"The Girl and her Brother": Concepts of Slavery and Gender Relations in a Gikuyu Folktale from Central Kenya

In colonial parlance African women were often compared with slaves: sold to the
highest bidder and working like beasts of burden, African women were associated with victimhood and
commodification. This discourse entered suffragette activism in Europe, and especially payment of the
bridewealth was singled out as an argument in the discussions. “Kikuyu women” were regarded as a
case in point, and, with a major European presence during colonial times, central Kenya was one of the
areas that featured strongly in these debates in the British metropole. African views on marriage and
bridewealth in relation to slavery hardly had a place in these debates, central Kenya being no exception
to this general rule.
In this article I propose to study accounts, evaluations and memories of gender relations and slavery
from the vantage-point of Gikuyu public debate. The paper offers an analysis of one folktale that reflects
on marriage and bridewealth in connection to issues of household autonomy, interdependence, gender,
force and agency.