The Representation of Women Dominating Woman in Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay With Me”

Abstract

This research aims to delineate the discourse of women dominating woman constructed in Ayobami Adebayo’s novel, Stay With Me, which is published in 2017. The study analyzes a childless woman’s condition that is being oppressed, objectified and subordinated by other women in her surroundings. The main female character, Yejide, is still childless after her four years of marriage. Her childless condition makes Yejide, as a subordinate woman in her patriarchal society, being oppressed and objectified by women in her surroundings. In the textual form, Ayobami Adebayo conveys her opinion and feeling about harsh treatment that receives by a childless woman in patriarchal society that done not only by men but also by women. To analyze the discourse of women dominating woman, I use Stuart Hall’s representation theory linked to Michel Foucault’s discourse. The research is categorized as qualitative research, as the data use are in the form of literature which is narrative sentences. In addition, there are two kinds of data in my research which are primary and secondary data. The primary data are taken from narrations and dialogues in the primary source, Stay With Me. Meanwhile, the secondary data are taken from related journals, books, essays, and other sources which present any information about the contextual background in Nigeria in 1980s and the biography of the author. It can be summed up that a childless woman are treated badly and even consider as ‘not woman’ by other women in her society. During Yejide’s struggle, as a childless woman, to keep her position as a wife she is treated as a subordinate, seen only as an object that produce child, and also get oppressed by women in her surroundings. Thus, by treating Yejide as a subordinate, exploiting by objectifies her and oppress her, they want to control on what Yejide should do and not do as a woman, and this three aspect form the discourse of women dominating woman in x the novel. The novel setting is in Nigeria where the society is patriarchal. Moreover, the setting is at 1980s where patriarchal is the dominant culture and affect every aspect of life of the people that live in the culture. That is why the relation of women dominating woman and patriarchal culture is important. It is because patriarchal culture is the one that triggers women to dominate other women to support male supremacy. Above all, Ayobami Adebayo, despite her protest and resistance towards patriarchal culture that seen in her novel, still shows how she as a woman in a patriarchal culture cannot fully escape those culture. In addition, she also emphasizes on childless women who do not fit into the expectation will receive harsh treatment and are treated as less than human, and more importantly she wanted to highlight that the one that capable of dominating women by objectifying and oppressing is not only men, but also women towards other women.