5. MARRIAGE AND WIDOWHOOD AS A DOUBLE YOKE TO AFRICAN WOMEN: AN APPROACH TO NESHANI ANDREAS’ THE PURPLE VIOLET OF OSHAANTUAuteurs:  Panaewazibiou DADJA-TIOU & Monfaye KOFFI & Ablavi Mandirann AMEGNONKA

Using womanist critical approach, this paper has examined and found that marriage is compelling and sometimes perilous to most African women. Women face many challenges in their homesteads due to their marriage which becomes abusive and which restricts their liberties vis-à-vis their husbands. Women in Andreas’ fiction are victims of physical as well as emotional violence orchestrated by their macho husbands. Though they are victims, these women dare not leave such marriages at the risk of being rejected by their families and the society. In addition, this work has revealed that women after undergoing the various ills related to their status of married women, become once more victims of widowhood rites at the death of their spouses. Widowhood rites dehumanise and deprive widows in this Namibian society of their inalienable rights