The paper is an in-depth literary analytical study of gender relations in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman from a feminist perspective. This exploration of the treatment of the female gender by the playwright and the male characters he creates includes the consideration of such matters as betrothal and marriage, conception and pregnancy, and women’s participation in sociopolitical issues. These issues are treated against the backdrop of a feminist theory that is essentially African in outlook and content, since the term seems to have different meanings to African women from what it does for the others. In a conclusive discussion, the paper posits that the treatment of Girl and other female characters in the play betrays the chauvinism of the playwright and of other male members of the
pre-literate African society represented in the play.

Critical responses to Wole Soyinka’s classic, Death and the King’s Horseman, a play based on a Yoruba historical event, are quite voluminous and multidimensional, generating a volume of essays, reviews and commentaries, which may discourage a critic aiming to venture in that direction as probably all there is to the critical interpretation of the play has
been exhausted. Craig McLukie observes the same in his recent essay on Death and the King’s Horseman and comments that The body of criticism on Wole Soyinka’s masterful tragedy Death and the King’s Horseman is substantive, although it falls into fairly coherent groups: the early paraphrases, the Marxist critiques, the mythic criticism, performance analyses, and Soyinka’s own commentary. (McLukie, 2004, p. 143)

English Studies Journal, literary, analytical, study, gender, relations, Soyinka’s, Death, King’s, Horseman, feminist perspective.