Subjugation of Widowhood: A Lexico-Semantic Analysis of Bayo Adebowale’s Lonely Days

Abstract

Widowhood is a state of having lost one’s spouse to death. It is a concept in most African settings that traumatizes every woman who is a victim of it. Though the types of inhuman treatments widows are subjected to vary from one ethnic group to another, the underlying fact is that the treatments are unpalatable. Apart from the harrowing experience of permanently losing a husband to death, the society (through the late husband’s family) is believed to be making life more difficult for the bereaved wife through excessive stigmatisation, baseless accusations, grave suspicions and deep-rooted allegations that she is the cause of her husband’s demise. As such, she suffers hostilities, oppression and humiliation by her in-laws. It is against this backdrop that this paper investigates the lexico-semantic expressions of subjugation of widowhood on the feminine gender as evident in Lonely Days. Such lexico-semantic features include similes, metaphors, personifications, hyperboles, allusions, antonyms, allocations, alliterations, rhetorical questions, symbolisms, synonyms and varied types of phrases and sentences, through which the novelist succeeds in demonstrating that the life of a widow is a piteous one that should attract global sympathy and attention. The paper concludes by calling on government and other relevant authorities to educate the populace in order to re-orientate them to desist from practicing inhuman beliefs which subject women to inhuman and traumatic treatments.