"My study examines the representation of women in Sub-Saharan African novels in French from the 1950s to 1960s in order to demonstrate the existence of an early feminism in the works of authors such as Ferdinand Oyono, Sembène Ousmane, Seydou Badian, Guillaume Oyônô Mbia and Ahmadou Kourouma. Scholarship on these novels has often emphasized the colonial issues presented in these texts, which frequently denounce both colonialism and the new ruling classes that emerged following independence. Due to the focus on these matters, readers have often overlooked the portrayal of women and questions of gender, including the refusal of many rebellious female characters to resign themselves to their condition and place in society, and a desire for self-liberation.

I hope that my work will offer a different point of view for reading and interpreting Sub-Saharan African novels of the pre- and post-independence period. This study calls into question the prevailing idea that feminism did not develop in Africa until the late 1970s, since these novels precede this later feminism. Moreover, this research shows that despite severe social restrictions, African women were not amorphous but combative."