An African Feminist Reading of Wole Soyinka

Feminist scholars have often debated the portrayal of women in Wole Soyinka’s works, who typically navigate patriarchal societies. In Soyinka’s plays, Death and the King’s Horseman and The Lion and the Jewel, however, we find women who operate within the confines of tradition and strategically redefine their roles through acts of defiance.

African feminist scholars, such as Molara Ogundipe, Amina Mama, Furaha-Joy Sekai Saungweme, Fatoumata Keita, Wanjiru Nguhi, Oyeronke Oyewumi, and Nkiru Nzegwu have sought ways to address issues of inequality on the African continent from the perspective of power relations. They have advocated for philosophies and politics that push for substantive equality between men and women while simultaneously challenging patriarchal domination and the heteronormativity of the post-colonial state. In their works, these scholars have articulated that although women played a central role as social agitators in the African liberation from the bondage of colonialism, African patriarchy, which scholar, Furaha Saungweme, refers to as a ‘common thread of both colonial and post-colonial times’ still holds us behind.  

Tracing the works of Nigerian feminists, Nkoyo Toyo and OluTimehin Adegbeye, and South African feminists, Mase Ramaru and Elsbeth Engelbrecht, one quickly observes that gender-based inequality and violence rooted in colonization are intensely woven into the contemporary fabric of African societies and are perpetuated through African patriarchal post-colonial governance. I follow these scholars’ articulation of the importance of African feminism as a crucial framework to contest traditional gender roles and innovate strategies to advance fundamental structural change for women to be full actors in the development of the African continent. Reading the works of Wole Soyinka through an African feminist lens provides a critical perspective on the patriarchal structures embedded within the traditional Yoruba society, the marginalization of women and how women navigate within the constraints of a patriarchal society.  

Soyinka’s portrayal of female characters in the plays Death and the King’s Horseman and The Lion and the Jewel illuminates the exclusion of women within traditional settings where cultural norms and male dominance often restrict women’s agency. While misogynistic acts and entrenched gender roles—where women’s identities are usually defined by their relationship and proximity to men—stifle these women’s ability to act independently, Soyinka offers female characters that exhibit few moments of resistance and subversion, thereby critiquing these rigid structures and hinting at the potential for feminist empowerment. These radical acts of resistance and subversion reveal the possibility of redefining womanhood within patriarchal structures in postcolonial Africa...

This essay features in our print issue, ‘The Enduring Voice of Wole Soyinka’ and is only available online to paying subscribers. To continue reading register for a free trial and get unlimited access to The Republic for a week!

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