An Examination of Catholicism as Social Vision for Women Emancipation in Post-Independence Kenya in Margaret Ogola’s The River and The Source and I Swear by Apollo

Abstract

This paper examines the impact that significant social change has on the images of the woman as explored by Margaret Ogola in her two novels The River and the Source (1994) and I Swear by Apollo (2000). The focus is on Ogola's contestations of cultural definitions of the African woman. The study is also interested in making explicit Margaret Ogola's ideological position, especially in so far as the position directs her exploration. This paper, as such, tries to define Margaret Ogola's vision for women in the Kenyan society as reflected in her fiction. The study is guided by feminist literary theory in its eclectic mode, especially in its Marxist feminist and Liberal orientation. In these strands, feminist theories enable us to understand the category of woman as a cultural construct that must therefore be dismantled in order to re-evaluate women's experiences. The justification for this is that the study's interest is in the images of the woman and feminists have done quite a lot of useful work in reconstructing these images through placing the woman at the centre of discourse. The paper focuses on how Margaret Ogola constructs the place of the woman in the socio-economic, political, religious and cultural environments in post-independence Kenyan society.

Keywords: Catholicism, Social Vision, Women Emancipation, Post-Independence Kenya, Margaret Ogola, The River and the Source, I Swear by Apollo