In societies, there exists different types of unit relationship. One of such relationships is the marriage union in a family unit. It accounts for how each member of the union has fared in the discharge of their respective roles for the sustenance or otherwise of such a familial framework. Since literature is an artistic documentation of societal values, then familial relations become exposed through the idiosyncrasies of characters implicated in texts that domicile them. Ubesie being one of such artists that are sensitive to their social milieu attempts capturing his societal familial relation values and their violations through the creativity of the novel. It is against this background of familial relation that this study attempts a re-reading of Ubesie’s Isi Akwụ Dara n’Ala, using a descriptive method within the confines of deconstruction and contextualist theoretical frameworks to investigate gender relations relativity. It is, however, observed that exigencies of life, such as war, can impose constructs for ‘gender role exchange’ or ‘extra gender role’ amongst spouses in a family setting. Also observed is the authorial use of extensional expressions that tend to lend texts to different types of interrogations hence textual re-reading. We note that gender role is definable in line with the context of events that play them out.

Keywords: Familial relations, deconstruction, contextualism, Igbo nation, gender role and extra gender role