The Exploited Body: A Marxist-Feminist Reading of Gender, Labor, and Capital in Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen, El Saadawi’s Women at Point Zero, and Darko’s Faceless

This study employs a Marxist-feminist lens to analyze the systemic marginalization and exploitation of female characters in three African novels: Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen (1974), Nawal El Saadawi’s Women at Point Zero (1975), and Amma Darko’s Faceless (2003). Moving beyond cataloguing instances of patriarchal violence, the paper argues that these texts depict women’s oppression as fundamentally intertwined with capitalist economic relations, wherein the female body and labor are commodified, and social reproduction is exploited. Through qualitative textual analysis, the study examines how structures of patriarchy and capitalism converge to relegate women to a state of “second-class” existence, extracting both productive and reproductive labor while denying autonomy. The analysis reveals a continuum of exploitation—from the domestic sphere and formal employment to the informal sexual economy—highlighting how gender subordination is materially produced and sustained. The paper concludes that a Marxist-feminist framework is essential for understanding the depth of women’s oppression in these narratives and for envisioning liberation that addresses both economic and patriarchal domination.