GOOD WIVES AND BAD WIVES: IBEZUTE’S VICTIMS OF BETRAYAL, THE TEMPORAL GODS AND DANCE OF HORROR

Abstract

This article is a ‘masculinist’ reading of Chukwuma Ibezute’s Victims of Betrayal, The Temporal Gods and Dance of Horror. The article contends that African literature has always focused on Africa’s socio-political situation until a group of “activists in feminist movement” started agitating for a proper representation of women in literature. Unlike in Europe and America where the ideology is not challenged, in Africa it was challenged by a group of scholars who called themselves ‘masculinists’. Using Ibezute’s three novels, the ‘masculinist’ ideology is demonstrated. While in Ibezute’s Victims of Betrayal it is revealed that men are play-things in the hands of their bad wives, in The Temporal Gods it is depicted that bad wives can go extra miles to impose their decisions on their husbands. In Dance of Horror, it is shown that the kind of woman that is married into a family determines the fate of that family. The article concludes that the implications of these situations as represented in the novels are that while the roles of some husbands in African homes are becoming more and more passive, the fate of some African homes and families are in the hands of wives.