Gender based violence in the Uncertainty of Hope by Valerie Tagwira and The Fading Sun by David Mungoshi: A feminist analysis

Abstract

Gender Based Violence (GBV) has been alarmingly on the increase in the recent past the world over, and it is regarded as a global pandemic issue due to perceived existing inequalities including women dependency on their male counterparts within societies; as an expression of gender inequity and/or toxic masculinity, GBV is considered a pandemic that exists in all humanity and societies at varying degrees of occurrences and severity. Therefore, there is a need for contingent mitigating mechanism to shield marginalized sections of societies i.e. women and girls against GBV pandemic. In order to mitigate GBV, it is necessary to analyse factors that lead to Gender Based Violence against women whilst exploring available coping mechanisms that female victims of abuse may employ. This thesis therefore, analyses two novels, The Uncertainty of Hope and The Fading Sun to determine why economically independent women remain in abusive relationships; the study employs radical feminist theory to digest and harmonise the two selected novels with literature in its exploration to create readers understanding of how they view Gender Based Violence from a difference lenses in cognisance of the belief that women get abused because they are financially, economically and support‐wise depending on their counterparts. Moreover, the study aims to explores few Gender Based Violence remedies by looking at the coping mechanisms as highlighted in the two literary texts used for this research; this is with the view that the study’s findings would eventually help women in abusive relationships to learn to cope and discover coping mechanisms other than separation which many a times negatively affect children.