Mara’s rising from total submissiveness to absolute emancipation in Beyond The Horizon by Amma Darko

Abstract

Marital life has usually been almost unbearable for women in African fiction. During the last decades, their status has been changing very fast. In Beyond the Horizon by AmmaDarko, Mara, after having undergone maltreatment, carelessness and domination from her husband Akobi in Africa as well as in Europe, has ended up sending him to prison. This article attempts to explore how somefemale characters are endowed with the necessary courage to report the ill-treatment they have undergone to the right person or authority in order to take a revenge and have things changed for themselves. As pointed out by the study, Marahas proved that change must originate from her not from anybody else. In order to be able to closely explore how Mara, as the embodiment of empowered women in the contemporary African fiction has improved (herself), it has been thoroughly evidenced such aspects as naivety, illiteracy and most importantly economic dependence of the female characters as the main factors working in an adverse way against them both in fiction and society.