“Living in Bondage:” Pessimistic Feminism in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon

The contemporary African fictional category exhibits significant interest in feminism, including diaspora feminism, especially with the expansion of women’s geographical and cultural spaces from rural and urban to diasporic settings. This represents a theoretical attempt at correcting the gender imbalance. Ironically, such efforts are often undermined and trivialised by a reluctance to portray fully liberated female characters, even in less restrictive contexts. The noted incongruity and cynicism, by diminishing the regularly constructed female autonomy, demand serious attention from literary scholarship. Guided by MacKinnon’s notion of Female Objectification and pornography, this study examines the continued exploitation of women, both at home and diaspora, in Darko’s Beyond the Horizon. First, it identifies the nexus between the portrayal of commodification, gender disparity and feminist protestations, without ignoring their socio-economic and political implications. The study further demonstrates that the inescapable and enduring denigration of African women, embodied in the character Mara, tends to render the long-anticipated emancipation of women unattainable. Lastly, it concludes that Darko’s feminism exhibits elements of cynicism and ambivalence, even as it represents gender inequality as inimical to sustainable human development.