Maternal vision and tragedy in Faith Ben-Daniels' Blue Ixora (2018): A gynocritical reading

Abstract

This study investigates maternal vision and tragedy in Faith Ben-Daniels’ Blue Ixora, highlighting the importance of motherhood as a critical site of intuition, emotional intelligence, and culturally embedded knowledge in African women’s writing. In a tradition where maternal insight is frequently undervalued or framed as purely sentimental, this paper positions Blue Ixora as a significant feminist intervention that reclaims maternal subjectivity as a powerful mode of knowing and ethical engagement. Anchored in gynocritical feminist theory, the study foregrounds women’s voices, inferiority, and lived experiences, reading the mother figure as a bearer of visionary perception that transcends ordinary sight. It argues that maternal intuition in the text operates as an alternative epistemology, one that enables the mother to anticipate tragedy, interpret emotional realities, and guide her family through moments of crisis and loss. Methodologically, the study employs textual and thematic analysis, examining narrative voice, symbolism, characterization, and psychological depth to trace how maternal consciousness shapes the novel’s moral and emotional landscape. The findings reveal that the mother’s intuitive vision functions as a form of resistance to patriarchal rationalism, redefining authority within both the domestic and social spheres. Motherhood is thus represented not as passive endurance but as active knowledge production and moral leadership. The study concludes that Ben-Daniels’ Blue Ixora portrayal of maternal vision reclaims women’s experiential knowledge and resilience, offering fresh insights into female agency and expanding gynocritical readings of motherhood in contemporary African literature.