BUCHI EMECHETA: Second Class Citizen How are women treated in the novel?

Answer Details

Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen is largely a protest against the low status forced upon women in both African and immigrant society. The treatment of women is shown through Adah's experiences and those around her.

Denied education

• As a girl in Lagos, Adah is almost not sent to school at all, because the family spends its scarce money educating her brother Boy. Girls are treated as less deserving of learning.
• Adah has to fight and scheme even to attend school, revealing how female ambition is discouraged from childhood.

Valued only for marriage and money

• Women are seen as a source of bride-price. Adah's relatives look forward to the dowry she will fetch rather than to her own fulfilment.
• A wife's worth is measured by her ability to bear children, especially sons. Motherhood is expected as a duty rather than chosen.

Domination by husbands

• Francis treats Adah as his property. He beats her, spends her earnings, refuses to work himself, and expects her to serve both him and his family.
• He opposes her use of contraceptives and her desire to write, burning the manuscript of her first novel, The Bride Price, to crush her independence.
• Francis relies on the support of his parents and the customs that place a wife beneath her husband and in-laws.

Double burden as immigrants

• In London women like Adah face racism as blacks and inferiority as women, making them, in the novel's terms, second-class citizens twice over.
• Adah must earn wages, keep the home and raise the children while her husband contributes little.

Resistance and change

• Against this treatment Adah asserts herself: she works, educates herself, controls her fertility and finally leaves Francis to raise her children alone.
• Her defiance shows Emecheta's belief that women can rise above the second-class role society assigns them.

Conclusion

Women in the novel are generally treated as inferior beings, denied education, exploited for bride-price and children, and dominated by men. Yet through Adah, Emecheta insists on the woman's right to dignity, independence and self-expression.