Place in the West African Women Writers Canon Olusegun Adekoya on 22nd June, 1935, Zulu Sofola lived for sixty years and made a significant mark in Nigerian female writing. The first published Nigerian female dramatist, she wrote about fourteen plays, some of which are still in manuscript. Her Christian faith leaves a major impact on her dramatic and theoretical writings, and so does her ambiguous heritage of Igbo and Edo cultures. She, like other Nigerian writers, excepting Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, the two giants who straddled the rapidly expanding space of African literature, have not received enough critical attention, not because of the lacunae and technical flaws in her plays, as argued by Olu Obafemi, but primarily because literature as a discipline has not been accorded its due recognition in the country. Zulu Sofola is not a feminist writer if by that expression is meant a conscious attempt to subvert male hegemony and invert gender relations. Her criticism of female oppression is inscribed within the general context of social injustice. She adopts a conceptual approach that a person be treated not on the basis of gender but purely as a human being worthy of respect. However, her perspective is neither Marxist nor socialist. Basically, it is Christian and essentialist. Economic rearrangements and political engineering, she would argue, can redress some of the gender imbalances but cannot provide answers to all the existential problems afflicting society. There is a strong suggestion in her writing that fallen humanity requires individual morality, a profound internal revolution, to attain and repossess the lost state of grace. Love, she seems to believe, is the key. The Utopian solution, which can be practised only on an individual basis, reveals one of the weaknesses of liberal feminism, viz the absence of a collective approach, or the disregard for women liberation organizations. Although she did not write between 1 840 and 1 880, Zulu Sofola could be rightly placed within the Feminine phase of Elaine Showalter's periodized developmental evolution of female literary tradition. There are many images of woman that radical feminists would frown at in her plays. The images are products of internalized assumptions about the roles expected of a Christian woman. 'The feminist content of feminine art', according to Showalter, 'is typically oblique, displaced, ironic and subversive, African Quanrriy fntbtArti Vti.lt m 3 one has to read it between the lines, in the missed possibilities of the text'.2 Zulu Sofola's sexual politics is circumscribed by Apostle Paul's injunction that wives submit themselves to their husbands. Informed by Christian precepts and tenets, her creative works would collectively be read by a radical feminist critic as a reproduction of male psychology through female complicity. As Maggie Humm wrote in Practising Feminist Criticism, 'Feministcritics argue that Graeco-Roman myths are often masculine constructs whose narratives only reflect the anxieties of male psyches. The main project of feminist myth critics is to move away from these constructions, perhaps to find that myths are originally feminine or at least to discover the outlines of some earlier, more specifically female, mythologies'.3 In The White Goddess Robert Graves elicits the residue of primitive religions in Christianity. According to him, "Christian legend, dogma and ritual are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarous beliefs, ... the only original element in Christianity is the personality of Jesus'/ Sofola explores in her dramas indigenous Nigerian myths and arrives at Christian conclusions. The wind of feminism blowing with full force over the Europe-American society is portentous. The radical feminist movement in the United States of America is largely responsible for the collapse of the marriage institution, which exacerbates the problems of drug abuse, vagrancy and violence in that free society. Yet, it would be criminal to stop the wind, for women have suffered immensely at the hands of men and really need to be liberated. Nevertheless, a wholesale importation of the sexist jargon of the radical, or marxist, or psychoanalytical, American feminists into literary criticism in Nigeria is likely to produce adverse effects on gender and marital relations in the country. In the creative writing of a liberal Christian like Sofola the jargon would confuse rather than clarify issues. Sofola could be conveniently classified as a liberal feminist. Her goal as a writer is justice for all - male or female - a guarantee of equality of opportunity. The two forms of liberal feminism identified by Rosemarie Tong in Feminist Thought5 - the 'classical' that seeks to protect civil liberties like property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association and the 'welfarist' that makes economic justice its main preoccupation - coalesce in her writing. However, Sofola's African, liberal feminism differs from the American It does not totally reject the cultural past but carefully selects and accepts its ennobling aspects, for example, respect for elders and communal existence Some of the African, Christian and family values espoused by her, for example, amiability, humility, and wives honouring their husbands, would be denounced and rejected by Amercan liberal feminists as stereotypical creations of men to control and subjugate women. The Sweef Trap is centred upon sexual politics in marriage. The playwright posits that, if only for the sake of marital stability and peace on the home front, a wife must accept, as commanded by God, the headship of her husband. Sofola explores the Oke-Badan festival, a ritual of atonement, a reawakening of the collective unconscious, that emphasizes the need for a periodic, communal and ritualized purgation of repressed sexual energies and accumulated tension for psychic and social harmony The sin of 'the primal scene' committed during a period of stress in the primordial past is atoned for and it is the people's belief that the atonement would purify their prurient dreams and desires. The festival, like all art, is therapeutic. Every society creates harmless devices for ridding itself of accumulated pollutants and relieving tension. A Christian takes the Holy Communion occasionally to appease the suppressed unholy appetite for animal and human sacrifice. The United States created or revives dangerous games like boxing, parachuting, wrestling and the rodeo to sublimate the American's passion for blood and violence which was given free reign in the frontier and plantation days. Gatsby's large and wild parties in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby serve the same purpose and, in addition, reduce the restlessness of the celebrant- dreamer of fame and wealth. It is not only patriarchal primitive societies that employ ritual to control human behaviour. Sofola casts the ritual of communal purgation in an ironical mode Take, for example, the explanation on why Oke- Badan is a sexist festival: 'Well, that was how our forebears felt and so it was'.6 In other words, the patriarchs who inaugurated the festival as part of the ideological and political machinery to legitimize male hegemony lacked knoweldge, or else they would have involved their womenfolk in the ritual attempt to cleanse the society morally, psychologically, and spiritually to the live a In the play, Clara kneels down and apologises to her husband for disobeying his order that she must not celebrate her birthday. American liberal feminists would take umbrage at Clara's penitent action and take the playwright as one of the women still trapped in the ideological net of male despotism. One of the reasons why generally marriages do not last in our day is woman's refusal to accept that the husband is the head of a home. In a desperate bid life of ' independence, firebrand feminists even reject marriage as an oppressive institution designed to enslave women They either end up as lesbians, or commit suicide, or live an emotionally thwarted life. In The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism , Zillah Eisenstein offered following biographical information on Mary Wellstonecraft, a liberal feminist who authored the highly influential book A vindication of the Rights of Women: 'Within her private, personal life, siie tried unsuccessfully to live the life of independence. She tried to commit suicide twice as a result of an intense and long love affair with Imlay, rejected the notion of marriage for herself until late in life, had a child out of wedlock by choice., and died in childbirth.'7 A totally liberated wife may try even adultery as a way of demonstrating her newfound freedom to use her body as she deems fit. We are told that Harriet Taylor and John Staurt Mill - both liberal feminists - carried on a close relationship for twenty years, 'routinely saw each other for dinner and frequently spent weekends together along the English coast." Her husband, John Taylor, 'agreed to this arrangement in return for the "external formality" of Hariet residing as his wife in his house."' Thank God, she waited for her husband to die a natural death before marrying her lover, unlike African Quarterly on the Arts VoLUNOi for between Ogwoma who wants to satisfy her desire for love and her parents who want her to sacrifice her heart's desire for her brother's sake Two, there is the conflict between the traditional practice of pa.rents choosing a their husband daughter and the modern liberalism of allowing a daughter to exercise her right to freedom of choice. In a patriarchal society, women are expected to be complaisant and submissive, but O g w o ma independent and strong-willed soul, a threat to male rule. Three, there is the age-old conflict over who, between a man and a woman, is to be held responsible for a sex scandal In O g o l i 's view, a woman is invariably the guilty parry: 'A man goes to a woman. It is the woman who opens the door."0 Finally, is an There are many images of woman that radical feminists will frown at in her plays' the impatient Acoli woman who sings: Lightning, strike my husband, Strike my husband Leave my lover; Ee, leave my lover.9 Zulu Sofola would be scandalized by the adulteress's murderous desire and put to shame by all the sleezy talk of phallogocentrism in the psychoanalytical school of feminist criticism. While she accepts that many gender conflicts are generated by culture, she simultaneously recognizes that some sex-based differences are biologically or naturally given. She conceives of marriage essentially as a paradoxical institution. In Wedlock of the Gods Ogwoma rebels against the tradition of her people in two important ways. First, she violates the taboo that forbids a woman mourning her husband's death from having a sexual relationship with another man. Second, she refuses to marry Okezie, her husband's brother, by whom custom demands that she have a child for Adigwu (her husband) for whom she did not have any. Ogwoma takes her husband's death as an opportunity to marry Uloko, her true lover, who could not afford the bride price with which her parents hoped to procure the medical treatment for her sick brother. Her parents forced her to marry Adigwu, the higher bidder, for money, even though he did not love him at all. The conflicts of the play are multidimensional. One, there is the conflict there is the conflict between the old communal mode of existence and the new capitalist individualism. their Members of Onowu family invoke the ghost of communalism and censure Ibekwe for having sold his daughter for money to spend on Edozie when he could simply have sought financial assistance. Of course, Ibekwe defends himself by citing a few instances of request sent to members of the family which were not granted. Sofola is indirectly saying that new economic forces arising from social change are putting a lot of pressure on individuals and tearing apart the extended family system. The idea is not expressly stated. Given her paradoxical vision, it is difficult to identify precisely OLONDOItA r«vl»v African Quarterly on the Arts Vol.1/NO 3 where her sympathies lie. It seems that she accepts sofne aspects of other indigenous and modern cultures and rejects others. The metaphor of a ram tied and whipped along the way to the alter for Ogwoma signifies that the playwright advocates the right of a woman to choose her future partner. But the claim of sisterly love for a sick brother is equally strong and makes the parents' choice a reasonable one. Sofola questions the bridewealth tradition that reduces women to chattels, the anachronistic view that: '... a man's daughter is his source of wealth.' (p.28), but she affirms at the same time the value placed on children, the most precious possessions, in Africa. A Christian humanist, Sofola portrays Ogwoma's insensitive attitude to her husband's death and her getting pregnant for Uloko even while she is still in mourning as immoral. In condemning Ogwoma's impatience and rebellious behaviour, she appeals to people's notions of dignity, honour, propriety, and shame. TheChristian in her cannot but disapprove of Odibei's act of vengeance, especially the recourse to magic and witchcraft to terminate the life of her daughter-in-law who, she thinks kills her son in order to marry her lover. According to the Holy Writ, vengeance is God's. Uloko disobeys this peace-maintaining ordinance of God, avenges his lover's death, and murders Odibei. After the act of vengeance, he looks for, finds, and swallows what is left of the poison that killed Ogwoma. Theirs is a wedlock in death. In resolving the conflicts in the play, Sofola shuns a mechanistic device and settles for the passion for vengeance which, ironically, issues out of love for a son, on Odibei's part, and for a lover, on Uloko's. The paradox of is well orchestrated. Dying, Uloko makes a powerful, emotion-laden speech that contains the essence of the playwright's Christian vision: love and hate We shall leave this cursed place We shall ride on the cotton of the heavens We shall ride to where there is peace, (p.56) Sofola's is the dream of paradise, where the perfect love that our fallen nature makes impossible in our God- cursed world shall be fully realized. The representation of the Newjerusalem, with which the play ends, signifies that Sofola's theme transcends that of human love, the primary concern of Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. Rather, it is the love that defies the trammels of custom and family and transcends human understanding. She takes the divine promise of the Son of God as the solution to the tragedy of a collapsed world and translates it into a powerful dramatic statement. The only perceptible flaw in the representation of paradise is the inclusion of the temporal images of the 'sun' and 'night', for the City of God 'had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof (Revelation21:33). Linguistic experimentation constitutes Sofola's most important technical achievement in The Wizard of Law, a farcical play that makes a mockery of women who marry for money, of lawyers who employ conundrums, confusing syllogistic arguments and deceitful actions to wriggle out of difficult situations and of traders who use all manner of sharp practices and tricks to fob off there overpraised wares on unwilling customers and make excess profits. A battle of false wits, the play captures the spirit of contemporary Nigerian society - its amorality and materialism - and depicts the world as full of dissemblers, as devoid of trust. Living is represented as a 'game' of deceit that is lost by the credulous and the gullible and won by the shrewd. Sikira marries lawyer Ramoni under the illusion that the bunch of keys that sounds in his pocket is money. When reality breaks upon her, she not only nags but abuses her husband, who consequently resorts to ignoble tricks to meet his material needs. She changes her tune when the lawyer brings home nine metres of velveteen lace to make new clothes for the impending lleya festival, and her 'foolish' husband suddenly becomes a 'fine husband. The best husband in the world'.'' A stricture against the increasing wave of materialism in our society, the play reveals the power of money, the universal whore, that not only mediates all human relationships but perverts, inverts and subverts all values. Rafiu plays Ramoni and sells at N 180.00 the cloth that normally should have cost half that price But, as Lamidi warns the joyous cloth-seller: 'You get luck now, but bad luck dey for corner' (p. 1 2). Ramoni, with the collaboration of his wife, feigns illness, madness, and epileptic attacks when Rafiu comes to collect the money for the cloth. Sikira tells a confused Rafiu: 'That man that called himself Ramom Alao has deceived you' She ad-i:. That thief knew about your father i rd my husband and used it to cheat you' (p. 1 8). The play is prophetic, for at its premier performance at the Arts Theatre, University of Ibadan, in May 1973, scams (which in popular parlance iscurrently called '41 9') were relatively unknown in Nigeria. Sikira's complaint: 'You made me tell a lie' and Ramoni's response: 'Cleverness is not a lie, my dear' (p. 19) provide the two contradictory views of social life in the play. Sofola's moral vision is informed by both God's law that forbids lying and stealing and the environmentalist idea that society makes us into what we are. Rafiu reconciles himself to the loss of the cloth money but, as predicted by Lamidi, he is not done with bad luck. Akpan, his low-paid goat-keeper, has consumed the goats in his care Rafiu takes Akpan to court for theft The presence of Ramoni, the defence lawyer arouses in Rafiu the passion for economic justice on the cloth matter. In the process of laying a charge of cheating against Akpan and Ramoni he gets utterly confused and is ordered by the judge to be sent to a mental hospital for treatment, together with Akpan who bleats like a goat in response to all questions. Asked to pay the agreed legal fee, after the dismissal of the case, Akpan bleats and used the trick taught him by the lawyer against him. The reversal of role - the proud lawyer becoming the gull and the clownish, foolish client the clever wit- is extremely farcical. 'Fools', according to J.L Styan in Drama, Stage and Audience, 'are free of laws' l2 The freedom is the basis of the principle of a-morality in comedy. Akpan proves by his action that 'with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you' (Mark 4: 24), a Christian principle that admonishes all professionals and workers to practise righteousness their dealings. in all African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. UNO 3 Much of the laughter is generated by language. Code-mixing, code- switching, mother tongue interferences, and pidgin English that unites the working class in Nigeria are profusely used to produce farcical effects, as exemplified in the following discourse: Size kini? Sikira: Ramoni: Your shoe Sikira: Shoe ke? Ramoni: Eh, shoe ('sh'pro- nounced as '$' bataj Sikira: B - a -t - a Ramoni: Eh, bata, abi you don't want bata for lace? Sikira: I want ke (p. 4J Many phonetic and syntactic problems encountered by Yoruba users of English are highlighted in the play. The mixing of codes and registers is expressive of the psychological disorientation brought by colonialism. However, the use of an impeccable style by Rafiu when he goes to dun Ramoni creates a problem. Sikira, too, uses the same correct style which, in our judgement, is illustrative of a failure of craft on the part of the playwright in the dunning episode. As Rafiu leaves the scene because of the fear that if his debtor dies of the epileptic attack he is likely to be held responsible, he 'curses and grumbles in the vernacular, then ends in English', according to the stage direction (p.22). The duplicity noticeable in the behaviour of the characters is reflected in their double consciousness and dual cultural heritage and in the slippery nature of language itself. It is important to remark that Rafiu reverts to Yoruba, his first language, when he is most excited. The implication is that the mother tongue is the easiest jnd most natural language. Style is an index of identity. Akpan's incompetent use of the English language is reflective of his low social status and poor educational background. To Ramoni's question: 'And what is the allegation?' Akpan replies: ' No bi alligator, no crocodile, na common goat, sah...' (p. 28). His use of the heavily onomatopoeic nonce-word gbee contributes immensely to a comic resolution of the play's conflicts. Farces thrive on such an improbable situation as African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. 11 NO. 3 presented in the court-room, namely a man metamorphosing into a goat and bleating as one. The point that Sofola is making is that the evil economic system operating in the society has lowered Akpan to the animal level. She indicts a dehumanising socio-economic system that transforms people into beasts and savages, cut-throats, liars, thiefs, robbers, and prostitutes. She sculpts the character of Akpan in such a way that the reader's empathy is aroused. She does not just denounce theft, she uses the story of Akpan and the missing goats to call for just wages, as revealed in the following dialogue: Akpan: Na suffer suffer na him I deh suffer since I come work for this goat-seller. So when I tell am many times say de money no sufficient, I come begin sell de goat for money for food. (eager to present a good image of himself). I nobi tief, true to God. I nobi tief. My mama no teach me tiefry I swear. Ramoni: So... Akpan: So when life come hard too much, i come sell some goat for money weh I go take buy gari. De goat weh die. I come et that one. Dat na troot, sah (pp. 29-30J As portrayed by Zulu Sofola, Akpan is a thief and not a thief. Equivocation is the name of the game played by the playwright. Ramoni's poor handling of English reveals that he is an incompetent and fake lawyer. The irony in the play's title is unmistakable. The lawyer uses a noun as a verb: 'We must renegotiation it' and supplies further evidence of his falseness and falsity: '(thinking hard as he calculates). For such a case of deliberate and premeditation burglary, the normal fee is N500.00 but I shall be consideration and leniency with you and charge you N 3 0 0 , 0 0' (p. 31). The solecisms portray the lawyer as a braggart and as an impostor. In a bid to impress his client with his mastery of English, he makes grammatical blunders. Lawyers are imaged through the use of irony as liars in the play. They turn logic upside down, prevaricate and quibble without compunction. Perhaps, the greatest lie told by them isthattheyare learned. The Bible in this regard, presents a despicable image of lawyers. 'Woes unto you lawyers! for ye have taken the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered1. (St Luke 1 1:52). Rafiu adds 'sah' to almost all his statements during the conversation with the proud lawyer in his shop. It is not clear whether he does so to honour or humour Ramoni. But one thing is certain: he plays the obsequious toad, or the ironic trader, who feigns humanity to cod his customers 'Sah' is thus used ambiguously as a mark of respect and as a trade gimmick. Lawyers exude might and power and illiterates hold them in high esteem in Nigeria. It is this image of greatness created for lawyers in the popular imagination that leads an expansive Ramoni to tell Rafiu: ' . we used to call you 'Oriede' (p. 8). The diminutive expresses both contempt and endearment and is highly comical. On the whole, Sofola succeeds in the use of pidgin English, which really is not surprising, for she came from an area where pidgin English is a language of everyday intercourse Thevanety of English used in the play carries a heavy dose of Yoruba accent which is in tune with the Ibadan setting. The linguistic experiment gives the play an effect that is profoundly comical. Sofola exposes how traders and lawyers treacherously use language to hoodwink people. A satire on our labyrinthine judicial system that takes illusion for reality, on our unjust economic system that dehumanizes workers, and on the entire society that makes people mad, the play is quite successful, perhaps her best comedy. A political satire on the evil of dictatorship, King Emene is cast in the idiom of ritual. Its message is that for a polluted land to be rid of its accumulated sins, the human agent of the ritual cleansing, like Jesus, must be seen to be pure. Hence it is imperative for King Emene to embark on an act of expiation, for without confession there can be no forgiveness. Although a religious theme, it is given a vibrant political interpretation by the playwright. King Emene's desire to usher in the Peace Week without first for the crime committed by his atoning Uued fan 4ixty