AFRICAN PROSE BUCHI EMECHETA: The Joys of Motherhood. Comment on the theme of gender discrimination in the novel.

Answer Details

Gender discrimination is a central theme in Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood. Through the life of Nnu Ego, the novel exposes how patriarchal Igbo and colonial society values men above women and reduces a woman's worth to her ability to bear, especially male, children.

The preference for male children

• A woman's status depends on producing sons. Nnu Ego is honoured when she bears boys and devalued when she has daughters. Her daughters' education is sacrificed so that the sons can be schooled.
• The bitter irony of the title is that the "joys of motherhood" bring Nnu Ego endless toil, for she is expected to sacrifice everything for children, especially sons, who ultimately fail to reward her.

Women as property and childbearers

• Nnu Ego's value in her first marriage collapses because she is thought barren; a childless wife is treated as worthless and returnable.
• Women are inherited like property. On Nnaife's brother's death, Nnaife inherits his wives, showing that women pass between men as possessions.
• Bride price and marriage arrangements treat women as goods to be transferred between families.

Unequal burdens between husband and wife

• Nnu Ego bears the crushing labour of feeding and raising the family through petty trading, while Nnaife contributes little and even squanders resources. The double standard is stark.
• Men enjoy freedom, leisure and the right to take more wives, while women are bound to endless domestic sacrifice.

Polygamy and male privilege

• Nnaife takes a second wife, Adaku, and the co-wives are set in rivalry, another sign of a system that serves male interest at women's expense.
• Adaku's eventual decision to leave and trade independently is one of the few acts of protest against this discrimination.

Conclusion. Emecheta indicts a society in which a woman is valued only as a bearer of sons and a servant of men. Nnu Ego's lonely, unrewarded death dramatises the cruelty of gender discrimination, and the novel becomes a powerful protest against the injustice done to women.