NEGOTIATING GENDER AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN CONTEMPORARY NORTHERN NIGERIAN FICTION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HABIBA AND THE THING ABOUT COMPROMISE

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of gender and social change in Razinat Mohammed's Habiba and Maryam Awaisu's The Thing About Compromise, focusing on how both novels construct female agency within the socio-cultural realities of contemporary Northern Nigeria. While existing scholarship has extensively explored themes such as patriarchy, child marriage, female oppression, and women's education in Northern Nigerian fiction, comparatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which negotiation functions as a culturally grounded strategy through which women challenge patriarchal structures and facilitate social transformation. Drawing on Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi's African Womanism and Obioma Nnaemeka's Nego-Feminism, the study adopts a qualitative comparative literary approach based on close reading and thematic analysis of the selected texts. The analysis demonstrates that both novels portray patriarchy as a dynamic social system sustained through economic dependence, cultural expectations, and intergenerational complicity rather than male domination alone. At the same time, the protagonists resist these constraints through negotiation, education, strategic compromise, and personal resilience instead of outright confrontation. The study further argues that education emerges as a transformative force that enables women to renegotiate unequal gender relations while contributing to broader social change within their communities. Through a comparative analysis of the two novels, the study extends existing research on contemporary Northern Nigerian fiction and demonstrates that meaningful social transformation is portrayed as a gradual process achieved through culturally embedded forms of negotiation rather than radical rupture with tradition.