AFRICAN DRAMA FEMI OSOFISAN: Women of Owu Discuss the plight of women in the play.

Answer Details

The suffering of women in war is the very subject of Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu. After the Yoruba kingdom of Owu falls to the allied armies of Ijebu, Ife and Oyo, the men are slaughtered and the surviving women are left to face slavery, grief and violation. Through them Osofisan exposes the peculiar cruelty that war visits upon women, who become the helpless spoils of a quarrel they did not begin.

Reduced to war booty. The central horror of the women's plight is that they are shared out among the conquerors as property. Noble wives and princesses of Owu are allotted like goods to the victorious generals, stripped of freedom and dignity. Their humanity is denied; they are simply prizes of victory.

The agony of the queen mother. Erelu Afin, once the proud mother of Owu, embodies collective suffering. She has lost her husband, her sons and her kingdom, and must now watch her daughters and grand-children destroyed or enslaved. Her laments give voice to the boundless grief of all the women.

Violation and madness. Her daughter Orisaye, a consecrated virgin and prophetess, is doomed to become the concubine of a conqueror, her sacred vocation defiled. Driven half-mad by suffering and vision, she foretells further ruin. Her fate shows how war profanes even what is holy in a woman's life.

The murder of the child. The most heart-rending blow falls on Adumaadan, whose young son, the heir of Owu, is torn from her and killed so that no future avenger may survive. A mother is forced to surrender her child to slaughter, the ultimate cruelty of a conquest that fears even infants.

The scapegoating of the beautiful woman. Iyunloye, the woman blamed for the war, faces the fury of the other women, who would make her pay for their losses. Her plight reveals how women turn upon one another under the pressure of shared misery, and how one woman is made to bear guilt for the greed of men.

Innocent victims of men's wars. Throughout, Osofisan stresses that the women took no part in the politics, trade rivalry or ambition that caused the war, yet they endure its worst consequences, bereavement, rape, enslavement and exile. They are the true casualties of male aggression.

Conclusion. The plight of women in Women of Owu is one of unrelieved suffering: enslavement, grief, violation, the loss of children and homeland. By centring the tragedy on them, Osofisan protests against the timeless injustice by which women bear the heaviest burden of wars made by men.