The Joy of Motherhood

 The Joy of Motherhood by Buchi emecheta 

This blog is a response to the thinking activity task on 'The Joy of Motherhood' by Buchi Emecheta. This task was given by Yesha maam.

About Buchi Emecheta:

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962,who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.

Emecheta's themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education gained recognition from critics and honours. She once described her stories as "stories of the world, where women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." Her works explore the tension between tradition and modernity. She has been characterised as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".

About The Joy of Motherhood :

The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was first published in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 1980 and reprinted 1982, 2004, 2008. The basis of the novel is the "necessity for a woman to be fertile, and above all to give birth to sons". It tells the tragic story of Nnu-Ego, daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing.

"The fear of everybody was that the man might give in and say, "After all, it's her life." However a thing like that is not permitted in Nigeria; you are simply not allowed to commit suicide in peace, because everyone is responsible for the other person. Foreigners may call us a nation of busybodies, but to us, an individual's life belongs to the community and not just to him or her."

 This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centres on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. Traditional tribal values and customs begin to shift with increasing colonial presence and influence, pushing Ego to challenge accepted notions of "mother", "wife", and "woman". Through Nnu Ego's journey, Emecheta forces her readers to consider the dilemmas associated with adopting new ideas and practices against the inclination to cleave to tradition. In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in child bearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.

The basic narrative lends itself toward neo-feminism. The main female characters struggle to shed the conditioning which forces them to act out roles that bring little fulfilment. With reference to this, study The Joys of Motherhood by applying a feminist theory.

Neo- feminism :

The novel The Joy of Motherhood accommodates the aspect of western feminism which brings in the light gender inequality, sexual difference, and gender oppression within the Igbo society. Novel also highlights the way women are oppressed and silenced by patriarchy. Though “concentrating on gender oppression alone would never make sense for who always experienced sexual and racial oppression as linked and compounded”.

Buchi Emecheta applies Western feminist ideology of ‘Motherhood’ for criticising the African patriarchal aspects of ‘Mothering’. Motherhood is believed to be the central focus of women’s isolation and oppression. It is rightly said that, “the joys of motherhood is a kind of false consciousness, it really is a power relation and women are duped into thinking that it holds any promise of sovereignty or free expression”. The novel The Joy of Motherhood is the story of female protagonist Nnu Ego, who enjoys her life being mother of many children in order to have a comfortable old age. She is ready to sacrifice herself in order to feed and give clothes to children. 

Emecheta tries to offer her critique the patriarchal meaning of motherhood through her character Nnu Ego. Nnu Ego begs money from Nnaife to feed her children but Nnaife asserts that, “I'm not giving you a penny, because I haven’t a penny to give” (Emecheta 1979, 136). Nnaife again said that, “it's your responsibility to feed your children as best you can ''. These words indicate that a woman is a slave of man, she is a subject of oppression by the patriarchal society. It is rightly said that, “she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children […] it was not fair she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman's sense of responsibility to actually enslave her” (137). Ego has experiences of marginalisation and oppression as a mother, and Emecheta's views of the African patriarchy.

"God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately."

Nnu is ready to struggle vainly to make both ends meet. Here the narrator describes how she manages the family, “ Nnu Ego still sold firewood, garri and other foodstuffs. Every morning neighbours could hear her calling: “Oshia, Adim, twins, wake up and let us go to the waterside!” There she would buy the firewood for the day’s sale and they would all carry it home. She normally left Nnamdi with Iyawo Itsekiri. As she looked at the children trooping in front of her with their little bundles of firewood, she used to Lsay, “Thank you, my chi, that they are healthy and strong. One day, they will become people”.

Buchi Emecheta criticised the way African patriarchal institutions define the word motherhood. In the absence of her husband, she, being alone, cares for her children in the best possible way in any worst condition. She does petty works, sells wood only for her children. She also saves money for their school fees. She avers, “On my life. I have to work myself to the bone to look after them; I have to give them my all. And if I'm lucky enough to die in peace, I have to give them my soul”. Due to hard work she grows faint. Adim knows that her mother Nnu Ego is not aged but she only looked in her seventies. Thus being a devoted mother, she does sacrifice her youth, life for her children. She never makes many friends, “she had never really made many friends, so busy had she built up her joys as a mother”. In this way she has a lonely death with no children and no friends.

Buchi Emecheta follows Western feminists who demand for educational rights for women, she offers her critique on the African society which offers education only for men. Emecheta depicts her critical views through her character Adaku who represents the liberal woman. She knows that education is a way to women’s freedom, so she tries to educate her daughters. Buchi Emechta tries to encourage African women to be educated in order to acquire "a room of their own" by example of this character Adaku.

Conclusion:

The novel The Joys of Motherhood is about postcolonial feminism in the image of Nnu Ego. Feminism and post-colonialism are both overlapped at many levels, for example superior-inferior,power-powerless. The phases of hybridity, Othering and ambivalence are faced by the protagonist. The protagonist Nnu Ego daughter of Chief Agbadi accepts the inferior status in the colonised African society. Louisa O Brien rightly said that, “Women as doubly colonised, firstly by white colonialism, and secondly by black masculinity are placed at the bottom of a hierarchy of value through the gendered response by the black man to his racial oppression. Those two oppressions are thus irrevocably intertwined: the more feminised the black man is by the white man, the more he is inferior and the more he needs to assert his masculinity, by which I mean his superiority, over the black woman.”

Thank you