International Journal of Language & Literature

'You're Responsible for His Death': Widowhood in Igbo Gender Construction and Struggle for Agency in Selected Literary Texts
Chinwe Ezeifeka, Ifeyinwa Ogbazi

Abstract
The paper examines the construction of widowhood in the traditional Igbo society where the demise of a spouse makes the partner culpable, especially the female. Using three texts set in the Igbo culture, namely, two stories from Ifeoma Okoye's The Trial and Other Stories entitled "Soul Healers" and "The Trial"; and Akachi Adimorah-Ezeigbo's drama text, Hands that Crush Stone, the paper rethinks this facet of gender construction through the lens of systemic functional linguistics. The Transitivity analysis showed the predominant representation of the protagonists in vulnerable social positions as ‘carriers’ of stigmatizing ‘attributes’, as ‘actors’ of incriminating ‘goals’, as ‘receivers’ of accusing and dehumanizing ‘verbiage’, as objects (‘hands’) and as the wretched of the earth. The Mood system of the clause as exchange shows the widows at the receiving end of interrogative and imperative clauses showing that power structures in the society are skewed in their disfavour. The paper observes the lone struggle of these social victims and the desperate but ingenuous strategies they contrive to gain agency from repressive cultural and social practices. The paper concludes that these literary texts, though set in apparently enlightened fictional Igbo societies, mirror authentic social practices that need to be critically addressed.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v2n3a8