The ‘woman Question’ in Contemporary Literature: a Study of Selected Novels by Ugandan Female Writers

Abstract

The thesis presents a critical study of the situation of the woman in contemporary Ugandan novels by women writers in the country. The study examines Ugandan women writers‘ attempt to construct their identity within repressive patriarchal situations while emphasizing the role women have played and continue to play in the construction of the Ugandan nation. The novels studied for this research are Silent Patience by Jane Kaberuka, The Invisible Weevil by Mary Okurut and Cassandra by Violet Barungi. The study investigates how the novelists write women into Ugandan political and social history. This comes against the backdrop of initially stifled voices of Ugandan female writers or perhaps what Lloyd Brown calls ‗other voices‘ in reference to women‘s writing in Africa – rarely discussed and seldom accorded space. The study is guided by a set of objectives: to examine Ugandan women writers‘ contribution to the development of the Ugandan literary space in Jane Kaberuka‘s Silent Patience; to investigate Uganda women writers‘ narration of the Ugandan nation in Mary Okurut‘s The Invisible Weevil; to interrogate how women writers in the country adapt to the changing social norms and centre women in Uganda‘s history in order to link it to societal challenges in contemporary society and; to compare and situate the Ugandan novel within the corpus of women‘s writing in Africa. Utilizing an eclectic theoretical approach, the study employs the feminist theory, specifically Elaine Showalter‘s arguments on Gynocriticism. Besides, New Historicism is found crucial in examining the perspectives that are critical in contextualizing the study and the historiography that the novels reveal. Narratology as propounded by Gerard Genette is also critical in the analysis of the salient stylistic aspects of the selected texts. Charles Ragin‘s Case Oriented Methodology provides a foundation upon which each novel has been sampled as a case study that represents female writing in Uganda. Finally, the study engages in a comparative reading of the selected novels to evaluate how they collectively contribute to re-writing Uganda‘s political and social history and how they can be compared to other contemporary novels written by female writers on the African continent. In particular, the study establishes that the authors endeavor to centre women as agents of change in nation building and social transformation in the contemporary Ugandan society, thereby correcting the often known common view of linking only the men with this very noble duty. The study further found out that the deployment of the bildungsroman tradition of writing as a narrative technique parallels the growth of the woman and the nation alongside that of the family and also uses the family as an allegory for the nation.