Gender and Power in Selected Works of Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie: An Analytic Reappraisal

Abstract

Indeed, gender and power discourses as ideological concessions have been investigated and reviewed from various perspectives by different scholars in the works of Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie. This paper offers a reappraisal of the views of the scholars essentially on the issues of gender and power in the selected works of Achebe and Adichie, viz: Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and There Was a Country and Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. The work, therefore, gives a reappraisal of the thoughts of scholars and presents a coalescence of their views, offering a distillation and filtration of the ideas they proffer on the selected works and projecting a comparatively valid arbitration and settlement where the views of the scholars are going inordinately radical and amorphous. The paper views that the opinion of the scholars on the discourses of gender and power specifically on the selected works of Achebe and Adichie are incongruous and asymmetrical while some of the views are inordinately on the verge of radicalism. This work, however, proffers a comparatively balanced perspective on the diverse views of the scholars with a view to navigating an even horizon.