Women within the Story: How their inner strength is what gives them the power to move forward
The role of women in novels is one
that always changes as the world itself changes, histories are altered, women
are liberated, and the past comes to light as a time that had once oppressed
women. Chinua Achebe’s novels Things Fall
Apart and No Longer at Ease both
center on male characters and women are in the background pushing the story
along and changing the lives of the male protagonist. As an answer to Achebe’s
novels Chimamanda Adichie wrote the short story “The Headstrong Historian”,
unlike the male protagonist of Achebe’s Africa Adichie’s story is centered on a
female character from the same Ibo village from Things Fall Apart. All of the female characters in these three
stories live in a patriarchal society that is created from traditions and
religious influences. Though they influence the male characters and have strong
personalities they’re still tied down to the male heirs, husbands, and sons.
The women in these stories have a
strength that is on par with the male characters in the story, their daughters
have that same strength and will to be able to stand next to the males of the
village. Two women from the Okonkwo household who have the strength to go head
to head with Okonkwo himself. One of them is his second wife Ekwefi who
although has lost many children throughout her years makes her one of the
strongest women in Literature. Ekwefi loss of her children and the births of
those by Okonkwo’s other wives made her bitter towards her own life,
“Her
husband’s wife took this for malevolence, as husbands’ wives were wont to. How
could she know that Ekwefi’s bitterness did not flow outwards to others but
inwards into her own soul; that she did not blame others for their good fortune
but her own evil chi who denied her any?”[1]
This
bitterness and the blame she placed on her own chi is fostered from the belief
system of the Ibo people within the village. It has dictated the life she lived
and why she couldn’t bare her husband any children. Only after sacrificial
killings and visits to the town oracle could she finally bare a child. These
trials make Ekwefi the strongest character even over her own daughter Ezinma.
She is able to withstand more pain than the other wives but she also has the
strength to go head to head with her husband when other wives would have been
complacent. Ezinma on the other hand is the apple in her father’s eye and grows
up to become a beauty who stays within the traditions of her people. What makes
Ezinma different from her brothers is that she has the same strength of
character as both her parents and as her mother’s only child they have a very
close relationship. Okonkwo often wishes that she had been born a boy so that
he could have made her heir to his fortune but because she was born a girl his
best option is to marry her to someone that he would be proud to have as a
son-in-law. Not once thinking about giving his wealth to his daughter, which
mirrors the same practices of the European settlers who had come to the land.
This is one of the few instances in which both cultures are the same,
especially where women are concerned.
On the other side of Achebe’s novel
is Adichie’s “The Headstrong Historian”, where the central character is Nwamgba the wife of Okonkwo’s close friend Obierika.
Adichie’s short story gives a greater strength to the female characters who
exist within the village. Like Ekwefi she loves her son so much that she will
fight to let him keep what is rightfully his. Since the death of her husband is
what drives the story making Nwamgba choose to keep her son alive from those
who want what is his she gets him into a Christian school so that he can learn
the ways of the English so that he can fight against his uncles. This is what
creates the tension within Nwamgba because her son loses his link to the
culture he was born into in favor of the Christian religious practices.
Adichie’s story also addresses the fascination of the grandchildren of the Ibo
people as well as most people who grow up wanting to know about their cultural
heritage. The character of Grace in the short story, who Nwamgba believed is
the reincarnation of her husband, shows the strength of a generation that was
white washed in their own history where her greatest achievements would be
bound to making African history the story of the Africans and not the one
created by European nations, even when African historians were against it “It was Grace who would ponder this story for
a long time, with great sadness, and it would cause her to make a clear link
between education and dignity, between the hard, obvious things that are
printed in books and the soft, subtle things that lodge themselves in the
soul.”[2]
Grace would later change her name to Afamefuna which makes her one with the
world her grandmother lived in but also creates a new generation of strong
willed Ibo women that have the same power as the men even when some men believe
that what she accomplished wasn’t that much of an accomplishment.
As
a mirror of the change in women in the difference between Adichie’s story and
the women in Achebe’s story is shown in No Longer at Ease from the main
protagonist’s love interest Clara. She lives in a world that is still ruled by
the laws and superstitions of the old world culture as well as the new
Christian world. Unlike Afamefuna who built her life around making educational
and personal gains, Clara who had a formal education in nursing and medicine
and should have been highly regarded among her people is the outcast. Tied down
with the burden of the old traditional ways she is what would keep Obi Okonkwo
from realizing his true potential according to those he is associated with.
Free-spirited and strong-willed Clara seems childish but is actually trying to
separate herself from the world she grew up in as an osu, but she will always
be considered an outcast even in a Christian faith where everyone was to be
accepted. She can’t win in a world where how a woman is treated is dictated by
religious beliefs, both old and new.
All of these female characters show
an incredible strength in a still evolving world where religion and patriarchy
are the end all of every conversation. Men would always gain the upper hand
because oppression is better than letting them have any power. They maybe
characters within the background of a story dominated by a male influence but
they are the strongest characters within the story. What Achebe’s novels don’t
acknowledge is the greatest strength of these characters are their wills to
move forward no matter the tragedy they face. Adichie’s story is what gives
them the voice that they needed to display their feelings and personal
triumphs. It is the true strength of female character when they’re able to move
away from the world that keeps them bound to one old tradition.
[1]
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart(New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 79.
[2]
Chimanmanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Headstrong Historian”; available from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/23/the-headstrong-historian
; accessed 16 November 2015.
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