The Challenge of Women's Domestication Portrayed in Ayobami Adebayo's Stay with Me
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v13i2.7336Keywords:
Domestication, Gender Roles, liberal feminism, motherhood, WomanhoodAbstract
This article explores the challenge of women’s domestication portrayed in Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay with Me, with a focus on how womanhood is narrowly defined through marriage and motherhood. Through the lens of Betty Friedan’s liberal feminism, this research analyses how societal and familial expectations and pressures domesticate women and reduce their identity and worth to their reproductive roles. The main character in this book, Yejide, represents a woman whose education, achievements, and personal identities are constantly overshadowed by pressures to bear children. This domestication and reduction of her womanhood not only limit her worth in the eyes of society but also gradually strip away her identity. This research reveals that by portraying her struggles and challenges, the novel critiques societal and familial norms that domesticate women and equate womanhood with motherhood. Ultimately, Stay With Me intervenes in the domestication of women and the reduction of womanhood to motherhood and demands a redefinition, one that recognises women as complete in themselves, regardless of whether or not they become mothers.
References
Adebayo, A. (2017). Stay With Me. In Canongate Books.
Baloyi, E. M. (2010). An African view of women as sexual objects as a concern for gender equality: A critical study. Verbum et Ecclesia, 31(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/ve.v31i1.380
Bartholomaeus, C., & Riggs, D. W. (2017). Daughters and their mothers: The reproduction of pronatalist discourses across generations. Women’s Studies International Forum, 62, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2017.02.004
Friedan, B. (2001). The Feminine Mystique. W. W. Norton & Company.
Gatuti, N., Jackson, K., & Njogu, G. (2024). Motherhood or Womanhood? A Closer Analysis of Buchi Emecheta’s the Joys of Motherhood. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), VIII(X). https://doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS
Ismayanti, D., Said, Y. R., Usman, N., & Nur, M. I. (2024). The Students Ability in Translating Newspaper Headlines into English A Case Study. IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 12(1), 108-131.
Ismayanti, D., & Syam, A. T. (2022). The Community Manipulation through Big Brother’ s Tyranny in George Orwell’ s Nineteen Eighty-Four. IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 10(2), 1556â-1569.
McCormack, K., & Graham, M. (2024). “Women should just be women”: Behind the words, terms, and labels of Australian women without children. Women’s Studies International Forum, 105(July), 102950. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2024.102950
Murdock, G. P. (1949). Social Structure. The Free Press, New York.
Nyanhongo, M. M. (2011). GENDER OPPRESSION AND POSSIBILITIES OF EMPOWERMENT: IMAGES OF WOMEN IN AFRICAN LITERATURE WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO MARIAMA BÂ’S SO LONG A LETTER, BUCHI EMECHETA’S THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD AND TSITSI DANGAREMBGA’S NERVOUS CONDITIONS. University of Fort Hare .
Oseghale, C. O., & Akhuemokhan, S. (2024). Involuntary Childlessness and Coping Strategies in Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay With Me and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. 16(May), 47–59.
Priyadharshini, P., & Kumar, T. (2024). Unveiling the Power of Liberal Feminism in Namita Gokhale’s Selected Works: A Journey Towards Gender Inclusivity. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 14(2), 485–490. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1402.20
Serón-Navas, A. (2024). Cross-Generational Sororities: Honouring the Feminist Legacy of Ama Ata Aidoo in Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay With Me (2017). Africanías. Revista de Literaturas, 2, e95755. https://doi.org/10.5209/afri.95755
Taylor, B. C., & Lindlof, T. R. (2002). Qualitative Communication Research Methods (second ed). Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 3(2), 195.
Tyson, L. (2023). Critical Theory Today. In Routledge.
Yang, Y., & Morgan, S. P. (2003). How big are educational and racial fertility differentials in the U.S.? Social Biology, 50(3–4), 167–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2003.9989070
Yeboah, P. A. O., Mohammed, M., Freitas, P. K., & Otoo, P. (2024). Everyday Stories and Untold Tales of Infertility: a Literary Examination of Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay With Me. International Journal of Humanity Studies (IJHS), 7(2), 169–184. https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v7i2.6802
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Citation Check
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Khodijah Munawar, Karina Hanum Luthfia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See the Effect of Open Access)
