Comparative analysis shows the relationship between two things and how these things are similar or different.
According to Irwin (228) intersexuality is the shaping of texts meaning by other texts. It can be referred to as author’s borrowing and transformation of prior texts or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another.
In Africa, the early colonial era was pre-occupied by issues of cultural conflicts between Africans and Western cultures, religion and world view but the post independent African countries experience further changes in theme, this brought about changes in African writers thematic focus of most of female writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Marima Ba, Buchi Emecheta and Flora Nwapa.
Emecheta and Nwapa are earliest feminist writers, whose work serves as the starting point for the independence and freedom of African woman in general. They wrote novels about the struggle of African woman in contemporary African society and portray the condition of woman in the traditional African setting their works promotes equality for men and woman in Political, Economic, Educational, Traditional and social spheres they believe that women are oppressed due to their sex based on the dominants ideology of patriarchy.
Patriarchy literally means rule by men or by paternal right. It is a situation whereby women are ruled or controlled by men, giving power and importance to men.
Were Nigeria and Africa oppressively masculinity? The answer is “yes”. Ghana was known to have some matrilineal society such as Akan; but Nigeria’s traditional culture, Muslims as well as Non- Muslims had been masculine-based even before the advent of the white man. The source, nature and extent of female subordination and oppression have constituted a vexed problem in African literally debates. Writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo, of Ghana and late Flora Nwapa of Nigerian insisted that the image of the helpless, unproductive African women was once ushered in by European imperialist whose women lived that way. On the other hand, the Nigeria-born, expatriate writer Buchi Emecheta, along with other subordinated to sexist cultural mores.
Flora Nwapa was the lone Africa female novelist’s voice lamenting patriarchy, in 1996 she published Efuru significantly in African feminist scholarship, it signals a long awaited departure from the stereotypical female portraiture in male-authored African literature but the prolific Buchi Emecheta joined the fray with the Joys of Motherhood (1980). Therefore as the female Nigerian critics, Chikwenye Okwonje Ogunyemi writes;
If Nwapa is the challenger, Emecheta is the fighter for the first time, female readers, through characters, are aware of their subjugation by their fathers, uncles, husbands, brothers and son.
Examples of feminist writers are Elizabeth Gilman, charlotte Perkins, Julia Ward, Lockwood, Mary Wollstone craft, Simeon De Beauvoir, Catherine Acholonu, Ama Ata Aidoo, Marima Ba, Buchi Emecheta and Flora Nwapa.
Women in Africa, especially in Nigeria are oppressed and are not recognized by their male counterpart because they believe that their duty is to cook, maintain homes, give birth to children and take care of them and their husbands.
Buchi Emecheta and Flora Nwapa in their literary writings Second Class Citizen and Efuru bring out other problems that the females face in their different sphere of life. They identify the problem of marriage and the problem of ill treatment meted out to the female characters involved in the novels
The study through a vivid comparison between Emecheta’s SecondClassCitizenand Nwapa Efuru is significant because of the following reasons:
The study intends to do the following:
The scope of this study is wide. It will be determined by how affective or relevant a portion is to the study. The study will touch the mainline text, i.e. area in which the topic is concerned. The study would have examined many texts but it will be limited to two prose works by Buchi Emecheta’s SecondClassCitizenand Flora Nwapa’s Efuru.
The facts to be used will be collected from the two novels as primary sources while other information from the internet, published and unpublished articles, journals and other related sources will be examined.
Feminism is one of the broad literary criticisms in literature. Therefore, this study will discuss feminism from liberal perspective because it contains issues relating to women’s suffering. Despite this, they remain strong, assertive and double in their relationship with the other sex. Also, literal formalism expresses predicament of women folk and their suffering without retaliating but believes in endurance and perseverance.