Abstract:
Many African women’s matrimonial homes are profoundly shaped by entrenched patriarchal, cultural, and religious norms. Such households within African novelistic discourse have invariably been depicted as spaces of women’s subjugation. In Igbo and Senegalese contexts, marriage becomes a structural mechanism through which gendered oppression is normalised and sustained. Against this background, this study critically examines Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen and Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter through the lens of Iris Marion Young’s theory of justice. The study employs a qualitative comparative method through a close textual analysis of the two selected texts, nuances and excerpts from the texts are extracted and analysed through the lens of Young’s framework. The study reveals that women experience multi-layered oppression across economic, cultural, and domestic spheres. The study further reveals that abandonment, polygamy, and divorce further intensify women’s marginalisation and powerlessness. In addition, the study found that the domestic violence and coercion through physical and emotional abuse, among others, which women suffer, are structural, culturally embedded, and multifaceted. The paper concludes that the novels’ authorial intention advocates for a form of justice capable of addressing these intersecting structures of domination in order to achieve meaningful and socially grounded gender equity in marriage.
Keywords: Patriarchy, coercion, working wives, polygamy, marriage
DOI: 10.36349/djhs.2026.v04i01.008
author/Bilkisu Baba Saleh, PhD and Abdulrahman Abdulwaheed Idris, PhD
journal/Dundaye JOHS, July 2026
