Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part A (2024)

This research work analyses aspects of atavism and women’s self-reconstruction in Chika Unigwe’s Night Dancer. It purports to highlight the impact of atavism from ascendants to descendants in African societies in general and specifically in the Nigerian Igbo society as contextualized in the novel under consideration. This study is conducted through the prism of the psychological and sociological approaches which have the merit of respectively probing into the human’s inner thoughts for the sake of understanding characters’ intrinsic motivation and reactions in front of situations they experience in their community, and helping scrutinize social realities through living conditions of characters in their traditional community. A peruse of the selected novel reveals that Nigerian writer tackles the phenomenon the atavism through its genesis, manifestations, consequences and how victimized female characters endeavour to get out atavistic shackles within the patriarchal Igbo society. The analysis has shown that Ezi the protagonist viewed as the architype of subversive African women whose defiance of the patriarchal traditional codes, dramatically laid a heavy impact on that of close members of her family who were bound to face the subsequent life dilemma. As a final assessment, Chika Unigwe’s ideological line reads quite clear: in a society where the woman is traditionally conditioned to marginality, it is intolerable and unjust for a daughter to pay back and suffer for her mother’s social offenses. Women must use their bodies not as a source of exploitation and subjugation, but rather as an ideological weapon in their struggle to change the status quo.