Patriarchal Dogmas and Marital Crisis in Ifeoma Chinwuba’s African Romance

This article explores how Ifeoma Chinwuba successfully depicts the conflictual relationship between spouses in a strictly patriarchal society in her long poem African Romance. The Poem tells the tumultuous story of a married couple struggling to find a compromise between the man’s excessive desire for domination and the woman’s thirst for freedom in a highly patriarchal community. Chinwuba transforms a family conflict into a genuine critique of Hausa society, in which women are marginalised in favour of men due to patriarchal dogmas. This study addresses the issue of both spouses’ responsibility for the success of their relationship. Drawing on the theory of ‘Africana womanism’, this study demonstrates that patriarchal precepts that harm women prevent married couples from leading fulfilling family lives.