Strong Female Characters in the Contemporary Anglophone Kenyan Novels: Socialist Realism Perspective

Abstract

This paper entitled Highlighting Strong Female Characters in the Contemporary Anglophone Kenyan Novels: Socialist Realism Perspective tried to explore the creation of Strong Female in Anglophone Kenyan novels. In Socialist Realism portraying a positive hero is a crucial aspect in their writing. However, many writers used males as their positive heroes, those Kenyan novels focused on creating strong female characters/ positive heroines/ in their famous works. The research used Socialist Realism Literary theory as a theory and a method to employ this paper. In doing so, the paper aims to show the re-emergence of Socialist Realism literary theory and Socialist Realist authors. After it was considered an outdated literary theory, and how different novelists from Kenya have applied the feature that Socialist Realism is known for. Three novels have been chosen for this study namely; Dust, A Journey Within, and Was Nyakeeru My Father?. All the novels were published after 2000 G.C. To read these novels, a theoretical framework is formed using Socialist Realism's feature theorized by different critics. The study concludes that different novelists in Kenya used the Socialist Realism feature Strong Female Characters associating it with their contexts, connecting it with their respective historical background, shared current statues, commenting on existing economic, social, and political situations. Besides Female Empowerment, Socialist Feminism, and Contemporary Kenyan Females were the approaches to discuss those Strong Characters.