Throughout the film, gendered language serves as a weapon of subjugation. When Patrick says Irene is “good for nothing,” and Appiah praises another woman as “a woman of virtue” because she “knows how to cook, wash, and [work] like a woman,” language becomes a tool for erasure and female subjugation. Each insult and “compliment” reinforces a hierarchy where womanhood is synonymous with servitude. As Nigerian critic Obododimma Oha notes, female subjugation thrives through symbolic violence—through everyday words that strip women of dignity while elevating men.
