A feminist study of marginalisation and emancipation in Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's novels

Abstract

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye has had a remarkable impression on Kenyan literature. She is an English woman who adopted Kenya as her new country. Born in Southampton, England as Marjorie Philly king in 1928. Marjorie’s adoption into Kenya, absorption of Kenya’s cultural heritage and rejection of categorization makes her occupy a space in Kenya as Kenyan writer and poet. Kenya’s history and settings are raw materials for her fiction. Her undying concern about the plight of working class and poor women is undaunted. Macgoye is preoccupied with evils of colonialism and patriarchy that distort women’s way of life.

The study is fitted within African feminist theoretical framework. The research is meant to establish whether marginalization and emancipation are recurrent themes in Macgoye’s chosen novels. A critical overview depicts Macgoye’s concerns about marginalization and emancipation of women.

Using African feminist approach, the study generates a debate about the suitability of the approach to the study. The author is established to have taken a feminist position in the three novels. Marginalization and emancipation are recurrent in the chosen novels. Similar ideas about women in society manifest in various guises. In the three novels African cultural heritage is not alien to Macgoye. Kutze confirms Macgoye to be “a Kenyan writer” because of her immersion in the African culture.

The methodological procedure entailed critical examination of primary and critical texts in order to establish appropriateness of African feminist conceptual framework. Western feminist ideologies crucial to the study are incorporated to enrich the study.

The study established that marginalization and emancipation predominate the three novels. The author examined evils affecting women in colonial and post independent Kenya. She delineates that personal and public lives of women can not be separated. The destruction of social fabric of women’s lives by colonial and post colonial rulers annihilates women