چکیده (انگلیسی):

The paper examines the construction of widowhood in the traditional Igbo society
where the demise of a spouse makes the partner culpable, especially the female.
Using three texts set in the Igbo culture, namely, two stories from Ifeoma Okoye's
The Trial and Other Stories entitled "Soul Healers" and "The Trial"; and Akachi
Adimorah-Ezeigbo's drama text, Hands that Crush Stone, the paper rethinks this facet
of gender construction through the lens of systemic functional linguistics. The
Transitivity analysis showed the predominant representation of the protagonists in
vulnerable social positions as ‘carriers’ of stigmatizing ‘attributes’, as ‘actors’ of
incriminating ‘goals’, as ‘receivers’ of accusing and dehumanizing ‘verbiage’, as
objects (‘hands’) and as the wretched of the earth. The Mood system of the clause as
exchange shows the widows at the receiving end of interrogative and imperative
clauses showing that power structures in the society are skewed in their disfavour.
The paper observes the lone struggle of these social victims and the desperate but
ingenuous strategies they contrive to gain agency from repressive cultural and social
practices. The paper concludes that these literary texts, though set in apparently
enlightened fictional Igbo societies, mirror authentic social practices that need to be
critically addressed.