Reading A Man Of The People From The Perspective Of Womanism

Chinua Achebe(1930-2013) is a foremost Nigerian novelist, poet, and literary critic, known as “the father of modern African literature”. He depicts in his novels a vivid picture of the Igbo society both before and after the advent of Western colonialists. A Man of the People(1966) is one of his representative works that enjoy great popularity and attract considerable attention of critics around the world.Many critics, especially the feminists, have long insisted that Achebe’s novels have consistently sidelined the place of African women in order to lay stress on the African manhood. This thesis examines women’s life experiences in Achebe’s writings by mainly focusing on his A Man of the People with a close analysis on the female characters in this novel from the perspective of womanism. Meanwhile, it probes into Achebe’s four other novels—Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, and Anthills of the Savannah, attempting to highlight Achebe’s changing attitudes towards women’s roles in African society and to show his developing womanist awareness. Achebe faithfully reflects in his female portraiture the African women’s plight and struggle in the patriarchal society. It can be seen that the misery the African nations have been experiencing largely derives from their exclusion of women from their social construction, and that the true liberation of African nations depends on joint efforts of both men and women, which exactly coincides with the ultimate goal of womanism to build a world in which all people live equally and harmoniously, for the “survival and wholeness of entire people”.