Women, Marriage and Betrayal of Trust in Selected Nigerian Dramas

Abstract

The paper explores ‘Women, Marriage, and Betrayal of Trust in Selected texts’ namely Wole Soyinka’s The Beatification of Area Boy, Femi Osofisan’s The Midnight Blackout and Toni Duruaku’s Cash Price’. It also explores the contemporary problems besieging women and their spouses. This provides a discursive analysis of dangers of betrayal of trust by both partners which also destroy the marital bliss of democratic marriage institution in Nigeria. The research methodology leans on internet, books, journals on relevant scholars and literary authors relating to similar issues raised by the playwrights to support the paper. It is the works of the same authorities on various topics related to the concerns of these four playwrights that shall be used to strengthen my observations and findings in this paper. Psychological and historical criticisms are deployed to unravel the issues raised in these creative works as reflected in the society. The findings lean on social greed, impatience, lust for mundane things also the relevance of informing the society on the plethora of stigma of divorces looming visibly on infidelity or abnormality. These necessitate prospects and challenges of marriage institution in 21st century and the need of reforming these anomalous cultural trends problematical in Nigerian society.