The Lion and the Jewel Lesson Plan

The Lion and the Jewel, one of legendary Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka's earliest plays, explores colonialism and gender roles in mid-twentieth-century Nigeria. Sidi, a beautiful and shrewd village girl, might be engaged to marry the schoolteacher, Lakunle; however, Lakunle, desperate to align himself with Western, "cosmopolitan" values, refuses to pay her bride-price, so the two are at a standstill. In the meantime, a photographer who came to the village months ago has put Sidi's photograph on the cover of a magazine, leading the village Bale—Baroka, in his mid-sixties—to feel a keen interest in taking her as one of his wives, and leading Sidi herself to perform vanity and...