RADICAL FEMINISM AND EMASCULATED PATRIARCHY IN LOLA SHONEYIN’S THE SECRET LIVES OF BABA SEGI’S WIVES

Abstract

Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010) is interpreted as a 
radical feminist discourse, where Lola Shoneyin presents an emasculated or 
powerless patriarchy. This paper, utilising the sociological and radical feminist 
approaches to literary criticism, looks at how Shoneyin projects the reaction of the 
African woman in the face of depravity, corruption, sexploitation, and oppression by 
demystifying masculinity and patriarchy. Shoneyin’s special use of the scatological 
narrative technique succinctly describes how the woman is subjugated by patriarchy 
and how she uses her physical and mental capacities to circumvent it. This paper is 
discursive and shows how Shoneyin effectively uses the pathetic situation of the 
woman in the text to saliently describe the subtle but forceful ongoing role reversal 
between the genders in Nigeria. The paper concludes that gender politics is enforced 
by patriarchy and is sustained by the politics of economic subjugation of the female, 
and that the best way to transform things for the African woman is through 
positively aggressive changes.