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Jolanda Cornish
Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood:
The Value of Tradition in a Non-Traditional World
In her autobiography, Head Above Water, Buchi Emecheta writes that she composed her novel, The Joys of Motherhood, out of despair over her tumultuous
relationship with her eldest daughter. While The Joys of Motherhood is about the connection between an Ibo woman and her children, there are other critical themes represented within the work. Critics analyzing the novel most often approach the text through the lenses of feminist, Marxist, or post-colonial theories. Feminist critics base their analysis on Emecheta’s depiction of marital relations between men and women, which in turn reflects the overall subservient position of women in traditional African cultures. Marxist critics deconstruct the text for the signs of how capitalism has adversely impacted African society. Postcoloniality specifically manifests in the text as the clash between colonialists and Africans and how colonial occupation has altered the natural development of African cities and villages, and how the influences of that colonial presence in Africa remains disruptive. These analyses are all valid and serve to accurately analyze the text. However, there is a beautiful aspect of the novel that should not be overlooked. The Joys of Motherhood provides various examples of how an oppressed people manage to sidestep the obstructions placed within their society. The novel models the ways in which the oppressed manage to create insular communities to mantain a dignified daily existence in which they can observe traditional customs.
The Joys of Motherhood is part of an autobiographical series of five novels based on Emecheta’s life. The series consists of the novels The Bride Price, In the Ditch, Second Class Citizen, The Slave Girl, and The Joys of Motherhood. Like the protagonist in several of the novels, Emecheta is an immigrant to London. Born in an Ibo village and educated in a missionary school in Lagos, Nigeria, Emecheta married at a young age to a fellow African student, and the couple emigrated to England for broader opportunities. Once in London, marital difficulties arose, and despite five children, the couple divorced. Emecheta’s autobiographical series chronicles her experiences as first a young bride and then a single parent in London. Mixed with her contemporary British existence and Ibo traditions gleaned from her own and her ancestors’ experiences, Emecheta’s novels signify the position of the non-western citizen in an increasingly globalized world.
The Joys of Motherhood begins in the year 1934 and ends after World War II just before the African Independence movements and the Nigerian Civil Wars. The novel chronicles the protagonist Nnu Ego’s conception made between her father, an Ibo chief, and her mother, a concubine from a neighboring village. After her mother’s death, Nnu Ego is raised with the benefits of her father’s status and is traditionally married off to a respectable young man in the village. After a few years marriage, it becomes apparent that Nnu Ego’s chi will not allow her to conceive, so her husband takes a second wife. Nnu Ego returns to her father’s house and is again married off, but this time to a fellow Ibo working in Lagos as a domestic for British colonials. The arranged marriage between Nnaife and Nnu Ego is never smooth, and indeed from her first sight of her husband on their wedding day in Lagos, Nnu Ego is disillusioned, though willing to follow custom and fulfill her duties as a wife. She is unhappy with Nnaife’s duties as a domestic servant, especially his having to wash his colonial mistress’s undergarments, but she hopes that her chi will bless the union by allowing her to become a mother this time. After the death of the first baby, Nnu Ego eventually goes on to mother eight children. Despite his position in British colonial society as a domestic servant, Nnaife fully assumes his position as the male head-of-household in his home as prescribed by Ibo custom. He therefore has the final say on household affairs and is the breadwinner. As the eldest son of his family, upon his younger brother’s death, Nnaife marries his two sisters-in-law and brings one of them to Lagos and incorporates her and her children into the household with his family with Nnu Ego.
As an Ibo minority in Lagos among Yorubas and British imperialists, Nnu Ego and her family live below the economic poverty line. Since the novel takes place before the Nigerian Civil Wars, there is not much strife depicted between the Ibos and Yorubas. The main conflict in the novel is how the Africans navigate the British imperialistic order. United against a common adversary, the Ibos and Yorubas in The Joys of Motherhood forge a loose knit community and rely on each other during hard times. The men also depend on each other for support. Nnaife, and his co-worker Ubani and the other men carouse and drink together as well as console each other in their own
ways. This alliance between Ibo and Yorubas is especially apparent in the relationships between the women. For instance, as a new wife in Lagos, neighboring women show Nnu Ego the best places to market for cheap, fresh foods. When Nnaife looses his job after his British employers abscond due to World War II, the neighboring women help Nnu Ego find cigarettes and other goods to stock a roadside retail stand in order for her to earn extra money. Also, as according to cultural customs, the women help one another deliver their babies. The women especially rely on each other when the men work away from home and when they are drafted into the British army. With Nnaife away, Nnu Ego has the help of neighboring women to feed her children and as an overall support system. When the British army commanders her living quarters, Cordelia helps Nnu Ego move her children and belongings into new housing. Unable to read English, Nnu Ego relies on Mama Abby to read Nnaife’s letters from the army and deposit his allotment checks into the bank.
Nnu Ego and her fellow neighbors experience the vicissitudes of a changing society without losing the essence of their traditions. While the Africans are buffeted about by the overarching turmoil and conflicts of the British, the Germans, and the other Western states, the Africans manage to maintain their cultural identity. As dictated by the rules of
imperialism, the Africans, especially those most vulnerable like Nnu Ego and her children, suffer economic hardship and nearly starve to death—most of the time without knowing what the conflicts of the “Western powers” are about. Asks Nnu Ego of her
friend, “But, Ato, on whose side are we? Are we for the Germans or the Japanese, or the other one, the British?” Ato answers back, “I think we are on the side of the British. They own Nigeria you know.” Nnu Ego responds back, “And Ibuza too?” “I don’t know
about that,” Ato confessed. The implication of this exchange demonstrates that while the British have imperialistic economic power over the country, the cultural essence of the people can remain untouched.
In his critical work, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o posits that language is the conveyor of
culture within a society. Having made the personal, artistic sociopolitical decision to only write in his native African language, Wa Thiong’o theorizes that the enculturation of English on African citizens is symbolic of the state of neo-imperialism, and that the
“peasantry” or “proletariat” class is the keeper of traditional values. It is for his need to communicate with the masses that Thiong’o decided to write in Gikuyu. Yet, his position raises the interesting point of how imperialized countries can reconcile having the younger generations raised as English writers and speakers while trying to recapture the cultural purity of the past. Also, others would question the feasibility of removing English on the grounds that the world is now an even more globalized place. In The Joys of Motherhood, Emecheta represents this distance between the generations in the relationship between Nnu Ego and her children, and in particular, the relationship Nnu Ego has with her oldest son, Oshia. Traditionally, the family invests in Oshia by providing him with the best education, and respecting his status as an elder male, and in return he is to take care of the family. As a product of an imperialist society, Oshia is educated in a British school system and goes abroad to college where he learns the western value of self-reliance and making his own fortune independently out in the world.
Oshia’s battle to maintain cultural values within a global world is foreshadowed while he is a small boy. Afraid that his mother would make him release the mice he captured while playing outside, Oshia hides the rodents in his father’s guitar. The family leaves home for the evening to attend a neighborhood celebration and, consequently, Oshia forgets the mice. Later in the night, the family hears the guitar mysteriously playing music; Nnaife, convinced that the guitar is possessed by spirits, throws the guitar outside and calls the local medicine man to perform an exorcism. Not saying a word about the mice, Oshia enjoys the excitement of his family caused by the “possessed” instrument, but he “learned a lot about his people.” This episode in the novel is reminiscent of African folktales in which animals figure as main characters. Through this scene, Emecheta, in a sense, demonstrates Wa Thiong’o’s arguments by demonstrating how the proletariat class
maintains tradition while it is the intellectuals and white collar class that must grapple with balancing modern globalization with cultural identity. Wa Thiong’o states that the “cultural resistance” of imperialistic forces and the shielding of “cultural
bombs” lodged by these imperialistic forces are most effectively fought by the proletariat.
The demonstration of how Nnu Ego, Nnaife, and their neighbors maintain their traditions is embodied by the numerous celebrations they have throughout the novel. Although money and power are in short supply, the Africans celebrate births, homecomings, and marriages. The hosts of each party are certain to have large supplies of palm wine and food for everyone. The communal sharing of resources often falls short of providing enough to meet demands. As an example, upon his mother’s death, Oshia returns to the village and throws a costly funeral celebration. The funeral puts him into debt which would take three years to pay off, but there is a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that an expected ritual has been performed to honor the dead. The conflict of how the imperial economic order impacts cultural customs is always present. When Nnu Ego returns to Ibuza to pay her father a last visit before his death, she becomes comfortable with the ease of being at home and surrounded with fellow villagers. However, a grand-aunt admonishes her to return back to Lagos and not to shame the family by failing to live up to her responsibilities as wife. In this respect, tradition is extremely limiting, in that Nnu Ego’s life and her children’s lives would be much easier in Ibuza than in Lagos. Though traditions can be limiting, especially in the case of a traditional marriage such as Nnu Ego’s, yet the traditional bond is what links and sustains the community in Lagos. What on the one hand undermines tradition as limiting can also be seen as the thread of continuity necessary for the cultural health
and identity of people.
The issues about traditions and rituals that both Wa
Thiong’o and Emecheta raise stem from the dilemma of
how a society reconciles and develops when ideals
between cultures clash. The issue of whether to write
in English or a native language is symbolic of the
larger issues about where to draw the line, how to
determine which traditions are axed and dropped by
the wayside, and which options are viable and realistic. A certainty represented in The
Joys of Motherhood is that it may no longer be
possible for the individual to walk alone or act the
bildurungstrom. It is for the individual to find acceptance in ways that merge into the larger cultural community and that are mutually
beneficial to act as shields against “cultural
bombs.”
Copyright © Jolanda Cornish
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