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| Article Name : | | | GENDER IN CHINUA ACHEBE'S THINGS FALL APART | | Author Name : | | | PRADIP KUMAR BEHERA | | Publisher : | | | Ashok Yakkaldevi | | Article Series No. : | | | GRT-2071 | | Article URL : | |  | Author Profile View PDF In browser | | Abstract : | | | Chinua Achebe's first novel Things Fall Apart published in 1958 accounts for the experience of women within nationalist discourse. It shows how the dominant masculine nationalist tendencies are countered. It lays emphasis on women's concern. It describes the dual-sex institutions of Igboland which have shaped the identity of men and women in Igbo societies. Judith Van Allen mentions “Igbo Societies functioned according to a system of social organization that thrived on diffuse authority, fluid and informal leadership, shared rights of enforcement, and a more or less stable balance of male and female power”. (171) The Igbo sociologist Kamene Okonjo has also argued that in both the “democratic village republics” and “constitutional village monarchy” systems of pre-colonial Igbo society, authority was so “dispersed” between the sexes that “each sex generally managed its own affairs and had its own kinship institutions”.(47) Challenging what she considers a conventional stereotype on the identity of Igbo and Nigerian women, she contends that: | | Keywords : | | |
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