A Portrayal of Women in Ethiopian Poet Ephrem Seyoum’s Selected Poems

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the portrayal of women in selected Amharic poemsby Ephrem Seyoum. To that effect, three poetry works of the writer were selected andMarxist feminist literary critical perspective was used to frame the study. Besides,qualitative research design was employed to explore andidentify the ways women areportrayed in the selected poems. Then, purposive sampling technique and textual analysiswas used to identify extracts having feminist theme. Based on the analysis made, it isfound out that women are portrayed as sex objects, prostitute, victim of aging and victim ofinstitutional motherhood. Generally, the overall result of the study showed that womenwere predominantly depicted with little positive and more negative images.