Like 1945 and 1958, 1966 is a significant date in African literary history. For in that year Grace Ogotâs The Promised Land, the first novel by a woman to be published by the East African Publishing House, and Flora Nwapaâs Efuru, the first work by a woman in the Heinemann African Writers Series, both appeared. The year 1966 can thus be said to mark the advent of a contemporary female tradition in fiction. This event has not been written into the literary records, as critics have tended to treat the publication of the two novels as a non-event. Recently, however, several feminist critics, with no reference to Ogotâs The Promised Land, have assigned paradigmatic status to Nwapaâs text. Thus according to Susan Andrade: âEfuru [is] the first published novel by an African woman and the text that inaugurates an African womenâs literary historyâ (97). It is âthe âmotherâ text of (anglophone) African womenâs literatureâ (100).1 In ordering my chapters, I have given priority to Ogot, partly because she has a legitimate claim to it in that she became a published author before Nwapa, with several of her short stories appearing in journals in the early 1960s.2 I also hope to show that, in terms of the strategies of resistance it inscribes, The Promised Land, too, can be deemed a 4 ââmother textââ.
Ogot is the most forgotten of the women writers I examine. She also provides a particularly striking example of the invisibility of African women writers. Bernth Lindfors describes her as âKenyaâs best-known female writerâ (âInterviewâ 57). But as his own data on the canonical status of African authors shows, the title âbest-known female writerâ is an empty epithet. For Ogotâs ranking on the first of Lindforsâs two tests is only twenty-ninth â whereas that of Kenyaâs âbest-knownâ male writer, NgĆ©gÄ©, is third (âFamous Authorsâ 141â2); and she scores so poorly on his other test â where NgĆ©gÄ© moves into second place â that her name doesnât appear at all (âTeachingâ 54â5).
Ogot has had a fairly productive career as a writer. She has to her credit two novels â The Promised Land and The Graduate (1980) â as well as three volumes of short stories â Land Without Thunder (1968), The Other Woman (1976), and The Island of Tears (1980) â in English. But the critical establishment as well as feminist critics have tended to ignore these works. Ogot has also produced a number of works in Dholuo. Of these, Oladele Taiwo states:
The writings in Luo â Ber Wat, Miaha, Aloo Kod Apul Apul, Simbi Nyaima â may be new to many outside Kenya, but they have proved extremely popular at home. For example, a recent dramatisation of Miaha in Luo-speaking areas of Kenya excited the people and showed to what extent drama could be used as a medium of transmitting indigenous culture. (128)
Miaha has recently been translated into English under the title The Strange Bride (1989).
Ogotâs stance on the language issue is not essentially different from NgĆ©gÄ©âs. As early as 1968 she stressed the need for African writers from âan urban environmentâ to attempt to bridge the âgreat cultural gulfâ which separates them from âthe overwhelming majority of the population who live in the villagesâ (âAfrican writerâ 37). And in 1983, she stated that she was prompted to start writing in her first language by her motherâs remark on the publication of The Graduate that âIf only you could write in Luo you would serve your people wellâ. She also indicates that she has remained committed to writing in Dholuo so that her work can âbe read by all my peopleâ and her language preserved and not âswallowed up by English and Kiswahiliâ (Burness 60). Ogotâs decision has not, however, generated any of the interest or debate NgĆ©gÄ©âs resolve did a few years earlier to begin writing in GÄ©kĆ©yĆ©. The debate has, in fact, been characterized as a wholly male affair, and Ogotâs act has been negated by the absence of critical commentary on it.
Speaking to Lindfors about how she and NgĆ©gÄ© came to write their first novels, Ogot suggests that a kind of regional nationalism inspired them both when they were made aware at the 1962 Makerere conference on African literature of the relative âliterary barrennessâ of East Africa (âInterviewâ 58). NguÄŁTâs Weep Not, Child (1964) was much more widely reviewed than Ogotâs The Promised Land, possibly partly because it was the first novel by an East African to be published. It was also much more favourably received than The Promised Land, which was condemned by the critics. Charles R. Larson reviewed both books. Weep Not, Child he praises highly, referring to it as one of those âremarkable first novelsâ (âThingsâ 64). Of The Promised Land he says, after having criticized Ogot for her handling of theme, plot, mood, dialogue, and character, that it is âone of the most disappointing African novels in a long timeâ (Review 44). As is so often the case with mainstream criticism, the condemned text is one which attempts to subvert the manichean allegory of gender, while the one which is commended valorizes it. Weep Not, Child is a conventional male narrative â as Taban lo Liyong inadvertently reveals in his review when he contrasts the role of the male characters, the fathers and sons of the story, with that of âthe mothersâ. While the former engage in historical struggles, the latter, he observes, âare symbolic of âmother earthâ: they give and preserve life and are wiseâ (43). Or as Elleke Boehmer says of NgĆ©gÄ©âs characterization of women in his first two novels: âWe see here NgĆ©gÄ© upholding the patriarchal order by establishing archetypal roles and patterns of relationships that will continue, albeit in transmuted form, into the later novelsâ (âMasterâs danceâ 12â13).
The reviews of The Promised Land and the commentaries on it in overviews of East African literature display many of the trends that are evident in the criticism of African womenâs writing. The supercilious tone Gerald Moore adopts in his review is typical of male criticsâ attitude toward women writers. âGrace Ogotâ, he opines, âwould be advised to return to [the short story] form, which she has handled with some skill, and to abjure all attempts to give the visions of her essentially fantastic imagination a realistic dressâ (Review 95). Mooreâs review also shows evidence of a careless reading, but Douglas Killam who, in his analysis, confuses, in name at least, the main male character of Ogotâs novel with its female protagonist, highlights the insensibility with which some (male) critics read womenâs novels (126).
From the convention they adopt in naming Ogot, it is evident that Moore and Killam, as well as Larson, were actively aware of gender when they were reading her novel. For Ogot is always either âGrace Ogotâ or âMiss/Mrs Ogotâ (there is critical dissention over her marital status), whereas NgĆ©gÄ©, whom Killam also mentions, is never âMr Ngugiâ, only occasionally âJames Ngugiâ, and almost always âNgugiâ. Such namings may look innocent, devoid of significance, but they, too, uphold the patriarchal order. The semantic rule underlying the convention is what Dale Spender refers to in her analysis of sexist bias in the English language system as the rule of âthe male-as-normâ (3). Masculinity is the unmarked form, the assumption being that writing is a male activity. Hence, while on first mention or for emphasis it might be âJames Ngugiâ, it is almost always simply âNgugiâ. Femininity is the marked form. In other words, the naming is gendered â âGrace/Miss/Mrs Ogotâ â to show a deviation from the norm. The convention therefore not only marks the woman writer for her gender; it also rebukes her for transgressing the norm by daring to take up the pen. Even more insidiously, it names her not a writer but a woman, the implicit message encoded in the naming being that it is marriage/motherhood that is her true vocation and not writing.
The rule of âthe male-as-normâ would also seem to underlie the criticsâ readings of The Promised Land. All three critics complain of inconsistencies and improbabilities in the plot. âBut, worse than thatâ, according to Moore, the story lacks âforce and pointâ as the male protagonist, Ochola, rather than being âa tragic figureâ is âmerely a misguided oneâ (Review 94); while for Larson the storyâs âend destroys the mood of what could have been an idyllic memoir of African agrarian lifeâ (Review 44). But it is precisely such male literary representations as Moore and Larson evidently have in mind â Moore of the Okonkwo-type tragic hero and Larson of idealized, Mother-Africa-type evocations of the past such as Camara Layeâs The African Child â that The Promised Land (the title is ironic) challenges. The problem would seem to be, then, not that Ogotâs plot is improbable or pointless but that her narrative does not conform to the characteristics of the conventional male narrative.
It is, however, Maryse Conde, one of the few feminist critics to treat Ogot, who offers the most perverse reading of her writing. Conde, too, complains that Ogotâs stories lack credibility:
Grace Ogot lacks neither style nor imagination. But her talents are totally wasted. She is so blinded by her respect for the European codes of behaviour, so confused as to the place of her traditional beliefs, that her female characters possess neither coherence nor credibilityâŠ. She may believe that she is an emancipated woman âwho reads booksâ but what she offers her fellow-countrywomen is a dangerous picture of alienation and enslavement. One feels tempted to advise her to join some Womenâs Lib. Movement to see how European females question the code of values and behaviour imposed upon them, and to replace her Bible by Germaine Greerâs book. (142)
In the advice she offers Ogot, Conde overlooks the cultural and historical specificity of western feminism which she represents as universal. Indeed, it would seem to be Conde herself who is âblinded by her respect for European codes of behaviourâ. For at the same time as she condemns Ogot for adhering to western values (of which, in fact, as we shall see, Ogot is highly critical), she urges her to take western feminists as her model.
As Lloyd Brown observes, Condeâs reading of Ogot is also skewed by the prescriptive demands of the mode of feminist analysis she employs, the images mode, which requires that writers provide a positive role model for women:
The criticâs ideal of social equality or female independence ought not to distort or obscure the degree to which a writer, any writer, succeeds in depicting the less than ideal lives of womenâŠ. Conde seems to assume that an uncompromising realism is incompatible with a thorough-going commitment to the ideal of womenâs equality. (11)
As this excerpt suggests, Brownâs own criticism is grounded in what Rita Felski calls âa reflectionist modelâ (26), a mode of criticism which subscribes to the notion of representation as unmediated, and which measures a work by its ability to reproduce female experience realistically. As Felski observes, such a model is unable to account for the relation between literature, ideology, and the social domain or for the shaping influence of aesthetic structures (8â9,28). Brown also glosses over some of the subtleties of Ogotâs texts, but his analysis is, on the whole, perceptive, and I draw on it in the discussion of Ogotâs short stories and novels that follows.
The main ideological function of Ogotâs fiction is to undermine patriarchal ideology by means of a reversal of the initial terms of the sexual allegory. Such an inversion â female and male, good and evil, subject and object â does not resolve the problems of gender, but it is, nonetheless, a subversive manoeuvre. For it exposes the sexist bias of the male literary tradition and creates space for the female subject. As we shall see, inversion is a strategy that other women writers have also employed in their attempt to combat patriarchal manicheism.
In Ogotâs writing, inversion is effected in part by the designation of the national subject as explicitly female. Thus Ogot counters both colonial and African male representations of women as passive and ahistorical, as well as providing a critique of colonialism and indigenous patriarchy. I will briefly consider how this and Ogotâs other major strategy, the discrediting of the male subject, operate in a number of her short stories, as well as in The Strange Bride, before treating The Promised Land and The Graduate in some detail.
âThe old white witchâ3 is set during colonial times at a mission hospital where male and female nurses are being trained under the supervision of Matron Jack, the âold white witchâ of the storyâs title. Much to the Matronâs consternation, she finds that her female charges do not conform to the colonial definition of African womanhood:
She wished the African women folk were as obedient as their men. She had been told again and again that African men were little Caesars who treated their women like slaves. But why was it that she found the men co-operative and obedient? It was these headstrong females whom she found impossible to work with. (17)
As Nwapa also does in Efuru, in this story Ogot casts men in the role of colonial collaborators and portrays women as being foremost in offering resistance to colonial domination. But she is, in this respect, even more confrontational than Nwapa. For having designated women as subjects of African nationalism, she foregrounds their defiant action in her narrative.
The conflict centres on the Matronâs requirement that the female nurses conform to English hospital practice and administer bedpans, a ruling which the nurses resist as it contradicts the social conventions of their own cultural heritage which exempt women from what is quite literally the shit-work of their communities and would result, if adhered to, in their social ostracism. The Matron, however, who, in her validation of the racial allegory, epitomizes colonial society, insists that administering bedpans is the nursesâ Christian duty. âHaving accepted Christâ, she says, âyou must face the challenge and lead your people who are still walking in darkness and are governed by taboos and superstitionsâ (10).
Although the male nurses and other African male members of the hospital staff are privately incensed with the Matron for âtreating them like little childrenâ (20) and excluding them from administrative participation, they remain silent about their grievances and identify with the hospital authorities in the dispute. Echoing the sentiments of Matron Jack, their spokesman, the Reverend Odhuno, admonishes the nurses when they threaten to take strike action to âreturn to your rooms, change into your uniforms and continue to work in the Lordâs Vineyardâ (11). As he puts it to the other men: âWe should give our missionaries supportâ (16). By contrast, the female nurses under Monicaâs leadership act to liberate themselves from âthe iron ruleâ of Matron Jack (18). Branding the men âtraitorsâ (9), they call a strike and decide to leave the hospital and return to their homes for its duration. For, Monica reasons: âIs it not true that [the Europeans] give orders while we work? Then let them carry urine and faeces â they will not do it for a week. When they are desperate ⊠they will call us back, on our termsâ (13).
However, as is the case with Okonkwo, history is on the side of Monicaâs adversaries, which makes a tragic ending to her story also inevitable. For colonial power relations do not permit the emergence of African national subjects of either gender. Monica falls ill while she is at home and her people take her to the hospital âagainst her wishâ (25). Having lost consciousness, the once âheadstrongâ Monica is as âco-operative and obedientâ as her male colleagues have always been in the face of colonial authority. â[Y]ou can keep your Christianityâ, she had once told Matron Jack (10), but the last sacrament, âthe best parting gift that a dying Christian can receiveâ, is administered to her while she lies helpless, the object of the Matronâs ministrations. Regaining consciousness just before her death and recognizing that she has been defeated, she tells her mother to return home, for âI am staying with the Old White Witchâ (25).
In âElizabethâ it is post-independence patriarchal relations which reduce the storyâs eponymous heroine to object status. Like several of the male-authored texts discussed in the previous chapter, âElizabethâ is a story of âpost-colonialâ disillusionment. But Ogot counters the conventional male account of post-independence experience which, as we have seen, takes the primacy of the male subject for granted, with an account of womenâs anti-national experience.
Because of sexual harassment, Elizabeth leaves her job first with an American and then with a European employer. Assured by the Labour Officer âthat working for a fellow African with the countryâs progress at heart would be differentâ (199), she accepts the job she has been offered in Mr Jimboâs office, hoping that she will now be able to contribute to national development. At first Jimbo seems like âan angelâ (196),a man who respects her for her abilities. But her claim to national subject-hood is soon thrust aside and she finds herself once again fixed in the male gaze. She is âloveableâ, âbeautifulâ, âfeminineâ,Jimbo tells her (195â6). Then he rapes her.
Elizabethâs final employer is Mother Hellena, a nun who runs an orphanage, the only kind of employer, Ogot bitterly implies, under whom a woman can work and maintain her integrity. But the damage has been done and Elizabeth hangs herself when she discovers she is pregnant. She is not, however, portrayed as a passive victim of male oppression. Her suicide is less an act of despair than one of defiance and vengeance, a means of reasserting her status as a subject. For Elizabeth is not voicele...