Literacy, Literature and Gender Conflict: A Reading of Ola Rotimi's Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again and Tracie Chima Utoh's Our Wives Have Gone Mad Again

Abstract

In the society, the gender roles of the men are seen as being superior to that of the women. The women are placed at a very low status.  It is for this reason that African female and male writers began to write to expose the ways in which the rights of the women are violated and how they should try to gain freedom from this violence. Literacy has been identified as the most potent weapon in this direction through the instrumentality of literature. Ola Rotimi and Tracie Chima Utoh are among the literary writers who have used female characters as tools for social, political and economic change.  This research paper is an attempt to investigate the relationship between literacy and literature vis-vis gender conflict and consciousness. The paper also looks at the level of awareness required by both genders in the liberation struggle. The paper concludes that literacy and literary consciousness is an indispensable tool in the sustenance of gender harmony both in the family and social cycle.