An examination of women’s voices in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The thing around your neck”.

Abstract

This study investigates Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s female character portrayal in her first short story effort, The Thing Around your Neck, an anthology of twelve short stories. The study offers an insight into a variety of female characters taken from the author’s short stories. These characters, after being contextualized within a patriarchal society/environment, are analyzed in terms of gender subjugation and marginalisation vis-à-vis an African Reformist Feminist reading to explore and analyse a variety of Adichie’s portrayal of female characters in the text and to ascertain how the author equips and empowers her females to fight and overcome subjugating situations and attain their liberation and freedom. The study further employs the Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis model to examine the ways in which the author resists sexism in literature through her writing and her attempt to increase the awareness of the sexual politics of language and style in writing. The study also identifies and critically explores the strategies adopted by Adichie’s female/women characters in the society to involve the men in their women’s emancipation. This analysis justifies the author’s aim to involve men as partners in the women’s quest for freedom and emancipation in the development of the Nigerian society in particular and Africa as a whole. Also, possible symbols or connections to recent African history are examined in order to give domestic stories a larger meaning.