Depictions of Domestic Violence in John Ruganda’s Plays

Abstract

The research thesis set out to examine domestic violence in four of John Ruganda’s plays; The Burdens (1972), Black Mamba (1973), The Floods (1980) and Shreds of Tenderness (2001). The study examines the different forms and causes of domestic violence in the four plays. It further analyses the different literary devices that Ruganda employs and how he effectively uses these devices in his four plays to depict domestic violence. The study deploys the Russian Formalism theory and the sociological literary theory to assist in the analysis of literary devices employed to make domestic violence meaningful and realistic and to contextualise domestic violence in the society where it exists. The research is guided by three objectives of the study. The first objective is to identify the different forms of domestic violence as identified in John Ruganda’s plays. This study established that domestic violence occurred in many forms, including physical aggression or assault (hitting, kicking, biting, shoving, restraining, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, trespassing, harassment), or threats thereof; sexual abuse, emotional abuse, controlling or domineering, intimidation, stalking, passive|covert abuse (neglect), and economic deprivation. John Ruganda’s The Burdens expresses most forms of violence stipulated in the research study but physical assault stands out. The Second is to establish the causes of domestic violence as depicted in the selected plays of John Ruganda. This study discovered that the bit of culture that accentuates domestic violence is inheritance. In Black Mamba unlike in The Floods has a twist in as far as the economic factors play a role in the cause of domestic violence. The economic factors also were found to play a significant role in the cases of domestic violence, this includes women’s economic dependence on men, limited access to cash and credit, discriminatory laws regarding inheritance, property rights, use of communal lands and maintenance after divorce or widowhood, limited access to employment in formal and informal sectors, and limited access to education and training for women. The legal causes include lesser legal status of women either by written law by practice, inheritance, legal definition of rape and domestic abuse, low level of legal literacy among women, and insensitive treatment of women and girls. This is constantly portrayed in all the selected plays.