Themes of Second Class Citizen
Themes in Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta
Marriage without love
Analysis of The Theme of Marriage Without Love in Second Class Citizen
The marriage between Adah and Francis is not founded on genuine love. Both of them seem to have stuck to each other on the basis of convenience. Adah sticks to Francis as she has no relative kind enough to take her in. In short, Adah had no home to call her own, and she needed "not just any home... but a good quiet atmosphere where she could study in peace” (p. 25). Thus Francis' appearance on the scene is seen by Adah as a blessing. We are told that “Adah congratulated herself on her marriage” (p. 25). To her, Francis is a quiet young man, one who will soon be an accountant. The marriage itself starts on a wrong footing. Both of them, Francis and Adah are underage. The marriage is witnessed by only one person - Francis' mother who signs with her thumb. The couple forgets to bring a ring to the wedding. When the registry official insists on a ring, "Adah assured him that a piece of string would do registry, "they were married the following day" (p. 26). until they got home" (pp. 25-26). It is Adah's saddest day because rather than be wedded that day in the Francis seems to have been more interested in the fact that Adah will bring money into the house,
although he fears for the marriage if she works for the Americans where her salary "will be three times aliyowen (p. 26). Such is the tripty for a day's pay that she is said to have needed a protection on her first pay day. Francis fulfils that purpose by working “only half day in his office" and then taking "a bus to meet Adah in order to be a bodyguard for his wife and their money" (p. 26). The first sign of the apartness to come is in Francis leaving for England without being bothered by his wife remaining behind. Secondly, Adah feels cheated, being left in Nigeria: “so she was to stay in Nigeria, finance her husband, give his parents expensive gifts occasionally, help in paying the school fees for some of the girls, look after her young children and what then, rot?” Thirdly, for not having wept on the day of the husband's departure, Francis, still on his way to England, writes her from Barcelona: "You did not cry for me... You were very happy to see me go, were you not?" Fourthly, she is accused of not appearing in my send-off photograph” (p. 34). All these accusations and observations show that love is scanty in the relationship. Many chapters later into the story, Adah admits to herself thus: "She knew she was not loved, and was being used to give Francis an education which the family could not afford” (p. 137). The question such as "Had she loved Francis to start with?" and the answer, "the love was short- lived because Francis did nothing to keep it alive” (p. 137) evince the fact that the marriage lacked the essential nutrient identified as love from the very beginning.
A successful marriage is a reciprocal relationship
Analysis of The Theme of A successful marriage is a reciprocal relationship in Second Class Citizen
From the events in the story, it is evident that for a marriage to be successful, there ought to be mutuality. The Francis-Adah marriage fails because the relationship weighs much in Adah's disfavour. She enters the marriage in order to own a home; moreover, she and Francis are not of marriageable age. Adah is running away from wicked and non-understanding relatives. Her father had died and her mother had re- married. She is virtually alone. In this circumstance, she is ready to do anything to have her own home. However, the Obis, including her husband, Francis, are keen to quietly exploit her. Whereas she works and is prepared to utilize her salary to fend for herself, her children and Francis, the latter is more interested in his studies which unfortunately is not making progress. He prefers not to work and thinks that combining reading with a job will stall his success at studies. But the reality is different. When it falls on him to look after the children while his wife goes to work, he does the chore haphazardly while sitting at home and sharing Adah's salary when she brings it home. When Vicky falls ill, rather than their sorrow and worry bringing them together, it further divides them. Francis does not even know "how to be a man. Instead he cried, like a woman with Adah" (p. 69). Adah accuses Francis of infidelity. She warns him that should anything happen to Vicky, "I am going to kill you and that prostitute" and asks him, "You sleep with her (Trudy), do you not? You buy her pants with the money I work for, and you both spend the money I pay her when I go to work” (pp. 69-70). Francis even makes a mockery of his wife's fertile nature. On one occasion she is angry with him. Instead of beating her, he restrains himself and voices a dry joke: "You'll be telling the world soon that you're carrying another Jesus. But, if so you will soon be forced to look for your own Joseph" (p. 85). Francis is one who does not make friends, whether within or outside marriage. A sentence from the narrator in the novel attests to this observation: "Francis did not believe in friendship" (p. 104). This applies not just to outsiders but also in his relating with his wife and the children. When Adah fails to go to work because the railwaymen are on strike, her worry centres on her husband believing her. We are told that he would accuse her of laziness and would remind her they (the entire family both in England Such is the failure of the marriage that the narrator informs that in other marriages, husbands become and in Nigeria) needed her money" (p. 105) panicky and worried in case their wives died, "but not Francis... To him Adah was immortal. She has to be there, bearing his children, working for him, taking his beatings, listening to her sermons". 116). She has experienced much hassle with her pregnancy of Bubu with little or no involvement of her husband. This wells up emotion in her that she bursts into tears, which her doctor and his students view as "after baby blues." The truth is that Adah is wondering why she cannot be "loved as an individual the way the sleek woman was being loved, for what she was and not just because she could work and hand over money like a docile child" (p. 126). Furthermore, she puzzles and asks, “why was it that she was not blessed with a husband like that woman who had to wait for seventeen years for the arrival of her baby son?" (p. 126) Earlier, Adah had had to imagine "what her life with Francis would be if she had given him no child" (p.122).
The Joys of Motherhood
Analysis of The Theme of The Joys of Motherhood in Second Class Citizen
Nnu Ego, the central character of The Joys of Motherhood, whose life and sufferings will dramatize the story’s main points, is the illegitimate daughter, by a fiercely proud mistress, of the local chief in rural Ibuza. Nnu Ego’s inability to bear children with her first husband causes her father to arrange a second marriage, to Nnaife Owulum, who works in Lagos for an English family. Nnu Ego submits to marrying a man she has never met; indeed, when she does meet him, she finds in him neither esteem nor attractiveness. When Nnaife’s older brother dies, his wife, Adaku, becomes the younger brother’s junior wife. Nnaife is conscripted into the British army for action in World War II, and his two wives are left to their own resources. Adaku becomes a prostitute and does well financially; Nnu Ego remains respectable and does not. When Nnaife returns, he acquires a third wife, sixteen-year-old Okpo. Nnu Ego’s sons, as boys, are favored in society, and decide to continue their education in the United States and in Canada. Nnu Ego’s own life continues to be subordinated to men and their privileged status. Nnaife, after serving a brief prison sentence for attacking a man of a different tribe who wanted to marry one of his daughters, returns to Ibuza, with the young Okpo. Nnu Ego, disowned, dies in Ibuza obscurely, and a shrine is built for her so any infertile granddaughters can pray to her. Amesh of interconnected themes is developed in The Joys of Motherhood. At one stage, Nnu Ego thinks that if she were in Ibuza she would have her own hut and be given respect; in colonized Lagos, she has the worst of both worlds—polygamy and exploitation. She has been given to a man who is subservient before his English masters, as if he were a woman, but who still tries to exact complete obedience in the home, as if he were part of an organic social system of give and take that justified such demands. Her boys, to whom she has sacrificed everything, end up living in the New World, the epitome of modernity, and do not correspond with their mother. Nnu Ego has obeyed all the old rules but is still taken advantage of, and abandoned in old age.
Stubborn female
Analysis of The Theme of Stubborn Female in Second Class Citizen
Adah is a stubborn woman. From the outset, Adah is presented to us as a recalcitrant fellow who takes her fate in her own hands. From childhood, she has refused to accept the place given to her, either by her parents or any other person. She rejects the idea of Boy continuing his education because he is male while she, a girl-child, is denied secondary education. Adah does not accept her mother's presumption that a female child does not need too much of learning. According to Ma, "A year or two would do, as long as she can write her name and count. Then she will learn to sew" (p. 9). On her own, Adah decides to go to Methodist School and gets into Mr Cole's class. She tells Mr Cole who is surprised to see her, “I came to school - my parents would not send me" (p. 12). For not catering for all her children, schooling-wise, Ma (Adah's mother) is detained by the police. She is accused of child neglect. They take her to the police station and punish her by compelling her to drink a big bowl of garri with water" (p. 12). Adah is also punished by her father with a few strokes for being responsible for Ma's fate in the hands of the police. For making Ma drink garri almost to the bursting of her stomach, Ma makes an ironical remark: "You chose school. To school you must go from now until you go grey" (p. 15). For the manner Ibuza people honour their first son who studied in England, Adah "made a secret vow to herself that she would go to the United Kingdom one day" (p. 17). However, Adah's father's sudden death dashes her hope of earning a good education. As if that is not enough, Ma decides to remarry. She is left in the hands of her relatives who are not kind to her, essentially because of her apparent obstinacy. From very early times when her mates were thinking of something else, Adah had started thinking of marriage. She is not opposed to marriage; she only did not accept elderly suitors, in spite of mother's propaganda that "older men took better care of their wives than the young and overeducated ones" (p. 20). Being a wilful girl, she has already made up her mind that she won't marry a man "she would have to serve his food on bended knee.” Although Adah knows that many Igbo wives refer to their husband as 'master' or 'Sir', "she wasn't going to!" (p. 26) Such is her head-strong nature that her smile is taken to be a challenge to the headmaster who canes her until she bites one of the boys who carries her on his back. It is for this that she is nicknamed, "the Ibo tigress” (p. 21). Similarly, she withstands Cousin Vincent's strokes who canes her for supposedly losing the two shillings she was given to buy a pound of steak from a market. So stubborn is Adah that after receiving 50 strokes of the cane, she refuses to cry. Her cousin, Vincent, has to beg her "to cry a her again: not in this world nor in the world to come” (p. 23). little" (p. 23). After giving her a hundred and three strokes, he told Adah that he would never talk to to be Francis' type of woman and the narrator says: “Francis could beat her to death, she was not going Evidence to show that Adah is a stubborn female abound in her marital life with Francis. She refuses to stoop to that level” (p. 18.1). Although Francis is largely to blame for their disharmonious marriage, Initially , Francis was to be her saving grace. She wanted a home, and Francis' offer of marriage ought to have satisfied that desire. However, cases of her fixed ways or gauging her height with her husband lead to their various instances of misunderstandings. When she gets a hint that she may have to be in Nigeria for a while while her husband stays away in London pursuing his studies, she surmises what the intention is: "So she was to stay in Nigeria, finance her husband, give his parents expensive gifts... help in paying the school fees for some of the girls, look after the young children..." (p. 30). This is stubborn thinking. A little disagreement with Francis over whether or not the English joke with death, she insists, "You're lying Francis.” The husband feels humiliated by her referring to him as a liar for which he tells her, "This separation of ours has made you bold" (p. 40). Her arguments with her husband over minor issues attracts an obstinate response which Francis never likes. When Francis gives an excuse as to why he could not obtain a better accommodation than the one he had upon getting to England, Adah snaps: "Don't talk to me. I don't want to hear. You could have got better accommodation if you had really tried" (p. 42).
There are other cases of acts of inflexibility, say in her relationship with Trudy, the child minder or the Indian doctor who gives her drugs to enable her to have a healthy foetal growth while she had wanted the baby aborted. At the height of her disgust for Trudy whose carelessness in taking care of her children results in one of them falling ill, she remembers the ferocity of Ma, her mother: "she remembered her mother. Ma would have torn the fatty issues of this woman into shreds if she had been in this situation" (p. 56). It is not stated in the story how Adah knew her husband had been hobnobbing with Trudy. Yet she tells Francis: “I am going to kill you and that prostitute. You sleep with her, do you not?” (p. 69) Similarly, at one of the climaxes of her hatred for her husband, we are told that Francis "thought at first that she was going to smash his skull into a pulp from the way she was looking at him with thick hatred” (p. 107). From all that have been said about Adah here, she is certainly a stubborn lady.
Feminist temper
Analysis of The Theme of Feminist temper in Second Class Citizen
The novel is centred on the feminist quest of the heroine, Adah. Feminism is the pursuit by man woman to secure more freedom or welfare for females in a place where men are essentially in control or decide what happens as in our culture or tradition. This novel has many points in the narration where the heroine tries to question a poor treatment of females, assumptions about them or their being taken for granted. On the very first page of the novel, the narrator informs that Adah "arrived when everyone was expecting and predicting a boy." (p. 7). This indicates that society places more premium on the male than on the female. The narrator further remarks that the failure of Adah's parents to record her birthday is because "she was such a disappointment to her parents, to her immediate family, to her tribe..." (p. 7). Rather than encourage Adah to take up education, she being older, Boy her younger brother is taken to school. As for the girl, "a year or two would do, as long as she can write her name and count” (p. 9). This is not acceptable to Adah who not only forces herself into Mr Cole's class, but has to tell lies to obtain the two shillings to afford the cost of the entrance form.
Early in Adah's life, s has become conscious of the sexes, who is to be relied upon more than the other. She says it is her mother, Ma, who gives such a low opinion of the feminine gender. As the narrator puts it, based on what Adah thinks, "... when in real trouble, she would rather look for a man. Men were so solid, so safe" (p. 12). As it turns out in the novel, however, Adah’s reliance on her husband, Francis, is a catastrophe. Not only does he fail to lead his family, he fails to show support to his wife who is the breadwinner of the family.
Adah is compelled by the mother to choose elderly suitors who in the thinking of her mother would look after wives better. Adah is not moved by this view. She wants young suitors rather than those who "she would have to treat as a master or refer to as 'Sir' even behind his back” (p. 20). Modern feminism is not so keen about marriage but Adah's feminist temper initially saw marriage as an escape route out of homelessness. The home she aspires to have is not one there would be trouble today and fights tomorrow, but a good, quiet atmosphere..." (p. 25). Ironically, her marriage with Francis does not provide such a peaceful air.
In their marriage, Adah diseovers that Francis is an African through and through" (p. 30). Even what concerns Adah is not meant to be known by her. To Francis, "he was the mafe, and he was right to tell her what she was going to do" (p. 30). Only once does he kiss Adah in public, and thereafter Francis remains within his African traditional dictates. Conversations often turn into quarrels and certain words or expressions used by Adah are re-examined and given some connotations by her husband. When Adah joins Francis from Nigeria and during a discussion, the former says, "You're lying, Francis," Francis takes it as an affront: "This separation of ours has made you bold. You've never in your life told me that I was lying before" (p. 40). Their relationship gets to the point where “Adah thought Francis hated her" (p. 43). For issues in their marriage, Francis always consults his parents. He is always conservative like loathing his children picking up another language spoken in urban Lagos. With respect to the children's care while Adah works, Francis only does his studies in the house, and is not prepared to look after them. When Adah reminds him that they had decided he looked after them, he retorts: "You mean you decided ou thought it all out, and then you tell me what I am going to do" (p. 51). He is one who is ashamed of his few friends seeing him push his children in a pram and complains bitterly to his wife. On an occasion, Adah prays him to take the children to Trudy, the child minder, he cries "Oh God... Have I any choice?" Apart from having asserted her humanness when Boy rather than herself was encouraged to go to school, her feminist inclination makes her play with the term, "she was only a girl" when she is having a chat with a nurse. When the nurse retorts at Adah's "only a girl," the latter ruminates on what happens in her society: “But how was she to tell this beautiful creature (the nurse) that in her society she could only be sure of the love of her husband and the loyalty of her parents-in-law by having and keeping alive as many children as possible, and that though a girl may be counted as one child, to her people a boy was like four children put together?" (p. 68). One of Francis' regrets seems to be his bringing his wife to London and letting her "mix with middle-class English women. They (African women) soon knew their rights” (p. 70). One of the rights is having their husbands all to themselves. Thus when Adah notices that Francis and Trudy are flirting, she is beside herself with anger. She faces her husband: "Last night you left at eleven, and you did not come back until I was ready for work. Seeing Titi!" (p. 70). He exerts the need for a response to familyissues on Francis. She uses sex to obtain a response to what she wants her husband to do: “she would encourage him to work himself up and then bring up important discussions like where they were going to live" (p. 94). Often times when she resists him, "it would result in blows" (p. 95). She herself could with hatred" (p. 107) be occasionally violent. For instance, when Adah fails to go to work because of the railway men's strike and Francis asks her certain questions which seem to doubt her sincerity, the narrator remarks: "He thought at first that she was going to smash his skull into pulp from the way she was looking at him From her childhood when the headmaster identifies her as "the Ibo tigress," Adah shows that she does not take nonsense, especially between her and the husband. As the story unfolds, her hatred for her husband is unhidden. Her non-respectful comments about her husband's "little Chinese mouth," his stomach and his cheap linen pyjamas or wrinkled pyjamas” go to show that she is not afraid of him as such. Thus Adah's feminist hot-headedness is well established in the novel, particularly when she dismantles her marriage with Francis, and goes on to hire a two-bedroom apartment, the first of such space since she arrives England,
Racism and Prejudice
The Theme of Racism and Prejudice in Second Class Citizen
Second-Class Citizen presents racism and prejudice as barriers to Adah as she attempts to achieve her dreams. The blatant racism against Black people in London is especially prominent when Adah seeks accommodations for her family in chapter 6; most advertisements include the line “Sorry, no coloureds.” Adah and Francis face discrimination firsthand when they go to view a two-room apartment. The woman with whom Adah spoke on the phone to arrange the viewing of the rooms invited her over, but Adah had also disguised her voice so the woman would not know she was Black. When the couple arrives, the woman sticks her head out the window before coming downstairs, but she apparently could not see them well, judging on her shocked reaction when she opens the door:
Adah thought the woman was about to have an epileptic seizure. . . . She made several attempts to talk, but no sound came.
When the landlady finally speaks, she tells them the rooms have just been let, and it is obvious that her decision is based on their race. Even though Adah has been made aware of racism in London before this incident, she hasn’t “faced rejection in this manner.”
Emecheta also depicts prejudice among Nigerian immigrants in London, where Yoruba and Ibo people adopt suspicious and stereotypical views toward one another. The Yoruba people even think Ibos are cannibals. Late in the novel, Adah must hide from a Yoruba landlord that she is Ibo in order to rent rooms for her and the children.
In their first apartment building in London, Adah and Francis are discriminated against by other Nigerian immigrants, both because they are Ibo and because the other tenants think that Adah and Francis, with their education and Adah’s respectable job history, feel superior to those who work in labor industries. The other tenants also judge Adah and Francis for not wanting to foster their children elsewhere, as many other young Nigerian couples have done. The prejudice against Adah and Francis leads to their family being evicted from the building. The other tenants “knew how difficult it would be for them, but that was their desired effect.”
Irresponsible husbandhood
Analysis of The Theme of Irresponsible Husbandhood in Second Class Citizen
Francis marries early in his life. It is not clear if the manner he comports himself as a husband is because he takes on such a responsibility so early in life. Adah considers herself lucky marrying Francis who was not an old baldy, neither was he a 'made man' then..." (p. 25). As the days progress, the way he says or does things shows that he is not ready, neither for fatherhood nor for husbandhood. He sets to go to England for further studies without being bothered how his wife will fare at home. Instead he is more interested in noting whether or not Adah cries on the eve of his departure from Nigeria. Anything between him and Adah will "be referred first to Big Pa, Francis's father, then to his mother, then discussed among the brothers of the family..." (pp. 28-29). Adah hides the fifth pregnancy from her husband because she knows he will "repeat it to the Nobles, to his parents and to everybody" (p. 164). We are informed that at the height of their disagreement over the 'cap' issue,"Francis made it clear he was writing to his mother and father. Adah was not surprised at this” (p. 161). Their marriage "was finished as soon as Francis called in the Nobles and the other tenants..." (p. 161) and let them into what should have been a family secret. Yet it is this same neighbours, the women in particular, who had writlen Adah an open petition warning her to control her husband, because he was chasing them all" (p. 168).
At the least provocation, Francis beats his wife. Once, he beats her so much that their landlord, Mr Noble stops him from hitting her. However, she "was dizzy with pain and her head throbbed. Her mouth was bleeding" (p. 160). After she has packed out of their Nobles' one room apartment, Francis visits her with a knife and beats her even as he knows she is five months pregnant. But for their Irish co-tenant, Mr Devlin, perhaps Adah would have lost her life. Part of why he will be regarded as an irresponsible fellow is what he does with his wife's manuscript. He is conservative to the point where he does not believe that a woman should be a writer. He wonders in a strange way: "A woman writer in his own house, in a white man's country!" Reminded that "Flora Nwapa is black and she writes," he retorts: *Flora Nwapa writes her stuff in Nigeria" (p. 184). Not only would Francis not read the manuscript, he calls the material “rubbish" and goes ahead to burn it. Francis finds it difficult to accept change. He does not accept a woman claiming equality with a man or proving to be intelligent. He tells his wife, “You keep forgetting that you are a woman and that you are black" (p. 184). When Adah is about to start work with the American Consulate, he shudders to think that his wife will earn more than himself. He complains to his father: "Her pay will be three timesmy own. My colleagues at work will laugh at me." He asks his father what he should do. His father is angry with him and calls him a fool of a man" (p. 26) and goes on to remind him that Adah's money is his, especially as she practically has no direct relations interested in her or in what she is doing: "The money is for you, can't you see?" (p. 26) More or less an irresponsible husband, he loathes work. He is contented to be fed by his wife Francis is not bothered that his wife whom he leaves behind in Nigeria is taking care of herself and their two children, is financing his education in England, gives his parents expensive gifts and caters for the fees of his younger sisters. Although he does not work, he grumbles when he is asked to look after Titiand Vicky while Adah goes to work. He does not regard his looking after his own children as part of his responsibility. On an occasion he complains, “Who is going to look after your children for you? (p. 49) It is her children, not his own as well! He tells her, "I can't go on looking after your children for you." The narrator enlightens the readers on what goes on about children in Nigeria: "In Nigeria, when children were good, they were the father's, they took after him, but when they were bad, they were the mother's, taking after her and her old mother" (p. 49). Failing his summer examinations, he blames it all on her: "If she had not brought her children and saddled him with them... if she had not become pregnant so soon after her arrival, he would have passed” (pp. 54-55). A claim like this is an indication that Francis is not the husband of a family as he is not prepared to shoulder any responsibility or admit outcomes which he clearly initiated. So unhelpful is he that the narrator informs us, "Adah seldom called her husband for anything" (p. 148).
The presence' as the determiner of life
Analysis of The Theme of The presence' as the determiner of life in Second Class Citizen
Within the first paragraph of the novel, the narrator makes reference to the presence', sometimes a presence. It is used in the narrative to stand as the dream former and shaper, a promise fulfilled because there is a superior being somewhere dictating how things work even though a human being or human beings would want such things to work in another way. We are informed that there is always a presence which can be felt or which can direct or dictate one's consciousness until what is initially considered a dream becomes a reality. Adah's dream has a way of "assumed substance" which lives with her just like a Presence" (p. 17).
"The Presence would be akin to Adah's spiritual guide and director. She communes with this spiritual force within her such that both she and this spirit do exchange smiles when events or incidents favour her. This is the circumstance which draws a smile on Adah's face when there is a way for her, having not to leave school when her father suddenly dies, and her mother remarries. It is this moment of a misunderstood smile on her face which draws the ire of the headmaster, for which she is given several lashes of the cane. Just before then, Adah had heard the Presence tell her, "You are going, you must go and to one of the very best of schools; not only are you going, you're going to do well there" (p. 21). Thus "she was smiling at the Presence, not the headmaster, and she suspected that the headmaster knew she was telling the truth: he had simply wanted to cane her, that was all” (p. 22) "The Presence' constitutes Adah's drive to success or getting solved what ordinarily would be difficult to contain. As she matures to go to the secondary school and her father had died and the mother, a mere housewife, had just remarried, Adah obtains a scholarship. The narrator defines the Presence as existing right beside her, just like a companion” (p. 24). The narrator does not directly identify the Presence as God; it is rather God's manifestation in the heroine. It is her comforter, one who works with her and consoles her when she is in trouble or about to be in dire straits. "The Presence' is on and off. Certain measures and comportment made it stay with her; a behaviour which is unacceptable could drive it away. We are told that at this point Adah "wished the Presence was still with her to give her a clue but it seemed to have deserted her when she landed in England between her and her husband, (p. 60). Maybe the Presence requires one to be in a particular frame of mind, as in a state of calmness unloving, ungrateful and difficult. At a point she wonders if the Presence is not what ordinarily should or holiness. Her landing in England is marked by marital crisis with Francis proving uncooperative, be her instinct. In Nigeria, it had been active, she being closer to Mother Nature. However, in England conscious; he seems to have inequality as a fact of life. We are told that Adah does not expect Francis, there may have resulted a new circumstance which would still perhaps have to do with the relationship One suspects that the narrator's reference to "a man upstairs” (p. 143) connects us once again to the Presence which Adah considers missing as she is no longer near Mother Nature. A man upstairs heared for what happened to everybody, including herself and her children" (p. 143). Here, the narrator identifies the man upstairs as Jesus, a great man who is still known as the son of God'. Adah is very conscious of her God and when she is helpless, she leaves everything in His hands: "But what else was there for her to do? She prayed to God again and again to forgive her" (p. 156). At the height of her heated relationship with Francis, her awareness of the Presence returns as in her childhood: "She went nearer to it in her prayers. But she never knelt down to pray in the orthodox way... she talked to Him all the time, and Adah felt that He was always there” (p. 164). For her, "London... killed Adah's congregational God" (p. 165) leaving her with a personal God who loomed large and really alive" (p. 165).
Gender Roles and Misogyny
Analysis of The Theme of Gender Roles and Misogyny in Second Class Citizen
Adah’s options in life are determined by her gender. In Lagos, Adah must beg to go to school; as a girl, her formal education is much less important than that of her brother. Once she is finally able to begin her education, she must work to continue on to high school by winning a scholarship, and she repeatedly faces questions about why she is still going to school as she reaches a marriageable age. As a teenager, Adah marries Francis Obi for security. However, in a reversal of traditional gender roles, Adah is the breadwinner of the family. Francis devotes his time to studying accounting, while Adah earns a good job at the American Consulate. Very early in the marriage, she becomes pregnant with their first two children in quick succession. Nevertheless, Francis does not work, and Adah continues to work and support the family.
The concept of second-class citizen
When the story takes off, the concept of second-class citizen applies mainly to the female, especially in Nigeria. Adah's coming is not marked nor her birthday noted because she arrives "when everyone was expecting and predicting a boy" (p. 7). She is thus "a disappointment to her parents, to her immediate family, to her tribe..." (p. 7). In the scheme of things, Boy is considered more important than Adah. Adah's schooling is stalled in order to give Boy a headstart in education. The typical family would want their children to go to school: "Boys were usually given preference, though" (p. 9). At eight, the argument rages as to whether Adah should be allowed to go to school. Ma, Adah's mother, says "a year or two" of schooling "would do, as long as she can write her name and count. Then she will learn to sew." This is the mother's mantra as she "had heard her mother say this many times to her friends” (p. 9). One suspects that Adah's wildness for which she is punished with caning on the side of CousinVincent and the headmaster is her refusal to accept the second-class status. Her tendency to serve as the Ibo tigress' must have made all who accosted her want to suppress her. Her relations do not care whether or not she gets further education after primary school. How she affords the secondary school entrance fee does not bother them because being a second-class citizen, she will not go far. With respect to the disagreement between husband and wife, the second-class sex/citizen is at the background. Francis is not happy with his wife because she fails to cry as he leaves the country. As a woman who is supposedly his wife she ought to cry. When Adah tells Francis he is lying, his response shows that Adah is second class: "You've never in your life told me I was lying before” (p. 40). In England, the concept of second-class citizen goes beyond sex or gender and incorporates race or where one comes from: "you may be living like an elite but the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen” (p. 43). This is what Francis reminds his wife of. He sees his wife as his mule who works "harder than most girls of her age and because she was orphaned very early in life” (p. 45). Thus he prefers to do his reading and leave working to fend for the family to Adah. Francis is race-that he accepts his status in life as second-class. of their second-class ranking. "Her house-hunting was made more difficult because she was black. In In their desire to find a new abode, husband and wife have to contend with discrimination because 76). Nothing like this existed in Nigeria before she travelled to England. But in England, Adah leams some places where there is a vacant room "nearly all the notices had 'Sorry, no coloureds on themthat "black was inferior," the equivalent of second-class citizen. Gradually she learns that her colour The story of Mr Noble we have come to know in the novel is "when he became a second rale person, when he became second-class" (p. 89). As it is said, he is a retired civil servant in Nigeria and the only son of a certain chief in Benin City. He came to England to study Law. But poverty occasioned was something she was supposed to be ashamed of " (p. 76). by his second-class gradation brings him down to his knees. He is a butt of jokes , including some which demand that he undress to show that he has no tail. Each time Mir Noble does this , he carns himself a pinn of beer. The money he makes from a railway accident enables him to own a house said to be "too old, um shabby for any white family” (p. 93). When the white doctor fails to come to cure Vicky of his ailmen on Christmas, it is understandable since every person will like to stay indoors . However, the main issue in that the patient for which the doctor is being invited again and again is "a black child” who “had taken till on Christmas Day" (p. 149). Even the white man's locum, an Indian, does not come. He who comes is a Chinese, a second-class citizen like herself. The Chinaman examines Vicky and asserts that he had been bitten by a bed-bug. When Francis and Adah appear uncomfortable with the Chinese man's diagnosis, he assures that his grandmother back home occasionally suffers from bug-bite. She used to eliminate bugs by getting "cigarette tins and put (ting] all the feet of the bed in them, so that the bugs would fall into the tins, that had already been half-filled with water" (p. 151). Thus a second-class doctor identifies what is wrong with the child of a second-class citizen and diagnoses it correctly. The narrator asks: "How were they supposed to know that Vicky was not dying, but only bitten by a bed-bug?" (p. 151).