Representation of Sociopathy in Empowered Women in Ahmed Yerima’s The Sisters and Tracie Chima Utoh-Ezeajugh’s Our Wives have gone Mad Again

Abstract

Sociopathy is the act of exhibiting apathy to people and indifference to situations. It is a psychological condition which is found in people, especially women who are faced with difficult marriage experiences. Existing studies on women’s psychological conditions have often focused on their imbalances in novels with little attention paid to their anti-social behaviors in dramatic texts. This study is designed to examine the representation of empowered women with a view to discussing their actions and anti-social behaviours in the selected plays.

Psychoanalytic feminist theory was adopted as the framework while the interpretive design was used in the study. Two plays were purposively selected due to their affinity to the subject of the study: Ahmed Yerima’s The Sisters and Tracie Chima Utoh-Ezeajugh’s Our Wives have gone Mad Again (Our Wives). The plays were subjected to critical analyses.

The verbal expressions of all the empowered women in the selected texts are marked with egocentrism, frustration, hostility, emotional instability, aggressiveness, lack of empathy, overwhelming selfishness among others. These sociopathic traits reveal the women’s painful repressed memories of abandonment, deprivation, sexual, physical and emotional abuse which lead to the victims’ emotional breakdown. The women are embittered in The Sisters and overbearing in Our Wives, Their psychic energy shifts from repression to the expression of unconscious thought. Physical and verbal abuse characterise their outbursts against their husband’s past actions of infidelity, betrayal and murder in Our Wives and The Sisters. They are economically and socially empowered and thus assume the status of breadwinners. Their empowerment and subjectivity replace their stereotypical marginal positions. Despite this, they exhibit different kinds of self- denial, lack, castration and negative behaviours. The plays unveil their multiple experiences and their assertiveness as an affirmative mode of communication which is often linked with self-esteem, in the realm of specific sexual politics and the politics of representation. As a result, they become embittered in The Sisters and sadistic in Our Wives. All their husbands and sons are dead; though in their lifetime they engaged in covert extramarital affairs. Their husbands are absent, traitorous, disempowered or incapable. This creates psychological conflicts in the women. Although Funmi, Nana and others, in The Sisters, are socially well-positioned, they suffer from marital frustration and exhibit this through concealment, self-denial and doubleness. Dreams become an escape route and a disguise for repressed fears and wishes. They are presented through, condensation, repetition and substitution. In Taiwo’s dream in The Sisters, her parents and husband, Joe, who was a coup plotter, are condensed into the single symbol of the coffin. The president’s death is a repetition of the death of all the male characters in general and Joe, in particular.

Women tend to become sociopathic when they are under pressure, even if they are economically and politically empowered.