“Made of Sterner Stuff”: Female Agency and Resilience in Nadifa Mohamed’s The Orchard of Lost Souls

Abstract

The focus of this article is on the literary representations of women in postcolonial wartime narratives by African female novelists. An important assumption drives this article, namely, that women are largely absent from discussions on the interventions they can make to help fight social injustice, even though violence and resistance to injustice are mostly mediated through images of women and their bodies. Specifically, the article examines how Nadifa Mohamed employs agency as a discursive technique for negotiating female identities and dismantling oppressive structures in The Orchard of Lost Souls. The article is cognizant of Annie Gagiano’s views that recent African female authors’ novels have gained prominence in tackling national(ist) issues through their imagination of the nation with moral profundity and historical force, placing the women themselves at the centre of this national imagination. I argue that the leading female characters in Mohamed’s novel reconstruct their subalternity all too predictably to fight gendered violence and social vice, thereby contributing to the nationalist fervour that is underway in the narrative context of the novel.

Opsomming

 Die fokus van hierdie artikel is op die literêre voorstellings van vroue in postkoloniale oorlogsverhale deur vroulike romanskrywers van Afrika. Die artikel is op ’n belangrike veronderstelling gegrond, naamlik dat vroue grootliks afwesig is in besprekings oor die intervensies wat hulle kan toepas om sosiale ongeregtigheid te help beveg, selfs al word geweld en weerstand teen ongeregtigheid gewoonlik deur uitbeeldings van vroue en hul liggame bewerkstellig. Hierdie artikel ondersoek spesifiek hoe Nadifa Mohamed bemiddeling as ’n diskursiewe tegniek aanwend vir die onderhandeling van vroulike identiteite en die uitmekaarhaal van onderdrukkende strukture in The Orchard of Lost Souls. Uit die artikel blyk kennis van Annie Gagiano se beskouings dat die romans deur onlangse vroue-outeurs van Afrika prominensie verkry het deur nasionalistiese kwessies aan te pak deur hul verbeelding van die volk met morele grondigheid en historiese mag, waar die vroue self in die middelpunt van hierdie nasionale verbeelding geplaas word. Ek voer aan dat die leidende vroulike karakters in Mohamed se roman hul ondergeskiktheid alte voorspelbaar herkonstrueer om geslagsgebaseerde geweld en sosiale onsedelikheid te beveg, en sodoende by te dra tot die nasionalistiese toewyding wat onderweg is in die verhalende konteks van die roman.