Abstract

An image of Africa in a young mind is simply the exotic adventurous land that Bibhutibhushan created in his “Chander Pahar” with mammoths , lions and tigers,a land where one needs to penetrate into the impenetrable darkness of Amazons to get it charms and hues. Now comes the African “MAN”- someone with strong, stout curly hairs one will not be a very pleasant image. African ‘WOMAN’, here one needs time to think and respond. We definitely know that Africa is not just these travel talks; it is far more than one’s limit of exploration. These are the results of the grand narratives of making a land exotic so that one can’t think of accessing it. These sort of prevailing narratives lead the indigenous writers to take their pen and write out their stories. But while engaging in this task somehow the females are somehow marginalised. The non inscription of women in the forming of national identities in anti-colonial discourse often constructed on differential hierarchical polarizations which endanger counterproductive identities of women in African colonies, post independence. This exclusion privileges skewed monologues of masculine iconographies which have positional and political resonances in the identification of women. The empire as argued by the feminist critiques is always a raced project. This has resulted in the effacement of women in colonialism. The paper aims to look at the position of women in the African society before colonialism and the shift in paradigm, both in her social and personal level after the advent of the white folks. The paper also tries to throw light on the deliberate marginalisation of African women in the literary landscape till the 1960’s.