AFRICAN DRAMA Joe De Graft: Sons and Daughters Discuss the character and the role of Aunt Fosuma in the play

Answer Details

In Joe de Graft's Sons and Daughters, Aunt Fosuwa (Fosuma) is a member of the Ofosu family who supports the father's materialistic ambitions for his children, and she serves as a mouthpiece for the conservative, money-minded values the play criticises.

Character. Aunt Fosuwa is presented as traditional, status-conscious and worldly-wise in matters of family reputation. She shares Mr. Ofosu's conviction that the children must pursue "respectable" and lucrative professions, law, medicine, engineering, that will bring the family prestige and financial security. To her, careers such as painting and dancing, which James and Maanan desire, are frivolous, disreputable and beneath the family's dignity. She is therefore unsympathetic to the young people's artistic aspirations and quick to side with the father against them.

Role in the play. Her chief dramatic function is to reinforce and voice the older generation's outlook, thereby sharpening the central conflict between parental authority and youthful self-determination. By echoing and encouraging Ofosu's rigid demands, she helps to isolate the children and to raise the emotional stakes of the family quarrel. She represents the pressure of extended-family opinion that weighs on the young in an African household, showing that the opposition the children face is communal, not merely the whim of one stubborn father.

Contribution to theme. Through Aunt Fosuwa, de Graft exposes the folly of measuring a child's worth by the money and prestige of a chosen profession. Her attitude embodies the materialism and disregard for individual talent that the play condemns, and it stands in contrast to the more understanding figures who eventually recognise the value of the arts. Her presence thus deepens the generational and value conflict at the heart of the drama.

Note. The precise spelling and every detail of this aunt's part vary between editions, but her function as the conservative, materialistic elder aligned with the father is clear.