Abstract

This essay explores negotiation of power, gender, and identity in Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀'s novel Stay With Me using Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity. Set against the political turmoil of 1980s Nigeria, the novel negotiates the complex skein of gender roles in the socio-political and economic sphere.
Using the lives of Yejide and Akin, Adébáyọ̀ investigates how the performance of gender identity is constructed by society, economy, and family. The research demonstrates how gender roles are not born but enacted via the enactment of acts that constitute social norms, a demonstration of the performative nature and fluidity of gender. By establishing how gender intersects with class, ethnicity, and political power, the research reveals how intersecting categories create the characters' experience.
Precisely, it situates the way women's lives are commodified and put under their reproductive activities, controlled by patriarchal structures. The study further examines the women's emotional work and psychological labor in their experience of patriarchal relationships as they illustrate how their freedom is restricted by economic dependence and social roles. Lastly, Stay With Me also criticizes the colonial legacy and continuation of gender inequality in postcolonial African society. In the novel, there are informative explanations of turning the current gender roles upside down and searching for change at both personal and societal levels, where the performativity power in gender identity construction is evidenced.