Paper short abstract:

This study explores the psychological complexities that take place in the planes of the mind, and how rural-urban fuse make different shades of women and wives. To achieve this, urban and rural women stereotypes are traced in African literature as two selected Nigerian novels are analyzed.

Paper long abstract:

The rural and the urban have been overtly entwined, with one serving as 'the other side of the coin' in many situations, however, the space that once delineate the urban and rural is beginning to fade, because even in the urban, rural life can be put to play just as the urban life creeps into rural scape. The complex nature of the rural-urban life in Africa has raised more questions in delineating the rural woman or wife and her urban counterpart, because of the consistent fading of the mind's borderline.

It is in the light of this that this research (re)examines and questions the paradigm of urban-rural sexual stereotypes. How selected Nigerian women writers present this phenomenon is considered. Therefore, the psychological mingling of the rural and urban in the human mind is the focus of this study. This study does not only interrogate the stereotypes, it demonstrates otherwise the irony that is displayed by the different genders in their changing spaces. Further, the psychological complexities that take place in the mind, and how rural-urban fuse make different shades of women and wives is studied.

To achieve this, urban and rural women stereotypes are traced two Nigerian female authored novels by Lola Shoneyin and Chika Unigwe. As both texts are closely read, special attention is given to the representations of the rural woman and the urban in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives and Midnight Dancer respectively. A critical textual analysis is used.