By
OLAGBENRO Mojirola
Teniayo
Ajayi Crowther
University, Oyo
olagbenromojirola166@gmail.com
&
AGBOOLA Olubunmi Tayo
Ajayi Crowther
University, Oyo
ot.olufolabi@acu.edu.ng
Abstract
African drama has
often been read through a patriarchal frame, with women appearing mainly as
victims of political and cultural domination. Such readings, however, can leave
less visible forms of women's agency at the margins: the ways women negotiate,
adjust, build alliances, and act in the interest of both themselves and their
communities. This article examines these forms of agency in Tess Onwueme's Tell
It to Women and Ahmed Yerima's Erelu-Kuti. Existing scholarship on African
drama has paid considerable attention to women's subjugation, but less
attention has been given to the quiet, calculated ways through which women
exercise power. In the two plays, women are not simply presented as inheritors
of tradition. They participate in reshaping it, often through negotiation,
cooperation, and an understanding of communal obligations. The discussion draws
on Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's theory of Snail-Sense Feminism, which places
patience, negotiation, and communal well-being at the centre of women's
responses to difficult social conditions. Onwueme presents rural women who
confront both patriarchal expectations and the pressures of neocolonial
modernity. At the same time, Yerima reconstructs Erelu-Kuti as a historical
woman whose authority is sustained by community recognition and political
judgment. The two plays, therefore, provide different but related accounts of
women's power. In both, agency is closely tied to relationships, cultural
knowledge, and the community's survival. Rather than treating African feminism
as a single model, the plays show how women's resistance can take forms that
emerge from particular social and cultural circumstances.
Keywords: African feminism,
Communal resistance, Female agency, Snail-sense feminism
DOI: www.doi.org/10.57233/tjllc.2026.v05i03.010
author/OLAGBENRO M. Teniayo & AGBOOLA O. Tayo
journal/Tasambo JLLC 5(3) | February 2026 |
