Unveiling Human-Flesh Dealing: Prostitution and Sexual Depravation in Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana and Jagua Nana’s Daughter

Résumé

Abstract - While sharing the view that prostitution is one of the oldest professions, this essay examines this phenomenon as a social fact in post-colonial African society, tying it to the city and illuminating the various ramifications of the portraiture of the prostitute in Ekwensi’s fiction. Adopting feminist theory as the implied theoretical framework which needs no further reexamination here, the essay scrutinises attitudes to prostitutes and prostitution in ancient times and in contemporary African society, before pinning down the novelist’s diagnosis of the causes of this social plague.