The More than Beautiful Woman - African Folktales of Female Agency and Emancipation

This study draws on examples of African folklore that resist or subvert patriarchal control, manipulation, exclusion and the oppression of women. Folklore is replete with the power relations and stereotypes that manifest in gender. In most cases, women are represented as passive and subservient, relegated to supporting the male protagonist or caricatured as the foreboding and evil witch archetype. The narratives selected here contradict, challenge or satirise androcentric authority both overtly and covertly. This study draws on /Xam, Swahili, Sudanese, Senegalese and Zulu folktales that each illustrate the emancipatory and disruptive potential of female power, resilience, wisdom and agency. The extraordinary female characters that populate these stories reinforce feminine power and compellingly appropriate respect, justice and equality by turning masculine binaries on their head. Drawing on the resources of narratology, this study illustrates how these narrative frames authenticate female agency and are restorative and empowering to the African woman's psyche. Finally, this study illustrates how the wisdom of folklore, myth, fantasy, and social history, can instigate social change and egalitarian relations whilst celebrating the women of Africa as key protagonists, profound in their power as in their humanity.