as the women are submissive to the men their voice will not be heard. In Can the Subaltern speak? Spivak says: 

“As object of colonialist historiography and as subject of insurgency, the ideological construction of gender keeps the male dominant. If, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow”(287). 

The woman is owned by a man as the land is owned by the same man. But in Ngugi’s fiction the female is given a voice to speak, to revolt, to assert herself just like Wanja who was once a victim in neo-colonial Kenya, searching for a job like any other African woman, but due to the corruption and specifically the moral one that devastates Kenya it is impossible for a woman to find a job without being asked to offer her body to the boss. This is exactly what happened to Wanja during the journey to the city to meet their representative where Kimeria asked Wanja to share him his bed in order to help her and her friends. This evil is widespread in Africa and Ngugi sheds light on it in almost all his novels, he feels that it is his duty to speak about the evils that pervade his country and to commit his art to the plight of his people and moreover to find solutions to these evils. To study Wanja from the subaltern perspective is to sympathize with her and with every woman like her not to condemn her for what she has committed. As a subaltern woman, Wanja tries to retaliate against the black hegemony for the suffering she has undergone. She acts very natural in an unnatural situation where women are being treated as commodities and sex tools for the fellow black and the white tourists. Wanja accepts the job as a barmaid in Abdulla’s shop not because she is so interested in such kind of a job rather she is unable to find any other suitable job. When the neo-colonial agents destroyed the traditional and the social fabric of Ilmorog and nothing is left for Wanja, she was forced to play the role of the victimizer and she turns from innocence into depravity by using young African girls as prostitutes and opening a whorehouse. This act marks Wanja’s fall from innocence into depravity, from being a victim of the system into being a victimizer where she employs the motto of “eat or be eaten”. (345). Wanja at the end understands the power of education as she tries to compensate her failure in her life by taking care of Joseph and insisting that he should learn because learning is the best way to assert one’s self. The act of burning that Ngugi employs and which Wanja was exposed to, acts as a penance for Wanja’s adulterous deeds and it purifies her soul from the sins which she has committed. Ngugi’s aim behind this scene is to assert that his female protagonist though is a fallen woman, yet she bears the core of goodness inside her and that is why Wanja is associated with fire for three times in the novel. This fire is her earthly salvation and punishment. Ngugi moreover, justifies Wanja’s adultery with Karega as free from sins and it was free “from the burden of guilt”. (346). 

Petals of Blood: Feminism in Post-Colonial Kenya 

The story takes place in Kenya just after it’s liberation from British rule. It’s set mostly in a small village, and the four main characters are not natives of it. They’ve found themselves there, each looking for an escape from their pasts. In class, we had to write an essay about each book we read and I can’t remember what the original topic of this was supposed to be, but I ended up writing about the feminist aspects of the book. 

Wanju is the female lead; the other three are all men. She’s from the city and has, until her arrival in the village, been selling her body in order to make a living. Her grandmother, Nyakinyua, is one of the oldest residents in the village when Wanju comes to live with and care for her. Both of these women are strong, independent people who realize that they have to be able to care for themselves, as no one else will. Wanju learned that lesson early on. Abused by a neighbor and harassed by a teacher, she ends up pregnant and forced to leave the school she was excelling in. It’s after she loses the baby that she turns to prostitution, making her living until her escape to the village. She realizes at a young age that she does not have control over much in her life, but she has it over her body and her sexuality. I’m not making the case for prostitution here, but Wanju sees this as some way of having control over her life. Her sexuality is a weapon that, even after arriving in the village, she is able to use to advance her position within society. She takes over the bar run by Abdullah, another character, turning it from a tiny storefront into a booming nightclub. Her grandmother’s recipe for Thang’eta, an alcoholic beverage, also helps. It’s really their work that turns the sleepy little village into a booming town, and also sets the stage for the central story: the murder of three men. 

conclusion 

The novel is framed around their murder, opening with the four characters being questioned about their potential role in this. At this point, Wanju is running her own brothel, the richest woman in the town. As the book goes back and you see how she ended up there, I can’t help but admire her. To be in a time and place where being a woman was almost a danger, she’s managed to survive, to thrive, and do it on her terms. It’s not an easy life she lives but she manages to make the best of what she can and do it on her own. 

Work cite 

Alazzawi, Ahmad Jasim Mohammad. "A Feminist PerspecƟve in Ngugi Wa Thiong’s Novel “Petal of 

Blood”." InternaƟonal Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 3.5 (2018). 

Al-Harbi, Aisha Obaid. "An Eco feminist Reading of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood." Gezira 

Journal of EducaƟonal Sciences and HumaniƟes 12.1 (2018).

Sbeih, Mais. “[PDF] the Picture of the Fallen Woman in Ngugi's Novels Petals of Blood and 

Matigari: Semantic Scholar.” [PDF] THE PICTURE OF THE FALLEN WOMAN IN 

NGUGI'S NOVELS PETALS OF BLOOD AND MATIGARI | Semantic Scholar, 1 Jan. 

1970, www.semanticscholar.org/paper/THE-PICTURE-OF-THE-FALLEN-WOMAN-INNGUGI%E2%80%99S-NOVELS-Sbeih/5cacc2cdc24fe345df5d30cab860f727ebe08263.

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