Thinking activity :- The Joys of Motherhood

Hello Readers ,

            I am Aditi Vala and I am student of Department of English, MKBU.This blog is a part of my classroom thinking activity and this activity given by Yesha Mam.In semester -4 we have a one paper of African literature.In this blog i would like to talk about themes of the novel ' The Joys of Motherhood '.

             First of all talk about the writer ;

Buchi Emecheta :

Buchi Emecheta OBE (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) 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 characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".

Text  Introduction :

The Joys of Motherhood is the story of a young Ibo woman who dreams of living a traditional life as a mother of many children. Instead, she spends her life in Lagos, Nigeria, watching as traditional values are eroded and destroyed by Western influence. The hope she puts in having many children turns out to be misplaced, and her entire life is simply a struggle for survival, with no reward in old age.

 

              This novel published in 1979, The Joys of Motherhood was Buchi Emecheta's fourth novel, and one of her most popular. It is the third book Emecheta wrote about the role of women in Nigerian society, following The Bride Price (1976) and The Slave Girl (1977), and subsequently followed by Destination Biafra (1982), and Double Yoke (1982). Each of the five novels explores women's struggles within a patriarchal society.

              Let's see the themes of the novel ;

 Women and Femininity :

We learn very quickly in The Joys of Motherhood that a woman's role in traditional Ibo society is to produce children, and in particular, to produce male children. Her value as a woman is dependent on her fertility. If she is infertile, she is a "failed" woman. If she has only girls, she isn't a failed woman, but she lacks honor. Nnu Ego has absorbed these values, and her life's greatest wish is to be a honored woman. She has child after child, but ultimately, realizes that the rules of the game were made by men, and that her children have become a chain around her neck.

Men and Masculinity :

Manhood in traditional Ibo society is a privileged position. As a man, you have the right to several wives and you own your wives' labor, through which you may enrich yourself. But at the same time, you have an obligation to produce male heirs who will contribute to the family line. If you are infertile, or if your wife is infertile, your manhood is in question. The more children a man has, the more he has achieved. There are other privileges associated with being a man, such as drinking palm wine, being at the top of the social food chain, being taken care of by your children as you age. But in The Joys of Motherhood, traditional culture is changing as a result of colonialism. As a result, Nnaife, like Nnu Ego, is never able to realize his expectations. Ultimately, Nnaife finds little joy in his children, and even feels like his wives have mistreated him.

Race :

The biggest conflict over race in The Joys of Motherhood is the fact that Ibo men feel emasculated by working for white colonial officials. Nnu Ego is barely able to look at her husband Nnaife when she realizes that he washes clothes for a white woman. Racial conflicts persist even when most of the whites leave to fight World War II, and as Nigeria moves towards independence. The new racial conflicts have less to do with power relations, and more to do with ethnicity and culture. For example, the Yoruba look down on the Ibo. This is why Nnaife is so enraged when his daughter, Kehinde, runs away with a Yoruba man.

Mortality :

Death is common in Nnu Ego's world. Having children is a way of ensuring your immortality, in the sense that they will continue your gene pool. Children are also expected take care of you in your old age so you don't have to suffer all your life. Nnu Ego is seen as a successful and much loved woman because of the enormous and expensive funeral her children throw for her upon her death. At the end of her life, however, Nnu Ego feels as though she sacrificed everything for her children, but got little in return. She dies alone, with no children by her side. Nnu Ego's spirit doesn't think much of her funeral, or of the shrine her children build for her. After death, she refuses to answer the prayers of her descendents when they ask her to give them children

Wealth :

Nnu Ego, the protagonist of The Joys of Motherhood, comes from a wealthy family, and her first marriage is into another wealthy family. Even wealthy women must work, though, so she still does farm work. But during her second marriage, Nnu Ego is unprepared for life in Lagos, and for the abject poverty she endures through most of her marriage. Because she still thinks like a traditional woman, she expects to work, and she knows the fruits of her labor belong to her husband. But she doesn't know how to negotiate her husband's selfishness, alcoholism, and the way that he simply doesn't fulfill all of his responsibilities as a husband. Nnu Ego struggles, and her family is often on the brink of starvation. Her hopes are placed on her children's futures, and she believes that if she sacrifices for them now, they will take care of her later. But her children are growing up in a westernized culture, and they feel that their hard-earned money belongs to them, no matter how much Nnu Ego sacrificed for them. So Nnu Ego never sees the results of all her sacrifices, and lives and dies in poverty.

In Nigeria, a woman without children is in some ways incomplete, and the only way a woman may survive is to have children.Despite the fact that the reader knows from the beginning of the storey that the heroine, Nnu Ego, is terribly dependent and determined, Emecheta tenderloins that idea throughout the novel by contradicting it with her total belief that a woman without children in Africa is completed. Emecheta went so far as to strike at the basis of the protagonist's understanding through chronicling her battles and struggles during her motherhood after marriage, in the city When the women's ultimate objective remains to be to achieve, the title is ironic.

Rather than enjoying motherhood, I prefer to call it "motherhood." In truth, the irony in the novel's narrator is unquestionably necessary.In order to comprehend the novel and the overall impression of "Joys of Motherhood" describes the mother in the context of love and responsibility of a mother as every mothet is having.The novel's concluding lines reveal the irony in the title: 

"She died quietly there, with no child to grasp her hand and no friend to talk to her."

She'd never really made many friends because she'd been so preoccupied with her responsibilities as a mother.So concluding everything we can say that the work by Buchi Emecheta tries to dreg the idea of double colonized women in Nigeria as well as she talks about universal truth. 

Thank you