Identity and motherhood in Buchi Emecheta's "The Joys of Motherhood"

Female Ways of Identity Shaping -- the Joys of Motherhood

This ironic and even cryptic title of Buchi Emecheta's book is as far from the substance of her narrative as Africa is from Germany. What the book does convey with passion and realism is that motherhood in this African tale is a struggle -- and potentially a reward -- for those women who battle through adversity the way that Emecheta's character has done. The canvas that Emecheta paints with her talented brushstrokes takes the reader on a journey that, along the way, has serious roadblocks, pitfalls and challenges. It is a fascinating literary narrative, worthy on its own merits and world class in its adherence to descriptive excellence and quality of character development. And moreover, the identities of the characters -- their changes, their adapting to the new world -- provide a powerful and pivotal dynamic to the novel.

Methods and Theory

Embracing the tenets of New Historicism, one does not question the author's motives for presenting the literature as she does. But researching other strategies and models in the quest to fully wrap scholarly arms around the book has validity and is invoked in this paper. Noting and examining the identities of the characters as the dynamics move and change is an investigative method that is effective if used consistently.

Theoretical Approach

Michigan State University professor and author Katherine Fishburn presents an approach to reading and understanding African literature that she believes should help the reader negotiate "a new kind of relationship…between the needs of communities and the rights of individuals" as an "alien text." When that new idea is approached, in this case, African literature (Fishburn, 1995, p. xi), windows of the mind will open rather than close. Historically, Fishburn writes, the cultural domination and "dogmatism" of the West towards Africa cannot be dismissed easily even when readers have the "best intentions" (p. 1). The theory she espouses for readers encountering African literature -- and in particular Emecheta's work -- is that in order to achieve understanding, "whenever we encounter others -- in person or in art or in texts -- we should be willing to suspend our prejudices and open ourselves to them" (Fishburn, p. 2). Her book, Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-Cultural Conversations, Fishburn insists that she is "utterly convinced we can never understand African texts on their own terms," however we can view them with "fewer Western presuppositions and prejudices" (p. 13). And indeed, "we must learn to do this -- we no longer really have a choice in the matter" (p. 13).

In other words, prior to reading Emecheta's book, individuals should become "receptive" to the utter freshness and newness of African writing. It will not be possible for a Western reader to suddenly begin thinking the way "our literary ancestors did" and hence, achieve "historical objectivity" that offers readers a chance to follow and understand the text the way it was originally written. Fishburn (p. 3) asserts that believing one can simply suspend his or her own cultural biases is "a naive claim of historicism"; by reading Emecheta, Fishburn explains, she is not just reading about African heritage.

Instead, Fishburn believes that she is allowing "the Thou (Emecheta's text) to interrogate me, even as I interrogate it." The act of reading focuses attention not on "ourselves" but rather on the text in question. Fishburn is suggesting that Westerners must abandon their white, comfortable identities and try to allow the book to come to them, rather than them going to the book. And while according to Fishburn't is not possible for Westerners to understand fully the book by Emecheta, three strategies can be embraced when reading "alien" texts. One, an ethnocentric approach "from the outside" that uses neutral language vis-a-vis "New Criticism"; two, an "indigenous one" that rises up out of the "alien culture itself (and in which we cannot participate"; and three, the one that Fishburn advocates, "a cross-cultural or hybrid reading that speaks a language of perspicuous contrast" (Fishburn, p. 11-12).

Meanwhile, Lisa Friedli-Clapie, professor of French and Italian at the University of Washington in Seattle, has published a worthy article in the journal West Virginia University Philological Papers that should be read by any enterprising student prior to dipping into Emecheta's novel. Friedli-Clapie references several scholars in her opening paragraphs and each one of them offers a warning about reading too much into the story

Yes Emecheta understood while writing the novel that "…most readers of African literature are not equipped with the same historical and cultural experience as the African author" (Friedli-Clapie, 2005). Hence, Friedli-Clapie asserts that rather than speculate about whether by writing the book in English the author intended to educate English-speaking readers in the West about African culture or not, any of those arguments are "overshadowed by themes of river spirit or Mammy Wata worship." Mammy Wata, the "spiritual and psychological personification of water and all its life-sustaining force," is "an underlying cultural value in Nigerian women's literature at large, Friedli-Clapie asserts. Friedli-Clapie describes her theory as based on "Mammy Wata's underlying presence" in literary, spiritual, biological and monetary forms; and Mammy Wata, which is acknowledged and worshiped in many ways in Nigeria, Liberia, the Congo and Cameroon, brings out "women's ingenuity, spiritual practice, and dedication" (Friedli-Clapie).

Taking the story for what it is, and not what the author may have tried to weave into the narrative, it should be pointed out that in Nigerian culture, the python is a messenger for the Mammy Wata. According to Friedli-Clapie's theory Ona is "overcome after an unsettling seduction" which ultimately results in the birth of her daughter, Nnu Ego, the book's protagonist. That the author describes seduction: the convalescing chief "slid on his belly, like a big black snake, and covered her mouth with his" (Friedli-Clapie). Hence, the link to Mammy Wata, and the magic part of that cultural belief. When Ego is pummeled by the recovering chief's penis she cried out and at that moment the eldest wife of the chief falls ill. When Ego is born nine months later, she has a lump on her head and "the fair skin of the water people."

Character Constellation

The sarcastic language that Ona uses to try and stand up to Agbadi only seems to be effective when he is less healthy than normal. The identity of each when they are apart is quite different than the identity of them as a couple. Indeed, these blasts of what seems to be vitriol between characters does not represent the construction of the universal African Woman, according to author Salome C. Nnoromele. Simply put, The Joys of Motherhood is the story of a woman "who makes devastating choices and sacrifices her health and selfhood in the pursuit of failed traditions." Those decisions are capsulated in the idea of motherhood. Ato, who questions such drastic measures because of the loss of a child, foiled Ego's suicide attempt. Out of six pregnancies she was left with just two children, Ato points out, and yet she did not try to be the source of her own demise.

Aside from cultural expectations that the reader may have, Nnoromele explains, the book is simply a well-written, character-themed exploration "of what went wrong with Nnu Ego" (Nnoromele, 2002). The novel gives a wide-angle picture of two worlds that Ego is part of; one, the old world, which is reflected in the village of Ibuza; that world is one in which men "romanced their wives, women supported their families through farming" and family bonds were powerful and emotional. There was ample financial support in that old world, Nnoromele goes on to explain.

As to the new world in Lagos, it has become "bewildering and tiring" and those problems are reflected in the turns and twists and the unpleasantness of Ego's life. In that new Lagos world family support is non-existent, there is no land to be worked for crops (or owned), and women have to "enter the world of trade to find money" (Nnoromele). But don't blame Lagos entirely, Nnoromele continues, because the inability of Ego to cope with the new world has more to do with Ego than the conflict between the two worlds. Since Ego was actually sent to Lagos to find a sense of peace, and she had support there, but it was clear to the community that Ego was weak and had just one purpose: "Wanting one thing at a time and wanting it badly" (Emecheta, p. 36). That "one thing" of course was to be a mother. The only road to happiness, in Ego's view, was to get pregnant and have babies, and fulfill the more traditional role of motherhood.

On page 34 Ego runs off to her "chi" and complains that she can't have her own children. As mentioned earlier in the paper, Ego's chi is her Mammy Wata; "Why are you so wicked to me?" Ego demanded to know. "All she wanted was a child to cuddle and to love. Allowing [the borrowed baby] to suckle as much as it wanted relived her agony, and when they were both satisfied, he would nestle against her and rest" (Emecheta, p. 34).

Her father and his best friend often comment on what they view as Ego's "misplaced sense of values," Nnoromele writes. In order to survive in this new world Ego must somehow learn the values of "foresight, self-reliance, creativity, and flexibility"; in order to make the necessary survival adjustments she must pass these tests, but unfortunately "she fails all of them as she clings to failed institutions and beliefs" (Nnoromele). She also clings to a baby that is not hers, and her husband beats her for that. On page 35, Ego's father Agbadi doesn't blame Ego's husband for beating her but Agbadi takes Ego to his house where the women in the community "nursed her mentally back to normal. They made her feel" that albeit she did not have a child of her own, her father's house was "bursting with babies" and she could regard them as her own (Emecheta, p. 35).

Interestingly in the novel it is the older women, Ego's mother Ona, for example, that make more intelligent choices regarding life and happiness, even though they were brought up in a heavily patriarchal society. The older women have the self-realization to understand that life is a lot more than just following traditions "and doing what is expected of one" (Nnoromele). (As an aside, it is worth noting that Ona's identity certainly is radically different as she matures than it was when she was younger and frisky and standing up to Agbadi. She is still outspoken and a leader, but in a more balanced way.)

In society and in many novels the young woman is generally the aggressive one, but in The Joys of Motherhood it is the mother, Ona, whose identity is aggressive and emotionally strong, Nnoromele goes on. Ego is not strong at all; her identity as this point in the novel is wishy-washy at best; she is petulant, she pouts and she is incorrigible when it comes to living and interacting with the other women in the community.

And there is certainly a question as to Ego's sanity based on her obsession to have children and achieve motherhood. "It is necessary to question the sanity of a woman who speaks to a child, a mere infant, in the manner Nnu Ego does," Nnoromele explains. The baby is of course powerless to do what Ego asks him to do -- "send some of his friends from the other world" (Emecheta) -- in fact she is the only person who has the power to dig Ego out of this morass she is in. And Nnoromele mentions an important point: while no one advocates spousal abuse, when Ego's husband hit her, he wasn't doing it because she was feeding and taking care of him; he was aggressive towards her "for trying to appropriate what does not belong to her." His act was based on his rejection of Ego's attempt to cross the line in terms of human relationships.

The deeper one delves into the novel the more Ego's identity seems to slip into the darkness of mental confusion -- or perhaps a neurosis of some kind.

To wit, attempting to steal a child is not acceptable, and the selfishness that Ego has shown in this regard is later in the book brought up again, this time by her second husband Knaife. She is "nothing but a spoilt, selfish woman" (Emecheta, p. 49) her husband asserts. But when Ego is given a new start in life she still falls back on her selfishness and her old ways. She is married to that new man, Nnaife -- an arranged marriage -- who does not realize that she doesn't approve of him (and his fat stomach) and in private she fights back tears of frustration (Emecheta, p. 43). He is not handsome, and in her frustration Ego believes that "he had never seen a woman before." Ego did not want to have sex that first night but "she bore it" and she fantasized that the man having sex with her was Amatokwu, "her first sweetheart of a husband." The point of this section of the paper is that notwithstanding her revulsion at her new husband, the women in the village helped her as much as they could but once again "as in every area of her life, she ultimately fails," Nnoromele asserts.

She even attacks the new husband albeit he is the one who can bring her the baby she so urgently wants to have. "If you had dared come to my father's compound to ask for me," Ego told her husband, her brothers would have thrown him out. Soon though he notices that she does seem to be pregnant; "those breasts, didn't they look rather large?"

"What else does a woman want" her husband demands on page 49. He promises to give her the child she wants and yet she stares at him with "hatred" in her eyes. The sanity of this character is in serious doubt in many passages of the book, as Nnoromele had mentioned. Her identity is now becoming one of a crazed woman who is angry, who can't have babies, who is uncomfortable in her marriage and who lives in the past.

As often as Ego criticizes her new husband, and calls him less than a man because he washes women's underwear, she doesn't fully realize that the men in this town have given up some of their cultural values in order to make money working for white men. Cordelia, the wife of Ubani (p. 50), tries to explain that to ego. If Ego wanted a husband who had the time or the inclination to ask his wife if she wants rice or corn pap with honey, she should "forget it," Cordelia explains. "Men here are too busy being white men's servants to be men…their manhood had been taken away from them" and the "shame of it" is they don't understand that they have indeed lost their manhood (Emecheta, p. 50). The men are all slaves to the white men, Cordelia goes on, and if their masters beat them, they come home and beat their women. The identity of the males in this village is that of quasi-slaves who need money so they work for someone they do not trust or respect. But money is money, and this is the new world without the agricultural base of the old world, so one must ply whatever uncomfortable trade that there may be out there.

"The only difference is that they are given some pay for their work" Cordelia says cryptically, but of course the women at home get nothing but the hard work and an occasional beating from the men. Again this is the cultural reality of a community in Lagos and not an editorial statement by the author as to life in Africa in the 1930s.

When Ego's new brother-in-law overhears her talking in her sleep, he awakens her and tries to comfort her. The madness issue is raised her again by the author as the brother-in-law says he will come and visit you again "when you are really mad"; in fairness, the point is that women do talk in this culture and behave like less-than-sane people when their babies are too little to "make sense of any noises" (Emecheta, p. 46). To her brother-in-law's pronouncement, Ego replies that if she does go mad, she wants to take him, not her husband, back to her father because taking her husband (who is ugly and fat) would be disgraceful.

On page 74 Ato urges Ego to wipe that "lost look" from her face. Should she continue to have that grievous expression on her face then everyone will look at her with doubt as to her stability, Ato asserts. Making matters worse for Ego, she loses her first child and tries to commit suicide, but fails, as she does at just about everything she tries.

Teresa Derrickson teaches post-colonial literature at Gonzaga University, and she has published an article (Class, Culture, and the Colonial Context: The status of Women in Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood) that investigates the question of how colonialism has impinged upon the lives of Ibo women. This of course is not a scholar questioning how Emecheta arrived at the tone, plot, conflicts and characters in her novel, but rather it is a scholar legitimately examining the tensions between the "institutions of traditional Ibo society and the institutions of western Europe" (Derrickson). Those institutions are the "old world" (how things were before the English came with their oppressive controlling power structure) and the "new world" how it is now, in 1934, with full-blown colonialism.

The oppressive cultural practices in Ibo villages brought hardships to women, but Derrickson insists that those hardships are based more on the "historical moment of political and economic transition," a moment in history during which the British culture brought its own "values and priorities" to "clash destructively with the values and priorities of indigenous Africa." This question and this dynamic would not be relevant to the novel if it were not based on the real world of Africa in the 1930s.

In fact the identities of the Ibo women have been forcibly altered by the economic value system that was imported into Nigeria, Derrickson insists. The new economic system that Ona and Ego and the other women now live under -- "unlike their native system" -- totally fails to give them any reward or validation for their efforts. Derrickson explains that the pleasures associated with motherhood in good times -- that women like Ego anticipate with great joy -- are "ultimately negated by the difficult economic conditions" of the new urban environment the British have forced on the Ibo people.

It wasn't just the women in the Ibo community who had their identities and their lifestyles changed; it was everyone. An example of the roughness of the "new world" is found on page 57 of the book. Nwakusor is carrying a load of iron, and the drivers of the "white man's company" busses are always trying to make more money (in the new economy) so they went lickety-split from stop to stop. "The quicker the owners of these mini-buses went, the more money they would collect, for clerks and messengers working on the island preferred to go by them" (Emecheta, p. 57). It was all part of the new economy, the British corporations that hired Africans had changed everything. Emecheta does not spend a lot of narrative in a protestation sense, or in complaint-ridden sections of the book. But it is clear that when Nwakusor narrowly escaped death at the hand of the driver of a mini-bus, this was not how life used to be in Nigeria.

"If you don't know what to say," the driver "thundered," at lease take your ancient bundle of old iron off the road. I still want to make use of my life" (Emecheta, p. 57). Nwakusor was "too shocked to protest" so he picked up his old bike (which had been twisted by the impact but was still workable) and apologized. The driver was not accustomed to people being polite, "in fact one of the tools of their trade was their ability to reduce anybody to tears with pointed tongue" (Emecheta, p. 58). That passage is of course a microcosm of the larger issue with the new world and the new economy. The author uses incidents like these to establish literarily the tension that Derrickson was alluding two since colonialism had come to Lagos.

The identity of the "shouting" bus driver could be seen as a metaphor for the new British economy in that he used "uncouth language" and "shook an angry fist in the air." One can easily picture that scene in the mind's eye and knowing what bus drivers look like, identify the man instantly. And shortly after Nwakusor narrowly escaped death he crosses the road and there is Nnu Ego, "unbelievable though it was" trying to jump off a bridge into the river. She was stunned when Nwakusor called out her name, and stopped her attempt at suicide. He grabbed her and they fell to the ground. "What are you trying to do to your husband, your father, your people and your son who is only a few weeks old?" he asked her.

This chaotic scene with its tensions -- and the dead baby in the village -- cannot all be blamed on the British, but meantime Derrickson takes her point to another level vis-a-vis the pressure of the new economy on the old ways and the natives of Lagos. As the book progresses, Ego spends her "entire life," Derrickson points out, "alternately birthing children and working day in and day out as a cigarette peddler." That helps her fight against the hunger and poverty that are all around her in her household. But when her sons -- she finally has the babies she so passionately wanted for years -- grow up and leave before she is 40 years old, it breaks her heart and she is left to die on a country road with no one paying any attention. Prior to Derrickson painting a picture of Lagos prior to the arrival of the British (which helps put the novel into perspective in terms of the characters and their identities), she references a quote from midway in the novel in which Ego stops and contemplates the various troubles and injustices in her life:

"It was not fair, she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman's sense of responsibility to actually enslave her…[H]ere in Lagos, where she was faced with the harsh reality of making ends meet on a pittance, was it right for her husband to refer to her responsibility? It seemed that all she had inherited from her agrarian background

was the responsibility and none of the booty" (Emecheta, p. 137).

As to Lagos prior to the English arriving, women were not "impotent and/or trivial in the male-dominated communities of Ibo culture" (Derrickson). That is a "gross misconception" and in fact it is true that the work that men did was generally considered to be more "prestigious" than the work that women did. And indeed polygamy and "patilocal domicile" (that is, married women living in the villages where their husbands lived rather than their own villages) did secure men's power over women in general. That said, Derrickson contends that women were a "major force" in the agrarian economy in Lagos prior to the English butting in.

Women planted their own crops, they sold the surplus (that their own families did not need) in the marketplace, and moreover they exerted "exclusive control" over the management and the day-to-day operations of the village market. That is where all local commerce took place, Derrickson goes on. Beyond that, women were active participants in the dual-sex political system that was used by the Ibo society; how this worked was Ibo men governed themselves privately, and Ibo women, in turn, governed themselves separately.

The women chose their own leaders in a democratic setting -- and so did the men. There were votes on legislation that came before their respective constituencies, Derrickson continued. Given this amount of participation in the life and laws of the community, it seems women had a "formidable presence" and women had a "significant say" in how the village should be run. Derrickson is providing this background as a way to see the novel's dynamics once the colony had been established and English regulations and laws were put in place.

Criticism of polygamy is valid, Derrickson goes on, but meantime it was "well-suited to the agrarian lifestyle of the Ibo people" and it had within its system some mechanisms that allowed women "to better cope with the burdens of that type of lifestyle." To wit, polygamy allowed "co-wives…to form 'a power-bloc within the family'" -- and this power bloc was very effective, according to the literature, in "coercing an otherwise stubborn husband to behave in ways congenial to his wives" (Derrickson). '

Having several wives in the same household also gave women the chance to share cooking, babysitting, and other domestic chores; given the number of children that were born in a polygamy family, it required more than one adult female to raise those babies while the me were off working. In addition, the polygamy dynamic protected the economic interests of women by ensuring that each family had plenty of available manual labor when it was harvest time and the crops needed to be brought in.

Understanding Emecheta's novel -- not why she wrote it or what meanings she meant to convey through the narrative -- is helped, Derrickson goes on, by knowing the hardships that the female protagonist (Ego, who may have suffered from serious mental instability as was earlier mentioned) went through. Derrickson is very sympathetic towards Ego, saying she is "a victim of this newly imported capitalist society, a society in which African women are required to continue performing traditional duties and responsibilities" in an economic setting where their labor has no market value. Moving from a tribal culture -- and a tribal moral value system -- to a Western capitalist system "with all its benefits and pitfalls" has been at the expense of women like Ego, who was "stripped of former privileges" and not afforded the right to new privileges.

Meanwhile, on pages 67-68, Urbani is referenced as having dreamed not long ago that he would make so much money "from white men" by his 30th birthday, he could retire and go back to his home town in Emekuku Owerri. There, he dreamed, he would live as his grandparents lived, on the farm. In that dream, there was no place like this one he found himself in, in a place where "babies badly wanted by their parents died before they had lived at all" (Emecheta, pp. 67-68). But life at times could be so "brutal" that the only thing that made it livable "were dreams." This passage is presented just as Nnaife was trying to find out what was wrong. In fact Nnaife's identity as a father had grown in stature along with the pride that he felt from knowing there would be a new baby in the house.

And here is Urbani, struggling to keep dreaming so his hopes wouldn't be totally in vain, and he has to tell Nnaife that the child is dead. The hands that had "grown agile in years of squeezing and unsqueezing clothes in soapsuds," Nnaife's hands, stopped moving and Urbani was about to tell him the bad news. There is some certainly some symbolism and some irony in that scene; Nnaife is washing white sheets in white soapsuds for the white British master when his friend Urbani has to tell him the dark news. Then on top of that, Urbani has to explain that Ego has run away in a fit of sorrow. "Oh my God!" said Nnaife, his identity now more like one of a concerned father and husband rather than of a man who is hated by his wife and is ridiculed by her for washing clothing and sheets for the white man.

Ego wanted so badly to be a mother, to do motherly things and have babies, and of course later in the novel she does have babies (that grow up and leave her); but now things have turned sour for Nnaife and Ego, but Urbani is there to console the father. "…Stop talking like a woman," Urbani told his friend. Not everyone can be lucky with the first-born, but now, he urged Nnaife, it's up to you to get her pregnant again. "You'll see, this will soon be something of the past" (Emecheta, p. 69).

Conclusion

Oxford professor Christine Loflin brings up the added burdens that Nnaife and Ego have to bear when Nnaife's older brother passes away and Nnaife "inherits" the four wives of his older brother. This is a classic clash between the old world and the new world. Nnaife by this time has a new job and is doing pretty well; they have moved into a new apartment and their family is growing. But because urban spaces like this apartment do not allow for polygamous relationships, the new shuts out the old -- another juxtaposition that the novel presents to the alert reader. The identity of a married couple that finally has been able to raise some children and find a sense of independence from the village was moving in the right direction but now it is stymied by the addition of the four wives.

Those added burdens "ultimately cause a collapse of the family" because there are too many mouths to feed on Nnaife's salary," Loflin writes. This problem is just a microcosm of the larger burdens on the Ibo culture that were brought on by colonization. To Emecheta's credit, the novel stands very well on its own, without becoming a tale of how a culture was spoiled by capitalistic politics. The characters are dramatic and vital to the story notwithstanding the hell that is brought to bear by the collision of an old world and a new less-traditional world. And the tragic end of Ego can be seen as perhaps a metaphor for the end of the old ways of doing things that were crowded out by the new ways.