Femininity vs masculinity: Re-defining gender roles in Alobwed Epie’s The Lady with A Beard

Abstract

In line with the latest “UNDP Gender Inequality Index” which ranks Cameroon 150^th among a total of 189 classified world countries, Cameroon is determined a heavily patriarchal society. Many gender critics still hold a binary concept of gender to be male and female. Luce Irigary in This Sex Which is Not One in an attempt to counteract the binary gender view (which places a man at the centre of power based on his male sex organ), highlights that Freud’s phallogocentric concept of women’s penis envy is man’s vulnerability and weakness. Developing gender to be a social construction rather than a biological attribute is a powerful achievement given that roles will be awarded accordingly and not based on genetic traits. Gender grows beyond every limit if it’s not tied down to sex. Therefore, it should be redefined as a process of activity and not a static label. However, this paper aims to show that in spite of this position which Cameroon occupies, Cameroonian writers like Alobwed’Epie in his novel, The Lady with A Beard, redefines male and female stereotypes and roles. With a remarkable representation of his heroine in an evolving Cameroon, Emade surges her femininity through freedom of choice. Through self-consciousness, self-referentially and irreverence, Emade infringes a stagnant Bakossi cultural heritage, thereby, also challenging the ideology of definitive gender roles of masculinization and feminization. In re-defining both gender roles, this study adopts the Postmodern theory to debunk perspectives of a grand narrative, universality and stability in the novel to enhance gender configurations.