The Joys of Motherhood

“Please don’t mourn me for long; and see that however much you love our daughter Nnu Ego you allow her to have a life of her own, a husband if she wants one. Allow her to be a woman.”

Ona’s final plea to Agbadi constitutes a tragic commentary on her own life. She begs Agbadi to allow Nnu Ego to make life choices for herself, even if doing so requires her to leave him and start her own family. This contrasts with the way her father treated her, as he prevented her from marrying Agbadi in the hopes that she would produce a male heir for him. This also foreshadows Nnu Ego’s later expression of hope that her children will have better lives than she did, suggesting the possibility of marginal improvements from one generation to the next.

“Agbadi was no different from many men. He himself might take wives and then neglect them for years, apart from seeing that they each received their one yam a day; he could bring his mistress to sleep with him right in his courtyard while his wives pined and bit their nails for a word from him. But when it came to his own daughter, she must have a man who would cherish her.”

Here, the novel draws attention to The Hypocrisies and Contradictions of Patriarchal Society. Clarifying that Agbadi is not unique in this respect, the novel highlights the difference between the standard of behavior he expects of other men and the behavior he demonstrates. The implication is that the patriarchal system is ultimately designed to serve the selfish needs of men.

“Dr. Meers’s laughter was inspired by that type of wickedness that reduces any man, white or black, intelligent or not, to a new low; lower than the basest of animals, for animals at least respected each other’s feelings, each other’s dignity.”

The novel draws attention to Dr. Meers’s racist rhetoric, which he uses to elevate himself above others, pointing out that it actually proves his inferiority, not only to those he denigrates but even to animals. This introduces an element of irony, as Dr. Meers previously mockingly compared Nnaife to a baboon, whereas this passage claims that Dr. Meers is the more animalistic. Dr. Meers’s attitude extends beyond his individual flaws to exemplify the racist attitudes of many British colonists.

“What did you say? Did I not pay your bride price? Am I not your owner?”

Nnaife’s indignant response to criticism from Nnu Ego illustrates the way that women are viewed as property under the traditional patriarchal system. In terms of Nnaife and Nnu Ego’s relationship, this has a stifling effect, with Nnaife invoking the authority bestowed on him as a husband to shut down difficult conversations. The end result is an unhappy relationship accompanied by an increase in tension and resentment.

“Men here are too busy being white men’s servants to be men.”

Cordelia’s comment to Nnu Ego implies that their husbands, then employed by the Meers, are infantilized and emasculated through their servitude to the British colonists. Her comment hints at the complex interplay between traditional Indigenous social structures and the colonists’ impositions. In cases where the two come into conflict, the colonists’ military, economic, and political power ensures their dominance.

“And they all agreed that a woman without a child for her husband was a failed woman.”

When the onlookers at Carter Bridge learn the reason for Nnu Ego’s distress—the death of her child—they offer their sympathies but do not question Nnu Ego’s underlying assumption—that her success or failure as a woman hinges primarily on her ability to provide male heirs for her husband. In fact, this shared cultural assumption only amplifies Nnu Ego’s distress, showing how the traditional roles assigned to women are narrow and prescriptive.

“She was sure this son of hers would live next door to her, whatever profession he chose, as a good son should live near his parents and look after them.”

Here, Nnu Ego considers her hopes for the future as they are centered on her son, Oshia. In fact, her thoughts ironically foreshadow the opposite outcome, in which Oshia’s education takes him far away from her, leaving her to die alone and unsupported. Her experience illustrates the way that changing social norms disrupt her expectations regarding the rewards of motherhood.

“He was one of the Africans who were so used to being told they were stupid in those days that they started to believe in their own imperfections.”

Through his time in Lagos, Nnaife comes to accept the white colonists’ claims of superiority, whether implicit or explicit. Nnu Ego, who is fresh from Ibuza where the colonists’ influence is much less direct, does not share Nnaife’s views, nor his reverence for Mrs. Meers. The implication is that the colonists’ stronghold rests not only on military power but also on subtle psychological influence.

“If you made the mistake of pitying her, she would tell you what her two sons were going to be when they grew up; for anybody who had no ‘two sons,’ or who only had daughters, or who had no children at all like Iyawo Itsekiri, it was better to keep quiet.”

Just as Nnu Ego becomes deeply distressed when the death of her son calls her status as a successful woman into question, she later uses her sons as a means of asserting her success and importance. Despite her extreme poverty, she thrives in her exalted status as a mother of sons. This helps her minimize and ignore the other real and urgent problems in her life while also asserting her superiority over childless women, showing how she spreads patriarchal notions even as she struggles under them.

“Nnaife laughed, the bitter laugh of a man who had become very cynical, who now realized that in this world there is no pure person. A man who in those last months had discovered that he had been revering a false image and that under white skins, just as under black ones, all humans are the same.”

Nnaife returns from his nautical voyage disillusioned with his white employers and, by extension, all the British colonists. Exactly what leads to this realization is not specified, but his journey involves a transition from naivete to understanding through painful experience. The implication is that the justifications used to hold up racial and other hierarchies do not hold up under scrutiny.

“She tried desperately to control her feelings, to put on a pleasant face, to be the sophisticated Ibuza wife and welcome another woman into her home; but she could not.”

Nnu Ego’s initial, instinctive reaction upon Nnaife’s taking a second wife is one of dismay. Culturally, however, she is expected to act otherwise, and this passage illustrates the turmoil she feels as she struggles to bring her own feelings and behavior into line with tradition and culture. This exemplifies the struggle to maintain individual identity in the face of social pressures.

“On her way back to their room, it occurred to Nnu Ego that she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children, imprisoned in her role as the senior wife. […] It was not fair, she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman’s sense of responsibility to actually enslave her.”

Here, Nnu Ego has an epiphany about the way that she is manipulated by men to fulfill specific roles in society. While this represents an important step forward for her character, awareness alone does not offer a solution to the dilemmas she faces as a woman in a patriarchal society. By now, she is fully committed to her roles and it would be extremely difficult to withdraw or modify her participation.

“There is nothing we can do. The British own us, just like God does, and just like God they are free to take any of us when they wish.”

When Nnaife is abducted and forcibly drafted into the British army during World War II, Nnu Ego compares the British colonists’ role and power to that of God. The comparison suggests that she feels utterly powerless in the face of the colonists’ oppression and exploitation. It also implies that she struggles to understand the motivations underlying the colonists’ actions, just as she finds God’s ways unknowable.

“Nnu Ego knew that people would soon start saying: ‘You have already proved you are a good daughter, but a good daughter must also be a good wife.’”

After spending a few months in Ibuza following Agbadi’s death, Nnu Ego begins to feel that she ought to return to Lagos. She is not particularly happy at the prospect; in fact, she very much enjoys herself in Ibuza. Rather, her decision and her feelings are dictated by social norms that reduce her to a wife, daughter, or mother whose primary purpose is to meet the needs of men in her life.

“Yet the more I think about it the more I realize that we women set impossible standards for ourselves. That we make life intolerable for one another. I cannot live up to your standard, senior wife. So I have to set my own.”

As Adaku decides to set out on her own, leaving Nnaife’s household, she explains her rationale to Nnu Ego. Adaku’s decision to reject patriarchal standards and societal norms marks her as a foil to Nnu Ego who, despite her misgivings, chooses to lead the kind of life that is expected of her. Adaku’s realization that women have a significant role in propagating unrealistic and unhealthy social norms casts Nnu Ego’s actions in a new light, as she attempts to persuade Adaku to maintain a traditional life.

“Her son Abby had really put his mother in wealth. Nnu Ego bit her lip. O God, let some of her own children be like that, so that she would not suffer in old age as well as now.”

Nnu Ego spends much of her life suffering, both physically and emotionally. At times, she tells herself that life will be better in the future, particularly when her children are of an age to begin to support her. Those hopes, as expressed here, ultimately come to naught, as Nnu Ego’s children do not give her any material support before her death. Her many sacrifices and hopes as a mother remain unfulfilled.

“Even in death, Nwokocha Agbadi ruled his daughter. She belonged to both men, her father and her husband, and lastly to her sons.”

When Nnaife returns with yet another wife, his friend Nwakusor refers to Agbadi in an attempt to convince Nnu Ego to accept the new circumstances without question. His ploy proves effective, showing that Agbadi’s influence over Nnu Ego persists long after his death, even as her growing sons begin to exert a similar influence over her. Nnu Ego’s selfhood is effectively erased as she allows her life to be dictated by her male relatives.

“God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? […] After all, I was born alone, and I shall die alone. What have I gained from all this? Yes, I have many children, but what do I have to feed them on? On my life.”

After raising several children, Nnu Ego begins to understand the nature of her life, as well as the essential sacrifices she made for her family. Although she loves her children, she also realizes the extent to which each of them drained her own limited resources, including her very life, as she explains here. In retrospect, she laments the fact that she never stopped to consider her own fulfillment as an important factor in the decisions she made.

“But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man’s world. Which women will always help to build.”

This passage argues that while women have the potential to impose harmful ideals on one another, they can also instigate change by empowering other women, especially their daughters. It cuts to the core assumption of patriarchal systems, which is that fathers and sons have a greater intrinsic worth than mothers and daughters. Thus, even though Nnu Ego’s two oldest sons move far away as the novel concludes, Nnu Ego can take some comfort in witnessing the happiness of her daughters, even as she hopes that their future will be brighter, and more egalitarian, than her past.

“Could she have so deteriorated into the kind of woman who would not want her own child because she could not afford to feed or clothe her?”

By the time her final pregnancy ends in a miscarriage, Nnu Ego has developed ambivalent feelings about the prospect of bringing another child into her family. Although she mourns the loss on an emotional level, she also recognizes from a more practical perspective that she was not in a position to give the child the care she deserves. As expressed here, Nnu Ego feels tremendous guilt for not unambiguously wanting to raise another child, showing the cognitive dissonance that can result from a clash between inherited beliefs and her own feelings.

“Nnu Ego laughed with them, and she knew then that, had they lived in times gone by when families used to stay together, several generations living and dying on the same portion of land, Okpo’s children would never suffer.

Nnu Ego recognizes that the traditional lifestyle of her people does hold certain advantages over the modern, urban lifestyle she adopts in Lagos. Here, she laments the fragmentation of families as a result of the way that land is commodified in urban centers. She also highlights a disconnect between the relatively stable past and the uncertainty of the future, as new technologies and colonial influences take hold.

“When they predicted that soon her son would be back and driving about in a big car, she knew that they had all missed the point. She was not destined to be such a mother. She realized that now. Her joy was to know that she had brought up her children when they had started out with nothing, and that those same children might rub shoulders one day with the great men of Nigeria.”

Eventually, Nnu Ego gives up on the hope of any material wealth coming to her through her children. Instead, she turns her attention to the less tangible possibility that her children will turn out to be important or well-connected. In so doing, Nnu Ego seeks to make the most of a difficult situation. In any case, she does not live to see her hopes fulfilled, as her sons pursue their educations and careers overseas and do not correspond with her. In a lifetime of disappointments for Nnu Ego, this may be the greatest, since it demonstrates that not even her children recognize and appreciate the sacrifices she made.

“Still, how was she to know that by the time her children grew up the values of her country, her people and her tribe would have changed so drastically, to the extent where a woman with many children could face a lonely old age, and maybe a miserable death all alone, just like a barren woman?”

As the novel ends, Nnu Ego is caught off guard by a central, irresolvable disconnect in her life. Though she raised her many children while fully expecting that she would be able to enjoy the status and prestige that come with parenthood, she finds that her adult children go their separate ways. In her old age, she returns home to Ibuza, where she comes to feel that she is no better off than she would be had she not had any children.