Setting of Second-Class Citizen

The novel is physically set in Lagos and London. Adah is a teenager who is desirous of obtaining Western education. At this time, education was largely for boys who were then thought to be more useful than girls. Adah's family lived on Akinwumi Street. Igbo and Yoruba parents lived together and exchanged ethnic slurs about each other. Igbo people thought bringing up their children in Lagos was dangerous as it would make them pick "up the Yoruba-Ngbati accent" (p. 8). In school, Adah was nicknamed "the Ibo tigress" (p. 21). The Yoruba said of the Igbo as having "cannibalistic tendencies" (p. 22). Some of her Yoruba classmates used to ask her what human flesh tasted like because "you Ibos used to eat people, didn't you?" (pp. 21-22) Although Western religion was gaining foot in a place like Lagos, traditionalism was still tolerated. Thus when Francis is about to leave for London, a relative comes to make a special prayer to River Oboshi: "some pieces of kolanut were brought by Francis' mother, and these were broken by the relative, then they were thrown into a circle on the floor, drawn with a chalk. A long prayer was sung to the goddess, who was four hundred miles away in Ibuza ..." (pp. 31-32). Through persuasion, Adah and her two children were allowed to leave for London by her mother-in-law. A lot of promises were madebto Francis' Ma, including the projection that it was only going to England that would ensure "Francis in his big American car and I in my small one... in England I will work and send you money... All the girls will go to secondary school... And when I come back, I shall earn more than double what I'm

earning now" (p. 35). In London, the Obis lived in two places - Ashdown Street in Kentish Town and Willes Road by Kentish Town Station at different times. In each case, the couple and their children lived in a room without conveniences. Although Francis is decidedly a wicked husband, the nature of the London of this era contributed to his lovelessness. It is cold, unfriendly and anyone who is not white is a second- class citizen: "you may be living like an elite, but the day you land in England, you are a second-class  citizen" (p. 43). Adah calls England "this God-forsaken country" and wishes she "had not come" (p. 42).

Their first landlord and the landlady are not friendly. They are in their thirties, they have been married for ten years and have no child of their own. Consequently, they "resented Francis' idea of bringing his children to England in the first place" (p. 49). They are glad to hear that the children "would not stay with their parents at Ashdown Street. They would have to be fostered" (p. 50). But Adah cannot hear about such an arrangement. The house in which the Obis live has a second-hand heater and always smoked" (p. 52); the children have no amusements and will not be allowed to play for "fear they would break their necks on the steep stairs" (p. 52).

Intolerance of the landlord and landlady drives the couple from Kentish Town to Willes Road by Kentish Town Station, to a house owned by a fellow Nigerian who has spent the better part of his life in England. Mr Noble, their new landlord, was given his name "when he came to England, when he became a second-rate person, when he became second-class” (p. 89). The compensation for being wounded in his work place at the railway is the money with which he invests "in buying an old terrace house in Willes Road, just by Kentish Town Station" (p. 91). Although he buys the entire three-floor building, the two top floors were occupied by two sisters who had been born in the house" (pp. 91- 92). Willes Road is narrow and curves into Prince of Wales Road. When approached from the Queen Crescent side "it had a gloomy and unwelcoming look” (p. 95).

With such a setting, it is not surprising that nothing eventful actually takes place here except the birth of Bubu. This place is Adah's unhappiest place of residence. Francis is as unhelpful as ever. In spite of uncertainties as Adah bore her fourth pregnancy, her husband is not bothered: "Adah remembered then that she had read or heard of husbands who became panicky and worried in case their wives died. But not Francis" (p. 116). In spite of the danger of losing her life, resulting from her aching after-pregnancy experience, Francis is unperturbed. Adah is lonely, notwithstanding that she lives with her husband and four children. Francis is conservative and non-conversational in his comportment. He is a man who cannot kiss his wife in public, a common gesture in England. It is in Mr Noble's house that Adah quarrels the more with her husband, receives more beating from him and has her manuscript burnt to ashes.