Subtlety of Tears: Theatrical Exploration of Women’s Psychological Battle with Domestic Violence (Published)
The average African girl grows into a woman knowing that she must get married. When she eventually does, she must do all that is in her powers to make her marriage work. She has to submit, obey, make sacrifices and above all, endure even the meanest form of brutality just to prove to the people that her marriage is working as well as other people’s. The fact that she is going through hell notwithstanding, little is to be known to the public of the true cause of the bruises she explains off as accidents, of the heartaches she covers with mere fatigue, of the tears she blames on onions. This paper examines the dramatic exploration of the emotional, physical and psychological battle women are engaged in in their various homes. Using the text, Onions Make Us Cry, this paper will critically explore how much women struggle in silence while trying not to wash their dirty linen in public and how eventually, these bottled up grievances usually lead to psychosis and even insanity; both psychological imbalances which, although mild in most cases, could birth very serious domestic violence in exceptional ones. While exploring this, the paper advocates for a speak-out; a situation where such women confide in someone in order to ease off accumulated aggression and/or grievance
Keywords: Battle, Domestic Violence, Psychological Battle, Women