International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume V, Issue III, March 2021|ISSN 2454-6186 www.rsisinternational.org Page 256 Gender Roles in D. E. K. Krampah‘s Mbofra Mfa Adwene: A Feminist Critique Esther Asare 1 , Ernest Nyamekye 2 1 University of Cape Coast, Department of Ghanaian Languages and Linguistics 2 University of Cape Coast, Department of Arts Education Abstract: Literary writers have always been influenced by their environment. They consciously or subconsciously include society’s take on gender issues in their writings. In many societies, males and females are assigned different roles based on their gender, which they play in consonance with their age limits. Literary writers tend to hide behind language to portray gender stereotypes in literary works. For some time now, feminism has been a well-used literary criticism approach. It has been used as a tool to criticize gender roles, especially the representation of women in literary works in general. Feminist literary critics argue that the representation of women in most literary works shows a large equality gap between males and females. These inequalities are often measured in literature by diction, characterization, setting and other rhetorical devices. Substantial data in the literature show that whereas male writers often write to present the position of women in society and their social expectations, most of which are related to marriage, female writers accordingly, present the different female responses to these social norms and the objection of the position of women in society. Following these trends of analysis, this paper analyzes the kind of gender roles that some Akan male writers assign to their male and female characters to ascertain whether males and females are indeed presented as equals in literary texts. The paper adopts a radical feminist approach to literary criticism and analyses D. E. K. Krampah’s novel, Mbofra Mfa Adwene(1970). Keywords: Gender, Feminism, Radical Feminism, Ghanaian Culture, Mbofra Mfa Adwene, Feminist literary criticism I. INTRODUCTION Background This section provides background information about some key terms that apply to the paper. Concepts like literature, gender and gender roles are conceptualized for the purpose of this paper. There is no set-in stone definition of literature. To Culler (2007), literature has been defined variously to reflect what literature does in society as well as its contextual functions, and the genres of literature as opposed to other forms of writing. Arguing from the first approach to literature, literature has been described to have two antipodal functions. In one vein, literature is viewed as a medium through which hierarchical structures of society are communicated and learned, and in another, a medium through which societal ideologies are challenged and subverted. Culler (2007), like many others, contends this description and posits that, ―unless the functioning of literature is described in rather vacuous terms, it is not likely to have a single function that all literary works perform‖ (p. 229). Again, the so-called ―functions‖ of literature (constituting a nation, and contesting ideologies) can be performed by nonliterary discourses. The second approach to literature tries to describe literature by identifying some distinctive characteristics of the literary genre. Definitions from this viewpoint often include discussion of important characteristics of literary works, such as their fictionality, their non-instrumental use of language, their high degree of organization that extends to levels and to linguistic features usually regarded as transparent, and intertextuality. But again, such characteristics of literature are not distinctive enough because they are likely to be identified in nonliterary works. Culler (2007), arguing in support of this notion, notes that literariness is not confined to literature as it can be studied in historical narratives, philosophical texts, and rhetorical and diverse cultural practices. Essentially, literature may be the name of a variable cultural function rather than a class identified by distinctive properties of language. Bennett and Royle (2004) note that literature imitates and represents the realities of the world. This implies that literature evolves out of a people‘s individual and communal experiences. They note, however, that while some literary criticisms (e.g. structuralism) argue that literature is separate from the world, poststructuralist approaches to literary criticism (likenew historicism, feminism) assert that literature is actually in the world. Thus, the feminist approach to literary criticism holds that the events in a literary text are a representation of the actual happenings of the world. Since literary writers are part of the world, they rest on the happenings of their environment for their literary compositions. Therefore, although literature may be tagged fictional, it hides behind fiction to tell something about reality. Society‘s conception of sex and gender are among the recurring subject matter in literary works which feminist critics often uncover and criticize. Feminists always emphasize a staunch difference between the concepts of sex and gender. The categories, sex and gender are far more complicated than a mere alignment of male-female with masculinity and femininity. Newman (2002:353) defines sex as ―the biological status of a personas either male or female based on anatomical characteristics‖. This suggests a purely biological concept of sex, which is determined by anatomical facets likegenitalia, chromosomal, and hormonal variations.