“Womanpressionism” in Zulu Sofola’s Wedlock of the Gods

Abstract

The argument that “women are their own worst enemies” has become a cliché in social and political gathering where the issue of gender balance is in discussion, especially in Africa. In this paper I look at the import of the statement against the backdrop of Zulu Sofola’s popular play Wedlock of the Gods. For clarity of purpose, I adopt the concept of “Womanpressionism” - a term developed by Julius-Adeoye ‘Rantimi Jays in relation to intragender repression - as a working theory to interrogate the behavioural pattern of the female characters in the chosen play against spousal aspiration of one their kind. In the paper, I conclude that the female characters in the world of the play are reflection of most women in Africa’s socio-political and economic space. It is my opinion that in Wedlock of the Gods, Sofola reflects the social reality of women as commodity that are exchange based on the value placed on them by external factors like parents and community they come from in the Igbo society of Southeast Nigeria, and that the hegemony is being sustained by the womenfolk rather than the men.