BUCHI EMECHETA: Second Class Citizen Consider Adah's growth in confidence and determination in pursuit of her dreams

Answer Details

Adah, the heroine of Second Class Citizen, grows from a poor, overlooked Ibo girl into a determined woman who insists on shaping her own life. Her growth in confidence and determination is the backbone of the novel.

Early determination against the odds

• As a child in Lagos, Adah nurses a secret dream, her "Presence", of travelling to the United Kingdom and bettering herself.
• Denied schooling because she is a girl, she boldly sneaks off to school on her own and later works hard to win a scholarship, showing early strength of will.

Building a footing

• She secures a good post at the American Consulate library in Lagos, earning more than many men and gaining a measure of independence.
• She marries Francis but uses her earnings and her savings to finance his studies in England and to bring herself and the children over, taking charge of the family's future.

Confidence under hardship in London

• In England she meets racism, cramped housing and her husband's idleness, yet she keeps her library job and provides for the household.
• She refuses to accept the second-class role marked out for her, insisting on decent lodgings and on educating her children.

Pursuit of her dream to write

• Her deepest ambition is to become a writer. She composes her first novel, The Bride Price, and is proud of it.
• When Francis burns the manuscript in contempt, she is wounded but not broken; the act hardens her resolve rather than killing her dream.

Final independence

• Adah at last leaves Francis, taking her children and facing single motherhood with courage.
• By the close she stands as a self-reliant woman who has grown from timid dependence into confident self-determination.

Conclusion

Adah's journey is one of steadily rising confidence: from a girl fighting for schooling, to a working wife bankrolling her family, to a writer and single mother who chooses dignity over subjection. Her determination in the pursuit of her dreams makes her one of African literature's memorable strong women.