De la violence à la révolte féministe: l’image de la femme vue par les auteurs masculins de la littérature noire africaine d’expression française des décennies pré et post indépendances

In this work, I examine the representation of women in Sub-Saharan African novels in French from the 1950s to 1960s in order to demonstrate the existence of a feminist revolt avant la lettre in the works of authors such as Ferdinand Oyono, Seydou Badian, Sembène Ousmane, Guy Menga, Guillaume Ôyônô Mbia and Ahmadou Kourouma.

I show that these male writers disseminated in their literary works the premonitory ideas of African feminism. I demonstrated that, by doing so, these authors present a critique of the subaltern social position of the woman in traditional African society. She is considered to owe the male full respect, total submission, and does not question her husband and other men. I also show that these works satirized the way in which women are denied western education by the phallocracy. Some of the characters believe that girls’ schooling is not important because they are destined to run their home; they don’t need to read the colonizer’s language to fulfill their duties as mother. The character of the young girl educated in French school who revolts against phallocracy also explains both the fear of losing his authority over her if she becomes literate and the desire of male figures to keep her in a place of obscurantism in order to better dominate her. These novels also do not fail to explore the problem of polygamy, which although somewhat accepted is often portrayed by the authors as a forced marriage and sign of the woman’s objectification.