Overview of Women Power in Death and the King’s Horseman

In Wole Soyinka’s play write, Death and The King’s Horseman, he makes the play about a clash of two cultures and the constant battle between the both the Yoruba people and the colonists. Such as one of the two main characters, Simon Pilkings a white officer of the land is trying to stop Elesin Oba, Yoruba chief horseman from committing suicide to complete his culture’s custom to accompany the king into the afterlife. However, Pilkings feels that this act is inhumane and tries to stop Elesin from completing his people’s custom, in doing so Pilkings causes a variety of complications for Elesein. Such as his own people talking horrible things about him and how he’s failed his culture, and Elesin’s own son kills himself trying to atone for his father’s lateness of completing the ritual. So all of this turmoil and misfortune they encounter is a ripple effect of a clash of cultures and the confusion of not really knowing the others culture and basis of it. As a group, me and my partners have established one of the distinguished themes in the play, which is the empowerment of women that is portrayed all throughout the play. To us as a group, this showcasing of power through the female sex was a shocker, because in our society present day men are looked upon as the dominant sex and women are associated with being the less dominant sex, more so soft and weak. But the play breaks barriers when it allows their main female characters Iyaloja and Jane Pilkings to be independent and not latch on to theirmale counter parts like past females in society, novels, and plays have. Such as Iyaloja playing the role of an very important woman in that society, the “Mother of the Market”, she’s critical in every aspect of life you could say for that community, the market. In the play she is the giver of discipline and gives guidance to the community, so you could say she’s a huge reason to why the community functions. But Jane Pilkings has a whole different story, she’s the wife of one of the more important officers of the land, Simon. Usually officers wives in our society are usually tasked with staying at home, taking care of the kids if any, cleaning the house, cooking, and being a trophy wife for the husband can show off here and there. But Jane doesn’t fit that mold. She is feared and respected by most even though she’s Simon’s wife. For example, in the scene where her and Olunde are outside the ball expressing their opinions about the ritual, you can tell through the scene and his words that he’s trying his best not offend or displease her and he keeps reassuring her of his respect for her and her husband. That scene clearly displays the amount of respect and importance Jane has in this play and shows that she isn’t just Simon’s wife. She acts more as an advisor to Simon, acting compassionate as well as imposing on Simon. But some may have different opinions than my groups and I, such as Eileen Julien, in an article from scholarworks.iu.edu, which refers to her book When a Man Loves a Woman: Gender and National Identity in Wole Soyinka’s Death and

The King’s Horseman and Mariama Bel’s Scarlet Song”, she talks about there’s discrepancies in gender power in the plays between male and female characters. She mentions that does the play’s “global processes and other forms of oppression… affect African women adversely?”(206). First, contrary to Julien’s opinion on the play, “Sunnypress.edu” issues an opposite outlook, it argues that women play very important roles in both indigenous Yoruba religion and Yoruba Christianity. It mentions, how “women are the repository of these traditions and have consideration”(1). In other words, in this play not only do women play important parts, but they are also the reasoning behind the growth of religions in the play and Yoruba culture.