| The study holds that the construction of women in contemporary Malawian novels is the result of a cultural hybridity of three discourses: Western colonization, matriliny, and patriliny. It consists of five chapters. Chapter One is introductory and provides contexts within which to situate the study of women in Malawian novels. It opens with a thesis statement about the hybridity of Malawian literature and the construction of women in Malawian novels in English. A brief socio-historical and cultural background on the origins of Malawi follows. The chapter continues with an overview of the country's matrilineal and patrilineal systems of descent and related residence patterns, as well as speculation on their implications for the construction and position of women in Malawian society and literature. An attempt to situate Malawian women in the politics of Malawi from pre-colonial times to the post-independence period follows. Chapter One ends with synopses of the novels analysed in this study.;Chapter Three probes characterizations of women as mothers, wives, mistresses, prostitutes, politicians, entrepreneurs, rebels, professionals in both traditional and non-traditional areas, as well as white women. Flow charts of characters in the category under discussion precede each segment. Women's issues in Malawian novels in English are covered in Chapter Four, which examines marriage, polygamy, bridewealth, infidelity, deification of the mother, male preference, child spacing, infertility, violence---domestic, institutional, and sexual violence as in rape---women's community, and gendered space.;Chapter Five summarizes the study's findings by way of conclusion. Malawi is a culturally hybrid society with a hybrid literature, and the discourses of colonialism, matriliny, patriliny, and feminism are all implicated in the construction of women characters in Malawian novels in English. However, the male-oriented traditions from which they originate have had the greatest impact. Female characters are often assigned minor roles and relegated to the margins. By contrast, men get the major roles in all but seven of the twenty-two novels. These seven novels present women as principal characters, and two have female narrators. Women are also under-represented at the level of production: only two out of the twelve authors studied are women.;Chapter Two establishes critical contexts for Malawian novels and accounts for the scantiness of criticism on Malawian literature. It reviews the available criticism before proceeding to the critical appraisal of specific texts. A reexamination of some of the core Western and African feminist texts, as well as the available criticism on women in African literature, helps situate this study in an appropriate context. A justification for the study concludes this chapter. |
