Gender questions in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and The Jewel and The Trials of Brother Jero

Abstract

This article questions how women are represented in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel and The Trials of Brother Jero, following a feminist stylistics theoretical framework. The plays were investigated keeping in view Mills (1995) three echelons of enquiry: lexis, syntax, and discourse. Soyinka’s plays are masterfully carved to expose the suppression of women by men. In these plays, female characters are represented through withering words and phrases, which presages their disapproval and also their voluptuous accessibility and attractiveness. Women are represented through a sexist and hidebound lingo. They are rendered as malevolent, deleterious, and calamitous, as they are only credited with transporting hitches to the lives of men. They are presented as creatures of the scrubland, ferocious, barbarous, unschooled, and stumpy. These deleterious attributes were given to them with a direct implication of their subordination by their male counterparts. Also, they are represented as receivers of actions, since men carry out most of the demanding tasks/actions in the plays in comparison to women. Following transitivity choices, this article concludes that men carry out actions and women are acted upon. They are given prosaic jobs such as homemakers, paltry traders, hawkers, child bearers, and caregivers to their husbands and children, whereas men are given more important roles such as schoolmasters and chiefs. Women are not given these arduous roles, as the patriarchy perceives that they are not capable of carrying out those roles because of their emotions and simple mindset. Finally, the article recommends further research with the aim of advancing and improving the representation of women in Nigerian drama.