A Review Of Prof. Mabel Evwierhoma’s “Female Empowerment And Dramatic Creativity In Nigeria” by Ezekiel Fajenyo

A distinguished scholar, author, poet, researcher, literary critic, essayist and specialist in Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Professor Mabel Itohanosa Evwierhoma almost needs no introduction but her remarkable body of works has always spoken for her. Her immense contributions to Gender Studies in Africa especially in the area of feminist aesthetics and women centred approaches to drama and society, leading to such publications as Nigerian Feminist Theatre: Essays on Female Axes in Contemporary Nigerian Drama (1998), Issues On Gender, Drama and Cultural Studies (2002), Essays and Concepts on Society and Culture (2004)  and with GbemisolaAdeoti, After the Nobel Prize: Reflections on African Literature, Governance and Development (2006),  have made her a household name in any discourse on African Literature. Two of her poetic offerings are Out of Hiding and A Song As I Am. 

In chapter One titled “Female Creativity and Woman-centred Ideologies: An Overview”, Evwierhoma’s interest is an in-depth exploration of the ‘woman question’, especially as a seminal and pivotal subject impacted by “sex gender and ideology” (15) which are themes treated by female dramatists who have closely observed that the world’s contemporary changes have indeed affected the roles of women and there is need to be progressively preoccupied ”with self-actualizing and dominant heroines”. If our past must be objectively explored with details which are important to history, the place of such importance to history, the place of such heroines has to be established. Indeed, the “heroines are present realities in most of the plays by male and female dramatists. The consciousness is established that “the woman as what she is and what she ought to be” as contained in the realities of our cultures and traditions has to be rightly given her place of relevance and removed from the undignifying experience of “social invisibility”. Therefore, “the female dramatist as a member of the society, then has the choice of portraying her woman to suit her authorial goals. She has also the prerogative of making her woman conform to the active radical group or presenting her as docile and submissive”. Thus, the emergence of the radical or ideological plays is particularly aimed at creating a firmer and more progressive worldview of the women in society. Their goals embrace “the opposition of male hegemony or patriarchy in society, the pursuance of equality of men and women and a search for goals that are feminist or womanist-inclined” (16). Presented in better light, the women treated in such plays demonstrate new awareness “of current socio-political realities” and face the same squarely. They are seen as “ constructive in relation to that of the man…” (17). Because of the “phallocentric” views governing dramatic themes over the years, the female  playwrights have to reassert the significance of “woman-centred ideologies” to “demand strongly positive female characters and a re-reading of texts from the female perspective” for a better “assessment of women’s worlds in their concepts and symbols”. 

Anchoring her arguments on the strength of the historical relevance of such female heroines in Africa as “Queen Amina of Zaria, Moremi of Ile-Ife, Emotan of Benin, MeKatilili of Kenya, Yaa Asantewa of Ghana”, Professor Evwierhoma maintains that “If Literary history has been a male preserve and female creativity has a history that does not date far, it is desirable that female playwrights bring into the pages of the text active female characters whether with major or minor roles”. While acknowledging a number of successful female playwrights using female characters from different points of view- including Catherine Acholonu, Stella Dia Oyedepo, FolashayoOgunride, Julie Okoh, Irene IsokenAgunloye, Foluke Ogunleye, Tracie Utoh- Ezeajugh, Osita Ezenwanebe and Tess Onwueme. Of these, she chooses Tess Onwueme as a successful model in the radical recharacterization of the women because in her plays, she shows “how woman-centred ideologies affect female playwrights and their commitment to their art as well as the plays written”. As “the woman as writer and the woman as character and reader”, her “plays effectively reveal the changing roles of the Nigerian woman” (118). Through the instrumentality of Onwueme’s thirteen plays, the author aesthetically explores the concepts of feminism and womanism while insisting that the publication “will inspire other latent female dramatists to champion the cause of women through their texts…. The method employed for this work is that of content analysis through library research” (23). The study, she adds, seeks to assess the degree of empowerment the female character enjoys and to stress the need for the non-debilitating portrayal of female characters” (23). To her, female creativity is not only being corrective, it is a form of empowerment since the female writer confronts “all the forces threatening to silence her” (26). In this chapter also, the critic elaborately treats subjects of woman as writer, woman as reader and woman as character and thoroughly digs into essential details of different concepts and ideas which inform female creativity, male-centred criticism, ideology, feminism, womanism, etc brilliantly quoting and explaining diverse worldviews as reflected upon by a catalogue of remarkable scholars and researchers among whom are Juliet Mitchell, Catherine Simpson, Catherine Mckinnon, Marilyn French, Adrienne Rich, Hannah Arendt, Dorothy Driver, Elaine Showalter, Xaviere Gauthier, Mary Linton-Umeh, Ama Ata Aidoo, OmolaraOgundipe-Leslie, Adele King, Cheri Register, Rachel Koenig, Helene Cixous, Carole Boyce Davies, Toril Moi, Linda Killian, Bell Hooks, Alice Walker etc. it is a bold, intellectual universal excursion she has used to define and critically analyse the logics, framework of the beliefs of these critics, the strength and limitations of their principled presentations, the multifarious aspects of their unique convictions as each affects the woman question, female drama and woman-centred ideologies. This chapter achieves a comprehensive illumination on the world’s response to women creativity over the years illustrating the fact “that many forms of women-centred ideologies exist” while the many critics whose works are cited “regard patriarchy, the allegation of women to the background by men, as gradually coming to and end. To the proponents of these ideas, it is time for women to be heard, listened to and their meaningful contributions to society accepted as relevant to socio-political development” (66). She has ended the chapter, stating her position on the issues raised: “… it can be seen why women dramatists should write and create powerful female characters and why women should read and criticize as women in order to assert themselves on the pages and stages of our dramatic and theatrical history” (68).

Chapter 2 is on “Female Characterisation In Drama: Trends and Developments” and this starts off with the usual intellectual excursion from the classical to the modern theatrical history in which “most attitudes to women were largely patriarchal” (69). We encounter the richly endowed plays of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes Ovid, Plautus, as each Terence, Church liturgy, Petrarch, Rabelais, Thomas Moore, Shakespeare, Congreve, Marlowe, Chapman, Ben Jonson, G.B. Shaw, Brecht, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and Jean Racine, among several other, some of whom are not well-known as each presented women characters but also not forgetting the contemporary African drama of Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, Efua T. Sutherland, Harry Hagher, J.p. Clark.

Joe de Graft, Ebrahim Hussein, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, Bode Sowande and relevant women dramatists whose impact on the promotion of the women question cannot be ignored. The chapter, infectiously loaded with a long list of writers and their fairly discussed works, is a profoundly sumptuous and delicate march through dramatic history from the classical Greek The Roman Period and The Medieval through the Renaissance Era, Restoration to the Victorian Periods and the 20th century world drama without leaving out the contributions of contemporary African dramatists, especially female dramatists such as Zulu Sofola, Tess Onwueme, Irene Agunloye, Osita Ezewanebe, Stella Oyedepo, Foluke Ogunleye, Tracie Utoh-Ezeajugh and FolashayoOgunrinde. 

At each turn of the gainly scope and dimension of the chapter, the author announces that her critical business is to centre on Tess Onwueme, Sofola’s successor, whose works must be analytically explored for “the dual concepts of power and powerlessness in relation to her ideological preoccupation…. An assessment of the social context of Tess Onwueme’s creativity” (101). 

But there is one other characteristic of this chapter: The author, while discussing the central theme of the woman question over the decades, authenticates and exemplifies energetically the veracity and poignancy of her historical reflections with the cogent views and critical impressions of active thinkers, philosophers, psychologist historians and critics of each period, and thus we encounter such names as Plato, Ovid, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, marx, Engels, J.S. Mill and Kate Millet, to name a few. The ability to weave their popular views with the integrity of the focused theme shows the intellectual power and captivating strength of the author!

Chapter three is on “The Social Context of African Female Creativity” and the author announces her mission of utilizing the works of Tess Onwueme to poignantly establish the reality or otherwise of the female creativity in African societies. She writes “to examine the context in which Tess Onwueme creates. This would reflect the nature of that larger society in which her characters and ideas manifest and where workaday existence is always too hurried, too complex, indeed too confused to even take time out to look at itself…” (103). The chapter “attempts to clarify the nature of Onwueme’s society, the similarities that exist among her society and others, as well as its display of the subtle differences which make each individual society a unique entity on its own” (104). Of course it is a truth that like in many societies, the common realities of the African women are of cultural restrictions and traditional limitations- they are often denied visibility as they experience lack respectable socio-cultural status and appreciable sources of wealth; they mostly  have no legal rights and often face marginalization, stagnation, subjugation, regression and oppression. They are largely poor and a large majority of them are poor and illiterate, especially in the rural areas. The women are often dispossessed of their legitimate access to inheritance as most are not allowed to own properties. In the family circles, most women are voiceless and cannot lay claim to outstanding leadership. In the larger society, women are denied political powers or positions of captivating influence and regality. The patriarchal reality of such societies speaks of defined, limited scope of family and public performance and such means an ignoble life of undeserved restrictions and inhibition. Indeed, “The position of African women has alternated between dominance and passivity over the years. Certain communities have women’s prominence in one sphere of experience, and in another, passivity” (106). But the truth also remains that women have not allowed themselves to be permanently swallowed up by this reality. There have been signs and actions of disapproval and protests especially with the advantages provided by “education, modernization and urbanization” (iii) and such have propelled “changes in the status of women in African” which have “given them a new socio-political and economic significance” and “opportunities for social or upward mobility” (iii). In exploring such new dimensions of experiences, Onwueme’s place in dramatic literature is defined by a manifestation of modernity in female dramatic creativity as her characters and themes are more assertive and radical” (112).

The author does some historic-cultural excursion into the Igbo societies- which produced Tess Onwueme- and then to other ethnic communities such as Yoruba, Edo, Niger Delta, etc. This exercise establishes the author’s conviction that, “Perhaps the contribution of writers like Zulu Sofola, Stella Oyedepo, Tess Onwueme, Folashayo Ogunrinde, Catherine Achohonu, Julie Okoh, Irene Agunloye and several others in chronicling the lives and contributions of women to pre-colonial politics, may serve as a guide in post-colonial or neocolonial politics” (123). As for Owueme’s works, they have “within their social context, striven for the foregrounding of the socio-cultural structures which empowered the traditional African women” which is why the author dutifully explores her use of “festivals, sacrifices, marriage, birth and funeral rites, rights of inheritance, or politics, and the folklore of the people” in her thirteen plays which are The Broken Calabash, Legacies, The Missing Face, The Reign of Wazobia, Go Tell It To Women, The Desert Encroaches, Mirror for Campus, Ban Empty Barn and Other Plays, A Hen Too Soon, Cattle Egret Versus Nama, Shakara: Dance Hall Queen, Then She Said It and The Artist’s Homecoming. She uses, extensively, elements from her “Aniocha belief system” in which we continually encounter the folklores, gods, ancestral spirits, ritual cleansing and healing practices, process of appeasement, sacrifices, traditional marriage, rites and taboos, widowhood and divorce, foster parentage and taboos. In her use of language too are local songs, “proverbs, wise sayings and idiomatic expressions ever present in the people’s communication processes” (128). Indeed, she has significantly “toed the line of her creative predecessors in the area of dramatic portrayal of her contemporary environment and culture and making them pivotal to the thematic construct of her plays… on the whole, the social context of Onwueme’s plays which is one of woman-centred ideological consciousness is ever present within the consciousness is ever present within the macro-world of her text” (130-131).

In order to explore the ideas reflected “within the corpus of Onwueme’s drama, with emphasis on the influence of ideology on the treatment of the ideas” (133) the author makes out chapter four on “Ideology and Commitment in Female Creativity: A Focus on the Drama of Tess Onwueme”. Characteristically defining the cultural world of the African societies, Evwierhoma maintains that “all over Nigeria, women were forces to be reckoned with even before the colonialists set foot on African soil” and western education has opened the gate for greater glory for the women; it “has set the African woman free to affirm herself to some extent in almost every walk of life…”. It is education that has favoured the emergence of ideology and commitment to which the likes of Onwueme have since clinged.

The author, in this chapter, explores in depth how such concepts work through the works of Onwueme, and even the world of literature itself. To her, “Literature and commitment are essentially linked. A society which is dominated by committed writers is likely to be one in which inherent social problems are highlighted with a view to ameliorating them…. Literature and ideology therefore become relevant to contemporary society despite the underlying historicity. To reflect this, the lives of the people in the society need to be focused upon in terms of class, race, politics, or religions which harness the people’s lives together” (133). The chapter breathes with aesthetic life, enriched with accumulated facts on the place of the dramatist whose role “makes relevance and commitment important factors of creativity”. Ideology influences social transformation, change and sustainable development and a writer’s background is quite essential in understanding his/her choice of ideological position in their works, as to “embrace an ideology means to have a partial or total sympathy for it” and ideological commitment “is not subversion, rebellion or agitation against any group of people. Rather, it should be seen as a stance that engenders cultural economic and socio-political renewal in any environment through drama” (136). In the context of society, ideology means different things to different writers as shown in the numerous references to the critical views of Soyinka, Achebe, J.P. Clark, Lewis Nkosi, Omafume Onoge, Samuel Asein, Chinweizu, E.O. Apronti, Ezekiel Mphalele, Bode Osanyin, Bode Sowande, Anthony Giddens, Kyalo Mativo, Jiri Hajek, Dan Izevbaye, George M. Guggelberger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Rose Acholonu, Judith L. Newton. What is paramount is that the writer is justified “when his alignment is to certain ideas intended to change/transform his immediate environment from bad to good” (140); the writer must pay attention “to salient issues within and outside the social system”. No wonder then, Onwueme’s “Plays attempt to grapple with the problems that face the people of her society, be they men or women. Evident in her plays are also ideas about gender, female empowerment and the need for a progressive Nigeria” (142). Indeed, the ideas or themes in her plays “are predicated on the social realities of her time”. 

The author goes ahead to pick on each selected play of Onwueme to flesh out her dramatic ideology, particularly anchored on the need to for her people to free themselves from “constricting situations in which they are placed” as they also reveal “some preoccupation with radical, conservative as well as middle-of-the-road views” (149). The Desert Encroaches “condemns political disorder, with a focus on global or international politics”. In A Hen Too Soon and The Broken Calabash, the issues of marriage, tradition, religion and the family are used to make profound societal messages. Ban Empty Barn is an “allegory on parasitism on humans and animals, as well as on other levels like the political, economic, social, religious and emotional” (155). In The Artist’s Homecoming, she “advocates the idea of understanding parenthood and suggests the importance of letting a child attain her own goals” (157-158) while in Mirror for Campus, the focus is “on the political intrigues that occur on the ivory tower (the university) in present times” (159) and themes of “deprivation, hunger, poverty of spirit and body, social, economic and political deficiency and other maladies” (162) in Mirror For Campus, Ban Empty Ban and The Desert Encroaches. In Reign of Wazobia, the playwright treats themes of female power and rulership while in Legacies, events “traverse two continents that feature a constant crisis of identity within their citizenry… The ideas contained in Legacies include the search for individual, corporate, spiritual and cultural identity” (171-172). Go Tell It To Women “powerfully treats the concepts of liberation, gender, sustainable grassroots development, womanism and feminism” (178) while Shakara dwells “on the exuberance of youth and certain excesses that go along with it” (179). The She Said It “celebrates the tensility of women and is dedicated to women across several lands…´(186), though it treats themes of oil exploitation, power play, greed, evil collaborations “the politics of oil exploitation, exploration and sale and its negative impact on the lives of the people” (186). In all of her plays, selected for study, Onwueme depicts her ideological inclination through celebrating themes of “Power, knowledge, politics, radicalism and gender/women development” (194) while drawing the sharp contrast between feminism and womanism: “While feminism is insurgent, antagonistic to men and seeks a confrontation in every domain where women are found, womanism is reconciliatory and seeks harmony between men and women. Again, womanism is traditional and accepts femininity in its total sense. All that is female and feminine applies to womanism. But feminism is, more or less, a conflict between the sexes, where female ascendancy or triumph is forever the goal or the expected end…” (195). The author succeeds in carefully defining these concepts through an in-depth analysis of Onwueme’s works. 

In chapter 5 titled “The Ideology of Power and Powerlessness as Portrayed in Tess Onwueme’s Female characters”, the critic focuses essentially on the major female characters in the works and it affords the possibility of establishing that “womanhood, feminity and liberation may be seen as concepts laden with social, economic, political,. Cultural and psychological implications both for the audience… and the female playwright in Nigeria” (200). The chapter deeply explores the concepts of female empowerment and characterization, quoting prolifically from the viewpoints of the likes of Helene Cixous, Olu Obafemi, Carol Boyce Davies, Femi Ojo-Ade, Jean Weidemann, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, J.K. Gardiner, Rachel Koenig, Annette Kolodny and Chimalum Nwankwo. The critic notes that “A problem of subjectivity may be more difficult to tackle when female writers are faced with idealized male characterization” (205). Having effectively defined the groundwork of power and powerlessness, she asserts that the chosen plays “reflect some leaning towards female radicalism although the cultural thrust of the Igbo west of the Niger is mostly present in the background of such female insurgency” (222). The plays, dominated by female characters, speak through mostly animal imagery and allegory, revealing critical subjects of politics, power exploitation, injustice, violence, bad law enforcement agents, inequality, oppression and capitalism. Female characters in the chosen plays “reveal that Onwueme attempts a balanced portrayal of her female characters. Onwueme’s plays do not proffer a unidirectional or flat female characterization but they depict a multidirectional form of characterization, proving life-likeness in her female character portrayal” (244). 

Chapter 6 is the conclusion of this great work of deep introspection and definition of the female character in drama. The author succeeds in her comparative critical presentation on the plays chosen for study, insisting that Onwueme’s plays prove that ‘true art is genderless’ and that “Female creativity along with that of the male, needs to be relevant and refer to a gender perspective for a balanced literary history to be made” (250). The writer, having comfortably exposed the limitations of feminism and womanism, suggests “viable alternatives” including gynocentrism (the centrality of what pertains to the female gender and female sex); African-Feminism (signifying the entrenching of all that is female in text and outside it with a thrust on Africanness); ideology of womanness; African matriarchy (the study of the matriarch as opposed to the patriarch in texts); Mamarism (standing for mother who gives birth to all) and materism taken from ‘mater’) (260). These alternatives, according to her, “came out of the judgments that Nigerian women scholars can contribute to global knowledge production and consumption” (14). Professor Matthew Umokoro, in his foreword, the publication maintains that one of the merits of the book, with its truck-load of bibliographical references, “is the logicality of its design, coupled with its lucidity of thought, which owes something to the ordered intellectual context of a doctoral thesis for which it was initially written” (viii).

Ezekiel Fajenyo is an award-winning, Lagos-based Nigerian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist and short story writer. He has, over the years, performed also as a media consultant and public affairs analyst. His published works include Night of the Godmothers (1990), The Bandaged Candles (1991), Virtues of a Crowned Head (1991), The Writings of Abubakar Gimba (1994), Golden Footprints of a Mandarin (Co-authored, 2002), Words on Marble by General Abdulsalami Abubakar (co-edited, 2002), Grassroots Educational Development in Nigeria (2003), Current Trends in Mass Communication (Co-authored, 2003), Abubakar Gimba:Perspectives On His Writings and Philosophy (Co-authored, 2008), Rasheed Gbadamosi: The Man and His works (2009), A Critical Study of Dzukogi’s Writings (2010) Ambassador James Tsado Kolo: A Life of Duty and Service (Co-authored, 2012), Faruk Rashid Haruna: A Trail Blazer (2010), The Writings of May Ifeoma Nwoye: A Critical Literary Analysis (2019) and Denja Abdullahi: New Perspectives (2023).

His poems have appeared in Dancesteps of Dawn (1997), For Ken, For Nigeria (1995), Gems Out of Africa (1998), Abuja Acolytes: An Anthology of Poems (2000) and The Martyr of Nigerian Democracy (2001) while his short stories appeared in Through Laughter and Tears (1993), Dancesteps of the Eagle (1996) and Unique Madmen and Other Stories (2001). Aside many articles in newspapers and magazines as a columnist, his essay appeared in Eddie Ayo Ojo (ed), A Literary Biography of Tola Adeniyi (1993), His forthcoming titles include New Directions in Contemporary Nigerian Literature, Recent Nigerian Literature: Some Critical Views and Interviews and A Letter To Prophet T.B. Joshua.

A Fellow of the Global Foundation for Enhancement of Culture and Environment (NGO) and of Social Engineering Research Initiative (SERI), he was honoured in 1997 by the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Abuja Chapter, for his outstanding contributions to literature. He was honoured by the Institute Of Authors, Nigeria with World Poetry Commitment Award Certificate in 2022. He has visited Israel, United Arab Emirate and Spain, among others. He loves reading, writing and photography.