Playwrights and the task of building strong female characters: Interrogating intragender

Abstract

Most efforts made towards elevating the condition of women foreground the complicity of man in the former’s subjugation. Women are usually depicted in feminist drama as the passive recipients of the combination of man’s excesses and the repressive phallocentric universe. Hence some feminist plays privileging the monolithic view of women support this claim. By way of reframing this narrative and social construct, intra-gender studies elucidate some cultural and pathological antecedents that ex ray women-onwomen violence and discordant relationships. This study thus investigates intra-gender subjugation in the works of some Nigerian playwrights, using the  content and interpretative approach of the qualitative research methodology. Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the Gods, and Tracie Utoh- Ezeajugh’s Who Owns This Coffin? are case studies whose critical analysis are anchored on Kimberly Crenshaw’s Intersectional feminism. The study reveals the affirmation of African playwrights that women actually subjugate themselves and that playwrights have been  highlighting these issues for purposes of exposition and critical attention.The study concludes that the age long wish of women in terms of attaining emancipation and equity can be achieved through the elimination/dismantling of oppressive cultural and patriarchal structures thereby achieving freedom from social and economic inequality.