A Critique of Domestic Violence in Julie Okoh’s Plays: Our Wife Forever and Closed Doors

Abstract

The situation of women in most countries should have been tackled by the efforts of some female scholars and their male counterparts who have claimed in the past and still claiming to have fought and still fighting for the betterment of the female folks. The expression ‘domestic violence’ as used in this paper includes violence against women by an intimate partner and by other family members. Violence against women is often a cycle of abuse that manifests itself in many forms throughout their lives. During childhood, violence against girls may include; enforced malnutrition, lack of access to medical care and attention, lack of access to education, incest, female genital mutilation, early marriages and forced prostitution and even bounded labour. This paper reassesses the effects of domestic violence on women using Julie Okoh’s plays: Closed Doors and Our Wife Forever as moral critique of the unwholesome state of affairs in Nigeria and applies Abraham Maslow’s theory of Need. It adopts the qualitative research methodology. This paper discovers there are no stringent and effective punishments of culprits who unleash violence on women in Nigeria. And therefore, recommends severe punishment for people adjudged guilty of domestic violence and abuse on women, while encouraging them to speak out against this anomaly.