‘Palmwine is as good as St Rémy’: Leke Ogunfeyimi’s example in Weaker Sex

In this paper, I examine the tension between traditional African value-system on marriage and gender relations and Western perception and its interrogation often described as feminism. Since the contact with the European world due to colonialism, African societies and their cultural values have been subjected to scrutiny and change by Western ideologies which question the continued veneration of cultural precept and beliefs, and exposing their weakness while getting exposed in return. One of such ideologies is feminism that challenges male dominance and cultural/religious mechanisms perceived to undermine the freedom of the female gender. Leke Ogunfeyimi’s Weaker Sex dramatizes this kind of tension through its protagonist, Bomane Sosu whose radical feminist approach to her gender, femininity, and marriage, underlined by her traditional consciousness, specifically of the Yoruba, highlights the argument about the contradictions of contemporary feminist inclination including its implications in our society.