The Portrayal of Women Characters in the Novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’oJesu

Abstract

A self exiled and diaspora writer Ngugi wa Thiongo was born in Limuru, Kenya in 1938. He is a man of voice for his people and of his language. His chauvinism towards his Gikuyu language makes him different from other East African writers. In all his novels, essays and dramas, he insists on his culture and language and for the supportive of it he discarded writing in European colonial language which he had learnt from his childhood days namely English. He has authored altogether seven novels and of them, four novels were, at the beginning, written in English and later on he switched over from writing in English to his own Gikuyu language for his other novels. His personal as well as bitter experience in Kenya at the hands of neo colonialists made him stay away from his native land to America and England. Even though he is residing in a faraway place from his land of birth, he does not quench the thirst of liberation and freedom from neo-colonialism, at the same time the culture and language of his country which he regards as his own blood and flesh, and for which he is ready to sacrifice everything. The portrayal of women characters in his novels is highly significant. From the first novel to his latest novels, he is not anyway partial towards male-dominated society rather he endeavors to focus on women whose role in society in establishing the cultural heritage and love of freedom is noteworthy, they are also one way or other the real martyrs of Kenya. The Mau Mau fighters who have been hanged or shot dead in the freedom struggle are not the only martyrs to be admired but their sisters, mothers and wives who have lost the loved ones and also in the name of terrorism they have been ravished and sexually abused were also martyrs. For preserving their culture and tradition, the tribal women who have self-inflicted by circumcision are also martyrs.

This research article focuses on such women characters that have made themselves as real heroine for preserving their culture, tradition and religion and of that rituals