The title of Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls indicates the play’s focus on T
The title of Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls
indicates the play’s focus on the current students of Aburi Girls’ boarding school. In the play, scenes depict girlhood as a time of education, friendships, conflict, and self-development. However, in depicting girlhood, the play is also concerned with adulthood. Several adult characters play key roles in the girls’ lives, and the play suggests that students in their final year of school—including Paulina, Ama, and Ericka—are on the cusp of adulthood as they look forward to their future plans that include marriage, college, and careers. Most notably, the play includes two adult characters: Headmistress Francis and Eloise Amponsah.
While they attended school together as girls, their paths in adulthood have diverged; Francis runs the school, while Eloise won Miss Ghana and now works for the pageant. In addition to these adult characters, many of the students’ parents are referenced in dialogue, including the parent(s) of Paulina, Ericka, Ama, and Mercy (who never appear on stage). Through such dialogue, we learn of the parents’ actions, behavior, and beliefs, which often profoundly impact the students. Finally, the students also collectively watch (and critique while watching) the Miss Global Universe pageant, which is emceed by the adult “American TV Host” whose voice permeates the play’s final scene.
In this discussion board post, you will choose one or two of these adult figures from the play (they can be characters on stage or characters only mentioned in dialogue) and analyze how they portray adulthood. To analyze how one or two adult characters from School Girls
portray adulthood you may consider the following questions: what powers, responsibilities, challenges, knowledges, and joys do these characters experience? Are the characters mature and in what ways? What do their relationships, families, and careers look like? How do the adults’ words or actions affect the students? Do the adult characters learn anything new, about themselves or others? Do the adult characters parallel or mirror any of the student characters? Does the play contrast adulthood and childhood or suggest that they may be similar in some ways? Different societies have different definitions of what makes one an “adult,” though it is often based on an individual’s age; however, many societies contrast adulthood with
childhood. Childhood is often viewed as a time of play, growth, immaturity, and identity flux; on the other hand, adulthood is commonly viewed as a stage of life in which a person has reached maturity (physically, legally, intellectually, and/or emotionally) and gained significant self-knowledge. Traditionally, adulthood has been associated with reaching a variety of milestones surrounding relationships (such as getting married), family (such as having children), and career (such as having a job/salary of a certain level).
To be very clear: as
School Girls
acknowledges, the reality of both childhood and adulthood is certainly more complicated and varied for specific individuals than this outline of popular conceptions allows for (some children, for example, may be very mature in some ways, and many adults may not have reached the listed milestones for a variety of reasons, including personal choice). In your analysis, you must make reference to and build on material from one or more of this week’s lecture videos. Your goal should be to use the lecture material to deepen your analysis of your chosen passage.
Paper For Above instruction
Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls
deftly explores the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, illustrating how the transition between these stages manifests differently within the context of Ghanaian society and individual experiences. Among the multiple adult figures portrayed in the play, Headmistress Francis stands out as a pivotal representation of adulthood’s complexities, responsibilities, and contradictions. Her character embodies authority, discipline, and institutional leadership, yet also reveals vulnerabilities and internal conflicts that complicate her portrayal of maturity.
Headmistress Francis exudes the power associated with her leadership position, overseeing the school’s discipline, moral standards, and academic environment. Her responsibilities include not only the administrative functions of running the school but also maintaining cultural and moral order, which reflects societal expectations of adult authority. Her words and actions often serve as a moral compass for the students, shaping their perceptions of what it means to be an adult who upholds societal values. However, beneath her authoritative exterior lies a person grappling with her own insecurities and
emotional struggles, especially relating to her past friendship with Eloise Amponsah. This tension humanizes her and suggests that maturity encompasses not only power and responsibility but also self-awareness and emotional regulation.
The play contrasts her with Eloise Amponsah, a former student who has achieved fame as Miss Ghana and now works in the pageant industry. Eloise’s portrayal of adulthood differs markedly from Francis’s; her career success and beauty pageant involvement symbolize a different set of adult milestones focused on personal achievement, superficial glamour, and independence. Eloise’s narrative emphasizes societal notions of success and beauty, and her dialogue often reflects an awareness of the performative aspects of adulthood, contrasting with Francis’s more constrained and discipline-oriented identity. Eloise’s experiences suggest that adulthood can involve navigating external perceptions and maintaining agency within societal expectations, highlighting the multifaceted nature of what it means to be an adult.
The play explores how these adult characters influence the students’ perceptions of maturity and future aspirations. Headmistress Francis embodies the ideal of disciplined maturity that aligns with societal standards, while Eloise’s glamorous successes serve as both inspiration and cautionary tale. Their interactions with the students reveal that adulthood involves a complex interplay of external appearances, internal struggles, authority, and individual aspirations. The characters’ journeys and dialogues deepen our understanding of adulthood as a layered and often contradictory phase of life that balances societal roles with personal growth.
Moreover, the play hints that the line between childhood and adulthood is not always clear-cut. The students’ aspirations and their perceptions of these adult role models underscore that childhood may harbor elements of maturity and self-awareness, while adulthood may sometimes retain traits traditionally associated with childhood, such as playfulness or naivety. Bioh’s depiction aligns with contemporary perspectives that challenge rigid distinctions between these stages, emphasizing that maturity is a spectrum shaped by societal, cultural, and personal factors. In conclusion, the characters of Headmistress Francis and Eloise Amponsah exemplify different facets of adulthood—one rooted in responsibility and discipline, the other in achievement and outward appearance—yet both contribute to the play’s overarching message that adulthood is profoundly complex, multifaceted, and intertwined with the ongoing process of self-discovery.
References
Bunbury, T. (2020).
Reimagining Adulthood in Contemporary Theatre
. Cambridge University Press.
Hirsch, M. (2017).
Adulthood and Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
. Routledge.
Kumar, R. (2019).
The Cultural Construction of Adulthood
. Oxford University Press.
Lecture Materials, Week 3: Exploring Concepts of Childhood and Adulthood. (2024). University Lecture Series.
Ojo, O. (2021).
Ghanaian Theatre and Cultural Identity
. African Studies Review.
Smith, J. (2018).
The Politics of Maturity: Gender, Power, and Age
. Palgrave Macmillan.
Thompson, L. (2022).
Performing Youth and Age in Modern Drama
. Routledge.
Williams, A. (2019).
Global Perspectives on Childhood and Adulthood
. Springer.
Wright, P. (2020).
Narratives of Growing Up in Africa
. Harvard University Press.
Yeboah, E. (2023).
Educational Reforms and Societal Change in Ghana
. Ghana Journal of Education.
