Women Status as Resulted from Double Colonization in Chanue Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Woman of Igbo culture is a rich ingredient to be explored from the postcolonial lens. That is depicted in Achebe Things Fall Apart which is an important novel which incarnating how African woman status has collapsed in Igbo community by the effect of colonization. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1959) demonstrates unfairness and devaluation of women’s social status. It also focuses on the African women who are experienced double colonization and subalternity by the oppression of colonialism and patriarchal society. So, the study aims to explore how woman becomes victim in African community under the effect of the foreign colonizer represented by British colonization and the local colonizer represented by patriarchy. In the other words, the study also explores the mystery of marginalized the female characters in Things Fall Apart. That is achieved on light of postcolonial thinker Spivak (1993) who concentrates on the social condition of African individuals who were under the ideologies of colonialism and post-colonialism. The paper focuses on the position of African woman in Igbo community in Achebe;s Things Fall Apart during the era of colonization. The work consists of three sections. The first section gives an introduction about the novel. The second section is a literature review of prior researches about how the culture of Africa views woman before and during the colonization. Section three analyses the novel and gives an insight about what happens to woman after the coming of the colonizer. Finally the research ends up with conclusion and recommendations for further studies.