QUEST
FOR WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION IN BUCHIEMECHETA’SSECOND-CLASSCITIZEN AND SEFI
ATTA’S EVERYTHING GOOD WILL
COME
African society has been plagued by patriarchy which subjugates women and their rights as humans. Societal laws and local traditions or customs are constructed in favour of men. Therefore, men lord it over women especially in marriage. Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come and BuchiEmecheta’s Second-class Citizen are feminist texts which explore women’s plights with the view to dismantling patriarchy. This study examines the intellectual, economic and socio- cultural emancipation of women deployed in the texts employed for this study. This study realizes that women who are self- reliant and assertive easily check whatever can limit their and rights freedom in society especially in marriage.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
1.0 Life and Works of the Author - - - - - --
1.1Scope of Study- - - - - - - - -
Purpose of Study- - - - - - - - -
Methodology- - - - - - - - -
1.4 Theoretical Background - - - - - - -
1.5 Review of Criticism - - - - - - -
1.6 Thesis Statement - - - - - - - -
CHAPTERTWO
INTELLECTUALLIBERATION - - -
CHAPTER THREE
ECONOMICEMANCIPATION - - -
CHAPTERFOUR
SOCIO-CULTURALEMANCIPATION - -
CHAPTER FIVE
Conclusion- - - - - - - -
Works Cited - - - - - - - - -
CHAPTERONE
1.0 Life and Works of Authors
BuchiEmecheta was born on 21 July 1944, in Lagos, Nigeria. Her father was a railway worker with meagre salary so he could only send his male children to school. Gender bias and financial constraint forced BuchiEmecheta to stay away from school .Later , at age nine ,she was sent to a missionary school. Considering her brilliancy, she received a scholarshiip which qualified her to attend the Methodist Girls School. At the age of eleven, she was engaged and in 1960, she married Sylvester Onwordi. Shortly after their marriage he went to England for studies and three years later ,Emecheta joined him there. Emecheta wrote in her spare time. She returned to school and she earned a BSc (Hons) in Sociology in 1972 from the University of London and later she gained her PhD in 1991.
She has written the following works: In the Ditch (1972) ,Second-Class Citizen (1974) , The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977); winner of 1978 Jock Campbell Award, The Joys of Motherhood (1979), The Moonlight Bride (1981) , Our Own Freedom (1981) , Destination Biafra (1982) , Naira Power (1982) , Adah's Story [In the Ditch/Second-Class Citizen] ( 1983) , The Rape of Shavi (1983) , Double Yoke (1982) , A Kind of Marriage (1986), Gwendolen (1989) ,Kehinde (1994) , The New Tribe (2000) , Head Above Water (1984) , Titch the Cat (1979) , Nowhere to Play (1980) , The Wrestling Match (1981), JuJu Landlord (1975), A Kind of Marriage (1976) , Family Bargain, BBC Television, (1987).
She received the following awards in her life time: The Jock Campbell Award of the New Statesman in 1978. She was featured on Granta Magazine's 1983 as one of the Best of Young British Novelists. Again in 2004, she was featured in the A-Great-Day-in-London photograph taken at the British Library in honour of fifty Black and Asian writers who have boost British literature. She was awarded with an Honourary doctorate degree from Farleigh Dickinson University in 1992. In 2005, she was also honoured with the great OBE for her contribution to literature. BuchiEmecheta suffered a terminal ailment in 2010 and she died on 25 January 2017 in London at the age of 72.
Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1964. Her early education started at Queens College, Lagos. Later, she went to continue her studies at Millfield School in England. She graduated from the Birmingham University in 1985 where she studied Accounting .Upon her graduation, she moved to the USA in 1994 between 2001 to acquire more knowledge at Antioch University, Los Angeles where she earned a certificate in literary and creative writing. She teaches creative writing around the world.
She has following works to her credits: Everything Good Will Come 2005, A Bit of Difference 2012, Swallow 2010, News from Home 2010 and Lawless 2008. She has won awards and prizes like Zoetrope Short Fiction Contest 2002, BBC African Performance 2004, The Pen International David T.K Wong prize 2005, The Wole Soyinka’s prize for literature 2006, Red Hen short Story Award, 2003, The Noma Award for publishing works in Africa 2009.
Scope of Study
The scope of this essay is limited to the study of female emancipation in BuchiEmecheta’sSecondClassCitizen and Sefi Atta’s Everything GoodWill Come.
Purpose of Study
This essay looks at different aspects of feminine liberation in BuchiEmecheta’sSecondClassCitizen and Sefi Atta Everything Good Will Come with focus on what make them emancipatory works.
1.3 Methodology
The primary texts are thoroughly read and analyzed. Relevant scholarly comments on the texts are cited under reviews of criticism. In addition, articles in online and print journals are used to support this study. The literary concept of feminism is employed in the analysis and evaluation of the primary texts.
1.4 Theoretical Background
Estelle Freedmandefinesfeminism as “a belief that although women and men are inherently of equal worth, most societies privilege men as a group. As a result, social movements are necessary to achieve political equality between women and men, with the understanding that gender always intersects with other social hierarchies”(Web). M. H. Abrams, defines it:
as a distinctive and concerted approach to literature, feminist criticism was not inaugurated until late in the 1960s. Behind it, however, lie two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural roles and achievements, and for women’s social and political rights, marked by such books as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Indication of Rights ofWomen (1792), John Stuart Mill’s TheSubjectionofwomen (1869), and the American Margaret Fuller’s WomanintheNineteenthCentury (1845). Much of feminist literary criticism continues in our time to be interrelated with the movement by political feminist for social, legal, and cultural freedom and equality. (93)
Abrams’ definition is apt because it gives detailed information about feminism. It gives a critical insight into the suffering of women and efforts they have made so far. YetundeOlukemiAkorede argues further that :
Women’s resistance to perceived social, political and economic injustice led to the formation of women’s groups which had the goal of fighting for women. Politically, in the early American society women were not involved in voting and decision-making. They could not be voted in as members of the congress, and, as such had no political position. They could not be voted in as a member of their sex. At the same time in Britain, the bills of right passed by the parliament did not cater for the right of women because they were too political insignificant and voiceless.(10)
For many centuries, many women especially those royal blood suffer discrimination. This gave rise to agitations for women freedom. Feminism means different things to women across the world. Charles E. Bressler comments on types of feminist movement. According to him ,“three somewhat distinct, geographical strains of feminism have emerged. American feminism is essentially textual, stressing repression; British feminism is essentially Marxist, stressing oppression; and French feminism is essentially psychoanalytic, stressing repression. All groups, however, attempt to rescue women from being considered “the Other”(150). This means that the Western culture has a poor representation of women but in order to protect the place of women in society, feminist movements are encouraged. Those who perceive oppression and repression in patriarchy quest for women freedom. Patriarchy gives men rights which women find unjust. John EbimoboweiYeseibo argues that, “ patriarchy in its widest definition means the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of society and women are deprived of access to such power” (139). What this implies is that men suppress women in society and this puts women behind men.
The systems of the world are controlled by men and this has led to different classifications and suppression of women. BarbaraSmith holds that, "feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women --as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement (Wb). Women, regardless of class, colour , race and orientation about life, have the right to enjoy freedom of expression over personal affairs. It is on this note that MillicentGarrettFawcett says that feminism’s goal is to give every woman "the opportunity of becoming the best that her natural faculties make her capable of "(Web). This will guarantee women the democratic rights to enjoy a good life in society dominated by men.
Feminism fights against oppression and suppression of women and this has made it popular among world leading female writers. Emecheta’sSecond Class Citizen and Atta’s Everything Good Will Come are feminist texts which speak against injustice. The literary theory of feminism is used in this study to explain the concept of emancipation which Atta and Emecheta’s works dwell on.
1.5 Review of Criticism
Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come has enjoyed scholarly comments. AttehOluwaseun Deborah posits that it is “a novel of growth.” As a novel of growth, it describes the development of a young girl who tries to navigate life from childhood to adulthood. Accordingly, Atteh says that, “it reflects the experiences of a female character and attempts to overcome the constraints placed on females in Nigerian society” (175). Nigerian is a tough society where both the young and old have to overcome many challenges to survive. Femi Morgan equally observes that, “Enitan also finds herself struggling with the concept of religion and morality. The incessant conflicts in her family which further heightened the incessant health failure of her sickle-cell brother, who eventually passed on. Her mother, an escapist seeks succor from marginalization and a broken marriage in a white garment church. (Web). In order to have a balanced growth and development, a child in a bildungsroman like EverythingGoodWillCome must overcome personal, family and societal challenges. Atteh notes that the personality of the novel’s central character is weaved around both family and societal difficulties, “Enitan, the heroine in the novel, springs from a privileged background. She is even sent out of the country for her first degree and returns home as a lawyer. Because of her exposure through her father and through her experiences in the Western World, she learns self-assertion that “young girls do not have to slave in the kitchen any more” (175). Atta draws readers’ attention to a changing world where women are taking their rightful places in society. She presents female characters who challenge aged long societal norms that patriarchy is built on. The central character and heroine of the novel therefore grows from a voiceless dependent child to an assertive independent woman. The U.K magazine Times Literary Supplement writes that the novel is, “a beautifully paced stroll in the shoes of women growing up in a country struggling to find its post independent identity… Everything Good WillCome depicts the struggle women face in a conservative society. This is convincing, more remarkable is what the novel has to say about the need to spark out when all around is falling apart” (9).The fact that African society is tough as depicted in the novel is commented on by BuchiEmecheta. She admires the novel’s style of recounting life in Lagos. This she puts thus, “Everything Good Will Come is like listening to an old friend recounting and bringing up to date and to life the happenings of our beloved city of Lagos. I was sorry when I came to the end. (The novel’s Blurb)..Truly , the 201st Century women have boldly come out to challenge their male dominated society.
As females quest against patriarchy, gender tensions are created in society. Ayo Kehinde and Joy EbongMbipom argue that Atta writes EverythingGoodWillCome with the view to “projecting the tensions which ensue from the clash between traditionalism and the different faces and phases of modernization in Nigeria. She gives preference to the attempt at subverting stifling policies which affect women’’ (66). As rightly observed by Kehinde and Mbipom , the novel reflects 21st Century women who struggle on the same pedestrian with men in their effort to assert themselves as humans who are not to be seen as extension of men. It is on this note thatEnitan’s mother abandons her matrimonial home in favour of freedom and Sheri does not think twice before breaking the arms of her annoying lover. In his reaction to this development, Olanipekun Sunday Shola argues that modern women do not wish to be seen as object for sexual gratification. His submission is put thus:
In a patriarchal society, women tend to find fulfillment in life only in child-bearing and home making without proper consideration for the empowerment of women politically, economically and socially as seen from the novel Everything Good Will Come through the poem in page 53 whereby the analogical disposition between the “Banana tree” that bears fruit every year with the image of women folk portrays the spirit of feminism as a symbol of sex object and child-bearing. (Web)
From Olanipekun’s comment, it is evident that women have come to an age where they choose when they want to born and when they do not want to. This accounts for the sharp increasement in the use of contraceptives among African women. The various methods of birth control is a challenge to patriarchy which wants women to have as many children as their husbands want.
. HelonHabila in the epilogue of the novel writes that the novel is “a courageous story about friendship and self discovering. It is a rallying cry to women to speak out in a world that tries to muzzle them” (The novel’s Blurb). According to OlayinwolaAkande, the novel “is a contemporary work that brings back memories of the past. The novel features back-to-back military coups and the deadly Biafran civil war that nearly consumed Nigeria after retraces Nigeria’s political unrest to military regimes that controlled country before the proper crystallization of democracy’’ (14). OdiaOfeimun notes that, “Sefi Atta’s first novel has the nerve to redefine existing traditions of African story telling. It confronts the familiar passions of a city and a country with unusual insights and a lyrical power pointing our literature to truly height” (The novel’s Blurb).
Emecheta’sSecondClassCitizen according to Abioseh Michael Porter is a novel of development. In his assertion he says that, “it is my view, however, that if Second Class Citizen were read as a novel of personal development (bildungsroman), some of the seeming inconsistencies within the text would be more fully understood. Also, a look at this work as a novel dealing with a young African woman's gradual acquisition of knowledge about herself as a potential artist and about the themes of love, marriage, and the subject of student life overseas”(124). Porter is of the view that the message of the novel can better be appreciated if it is looked at as a bildungsroman. It is traces the personal development of the novel’s heroine and how she overcomes her tough challenges. Upon the heroine’s arrival in a foreign land, she learns to embrace the western culture which favours a woman’s desire to live above the shackles of patriarchy. EnoEkpenyongUmana posits that;
Emecheta’sSecond-Class Citizen, a semi-autobiographical novel addresses issues that militate against women especially in the Igbo traditional society Umana (2010). This is so because in the Igbo society, the female child is insignificant. She is regarded as a second-class human being. Her welfare is not of concern to her parents. Such is the fate of the protagonist, Adah, in Emecheta’sSecond-Class Citizen.”(2)
Being an African with a western orientation, Emecheta writes to satirise all African institutions that suppress women’s freedom. Marriage is one of such institutions that hinders women’s freedom and personal happiness. CharlseC .Fonchingong looks at the treatment of marriage in the novel with emphasis on its effects on women. According to him:
Emecheta sees the motif of marriage as a form of slavery for the woman. In her Secondclass citizen (1974) Francis is presented as a feudal lord who stays at home and feeds faton the labour of her serf wife – Adah. Adah is saddled with a husband who is perpetually unemployed and does not bring home a dime. She assumes the breadwinning role, does housekeeping and looks after the children. At night she is forced to give into Francis’ incessant demands for his “sex rights”. As if these were not enough Francis would beat her up and destroy the hard-earned property.(143)
As illustrated in the novel, Fonchingong studies the depiction of marriage as an exploitative institution which suffocates women. Society allows men to subordinate women and even marginalise them. This has rendered many women worthless as they are often left at the mercy of men. Longjam Bedana1 and SangeetaLaishram contend that the novel centres on migrants’ search for an acceptable home and culture in a hostile land. According to them:
the protagonist’s quest for identity and home in BuchiEmecheta‟s novel Second ClassCitizen [is] born out of the sense of dislocation, sexism and racism. At first Adah rejects the prevailing culture and lifestyle of England. She is socially as well as culturally alienated in the new country. However, she gradually gets adapted to the new culture which gives birth to a new life of a promising writer at the backdrop of sexism as well as racism … Emecheta‟s protagonist after a constant fight against sexism and racism, embraces an identity which allowed her to voice as a writer and welcomes a second home in England which gave freedom from traditional patriarchal oppression and stereotyping of African women. (35)
Upon her arrival in England ,Adah sees the need to fight against matrimonial injustice and this she does at the expense of her marriage. To wear a new social identity, she boldly faces her husband and puts a stop to his oppressive tendency. Grace O. Olutayo, and ChideraIlechukwu examine the novel from a linguistic point of view. Emecheta’ use of language capture their attention and they sincerely study it with emphasis on its contribution to the message of the text. Olutayo and Ilechukwu argue that:
The lexico-semantic analysis of this work entailed the use of collocates for cohesion, simile and metaphor for comparison, irony for humour, hyperbole for .Emecheta tapped from the wide varieties of English idioms to enrich the narrative. Her sense of humour is reflected in her ironic statements and in her use of simile and metaphor. It was also discovered that words like “second-class”, “sub-standard”, “female child”, “inferior” and “black” are scattered in the text. These words are often contrasted with words like “first-class”, “male” and “white”. The use of these contrasting words echo the central ideas of the novel which are the female child is seen as a second-class human being (degradation of the female), and the blacks in England are seen as second-class citizens (racism). (10)
Emecheta really uses creative words to convey her message. These words are used to capture and describe the social realities of women endure in their quest for identity in every society they find themselves. They conclude that , “the use of language is a significant part of the meaning of the novel as it reveals the setting and themes. The language is straightforward and this makes for a smooth reading of the text. Emecheta‟sSecond-Class Citizen is characterised by figurative, idiomatic and proverbial expressions. Her sense of humour is contagious and this relaxes the reader and aids the enjoyment of the novel” (10). It is obvious that the beauty of the novel lies in Emecheta’s language-use ability. This enables her to paint a beautiful picture of characters who struggle hard to end their disappointment about life especially in a foreign land.
From all the works seen on BuchiEmecheta’sSecondClassCitizen and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come, none has discussed the concept of emancipation nor combines the two texts. This essay ventures into a new study with emphasis on women liberation as illustrated in Emecheta’sSecondClassCitizen andSefi Atta’s EverythingGoodWillCome.
1.6 Thesis Statement
This essay posits that BuchiEmecheta’sSecondClassCitizen and Sefi Atta’s EverythingGoodWillCome depict economic, cultural and intellectual emancipation.
