INTERROGATING PARENTS’ INVOLVEMENT IN CHILDREN’S MARRIAGE IN AFRICA IN SELECTED WORKS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FICTION AND REALITY

Abstract

This paper focuses on redressing the critical imbalance that underestimates parents’ involvement in traditional marriage in Africa. Marriage in this context is defined as the union between a man and a woman. Indeed, most of those who criticize parents’ involvement in their children’s marriage do it based on their ignorance of African realities. Others do it because they just want African ways to look Western. The works under study are Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease, inspired by the Ibo culture and custom, and Olagoke Ariwoola’s The African Wife and Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya. The last two are not novels but civilization books. The former is set in Nigeria and deals with the Yoruba culture and custom, while the latter is set in Kenya and deals with the Kikuyu culture and custom. The two books make it possible not only to compare the message in the novels with the realities through the books but also the Eastern African realities, precisely the Kikuyu, in terms of marriage with the ones of Western Africa mainly those of Yoruba and Ibo. The study reveals that parents’ involvement in children’s marriage is not synonymous with imposing wives to one’s sons or husbands to one’s daughters but just a necessary coaching which is advantageous to both the family being founded and the extended families of both sides. It also points out some weaknesses in this practice. For efficient analysis, I have used socio-criticism, womanism, feminism, and postcolonialism as literary theories and the qualitative approach method.