Negotiating Patriarchy and Contemporary Female Identity: A Postmodernist Interrogation of Paulina Chiziane’s The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy

Abstract

This paper examines Paulina Chiziane’s The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy as a profound assertion of postmodern womanhood or female identity within the literary traditions of African feminism. Chiziane’s works have been read mostly in the light of sociological and realist frameworks.  Using the postmodern feminist framework, this paper interrogates and deconstructs grand narratives that define femininity in patriarchal African societies by emphasizing the multiplicity of womanhood, and the contradictions and fluidity that characterize women’s identities in contemporary times. The paper draws from the works of postmodern theorists such as Jean-Francois, Judith Butler and Zygmunt Bauman, alongside African Feminist thinkers like Molara Ogundipe and Obioma Nnaemeka. It argues that Chiziane’s novel portrays a uniquely African form of postmodern feminism as she rejects both the universal labels of western feminist thoughts and the idealization of the African woman with the culture specific traits with which she has been defined over the years. The study concludes that the postmodern reading of the novel enacts the possibility of new womanhood, a hybridized identity, a postmodern identity.