Deconstruction of the portraitures of the girl child and the boy child in the folktales, proverbs and proverbial names of the Baganda.

Abstract

This study is a deconstruction of the portraitures of both the girl child and the boy child in thirty selected oral works of the Baganda. The works include folktales, proverbs and proverbial names of the Baganda. Literature, like all communication reaches a wide audience in any society. It is attractive and appealing because it is often offered in the context of performance. This is why it has often been the medium of the social construction of gender. The Buganda sub-region of Uganda is no exception. In Buganda, oral literature, especially folktales, proverbs and proverbial names, has been the primary means of initiating and incorporating young boys and girls into the cultural norms and experiences. In my investigations, I was armoured with the provisions of the 1995 Constitution of Uganda on human rights, the demands of children's literature, the required international standards of children's literature, the role of literature in development and the modem trends of thought: like gender main streaming. My analysis of the selected works reveals that the oral literature of the Baganda involves deep seated gender disparities engraved in an age-old patriarchal system. Although folk tales, proverbs and proverbial names of the Baganda have groomed their fore-parents from time immemorial, the same literature has subjected the girl child/woman to multiple forms of oppression, repression, exploitation and discrimination. To the boy child, the oral literature of the Baganda has apparently skewed positive attributes. Informed by the tripartite theories of deconstruction, post-colonial feminism and reader response, the study undertook the deconstruction of the social constructs of the girl and the boy child characters in the selected folktales and proverbs of the Baganda. The study unearthed embedded contradictions and lies in what appears to be the negative and apparently positive images of girl and boy children respectively. The study proposes new ways of writing folktales, proverbs and sayings to offset the gender imbalances in the oral literature of the Baganda in general.