Stemming the Weaponry of Poverty and Patriarchy, and Dis-affirming Feminist Standpoints in Select Literary Texts

Abstract

The weaponization of poverty and patriarchal over-lord-ship have combined to constitute factors of domination and marginalization of the female gender. Even the United Nations Organization Sustainable Development Goals, SDGS 1, 8 and 10, have identified these two issues as endemic factors of oppression against the girl-child and women. In addition, culture and social construct significantly uphold subjugation over women and affirming male supremacy. On the other hand, feminist critics and activists are constantly canvassing a shift from these patronizing perspectives. Literary texts such as Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow, (2006), Chika Unigwe’s On the Black Sister’s Street,(2010), and Abdulrazak Gurna’s Gravel Heart (2017), document poverty in financial standing; increasing inequalities, lack of decent work and material resources among women as factors predisposing them to intimidating transactional male-female sexual relationships, identifying incidences from different parts of Africa. Cursory reading of these texts portray varied forms of female abuse, whereas critical studies on the texts reveal gender violence, female objectification, patriarchal domination, bad leadership, This paper makes a qualitative analysis of the effect of poverty and intimidation on the selected female characters, using a social theoretical framework of Feminist Standpoint which is examined as a feminist epistemology that describes the master-slave dialectic of the genders. Specifically, the paper dismantles certain feminist agitations that throw up women as the vulnerable gender, and argues for the eradication of poverty and provision of decent work and economic growth to guarantee stronger self-affirmation on the side of the women.