Resistance against colonial-patriarchal Domination in Adichie's Purple Hibiscus

Abstract

Purple Hibiscus recounts the moving story of Kambili, a 15-year-old girl, growing up amidst the chaos of a turbulent political environment and her fearful home life with her violently religious father and subservient mother. Kambili, though terrified of patriarchal rule, still revere her father Eugene's approval and has come to know only his structured and militant way of parenting. Eugene’s physical violation of Beatrice manifests itself in the number of miscarriages she has had. While we could read Eugene’s behavior as an act merely aimed at subjugating his wife’s body and keeping his family under iron-clad patriarchal control, it goes beyond that. His violent relation to Beatrice not only reveals a general obscured fear of sexuality as previously explained, but of heterosexuality as well. This fiction includes women in distress—female characters that are often terrified, oppressed, and driven to psychological disintegration by a powerful tyrannical male who embodies patriarchal oppression. Along with this, major female characters like Kambili, Beatrice and Ifeaoma show their cooperation among them and resist against patriarchal domination.