PARADOXES OF ADOLESCENT AND ADULT LOVE IN FEMALE SEXUALITY: NWABUEZE’S A DANCE OF THE DEAD AND A PARALIAMENT OF VULTURES AS PARADIGMS

Abstract

Sexuality differs from sex because it is embracing and encompassing; since it involves the individual’s expression of sexual interest, attraction and sensual feelings. Sex refers more to the physical and biological sexual characteristics that conservatively determine gender. Love in the other hand is a sensational feeling in the individual that spurs him or her on to express sexuality. Thus, there is a thin dividing line among love, sex and sexuality. The problem of this study therefore, stems from the proposition that age and human development impact on how the trio of love, sex and sexuality are expressed by the individual; despite the contention that in sexuality some people are either “younger” or “older” than their ages. The researcher identified two age brackets in this study: Adolescents and adults and examined how youth and maturity have affected the expression of female sexuality in postcolonial Nigerian society. This is without prejudice to the fact that; biological, socio-cultural change, nature, concept of choice as well as material gratification and pleasure are important variables that condition individual sexuality. The researcher interrogated Emeka Nwabueze’s contention in the two plays selected for study: A Dance of the Dead and A Parliament of Vultures, that there are conflicting paradigms of female sexuality in the postcolonial Nigerian society, as the two plays juxtapose the impact of adolescent and adult love on female sexuality; using case study and content analysis approaches of the qualitative research method. Therefore, there is a paradoxical attempt to determine the negativity and positivity between and betwixt the two: adolescent and adult female sexuality in the postcolonial but volatile urban Nigerian society. The study concludes that; though discourse on sexuality, especially female sexuality across different eras in human development is as diverse as it is complex, age, human development and socio-economic change are variables of love, sex and sexuality.