Book Review: The Joys of Motherhood (Essay Sample)

Book Review: The Joys of Motherhood
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Book Review: The Joys of Motherhood
Introduction
Buchi Emecheta’s ‘The Joys of Motherhood’ delves into life and issues of culture in a post-colonial Nigerian community. The protagonist, Nnu Ego, typifies an African woman whose joy and satisfaction come with bearing children (Emecheta, 1988). She has mixed fortunes, moving from one marriage to another, and even contemplating suicide. The novel has feminist undertones that run throughout the plot. Emecheta subtly relays the predicaments of most African women in a continent that is reeling from the effects of colonialism that has changed all aspects of life. This book review will extrapolate the realities of an African village coming to terms with social and cultural changes that define colonial legacy. It will also elucidate the struggle of individuals as dictated by emerging social and political realignments.
Why the Book is Important
‘The Joys of Motherhood’ is an important book in showing the condition and predicament of an African woman living in a transient period. The social and cultural fabric of Nigerian community, just like most parts of Africa, relegated women to the bottom and periphery of the social order. Emecheta, therefore, serves to add a voice in the burgeoning discourse on African womanhood. Just like Miriama Ba and Bessie Head, she gives the experience of a woman in a society that is rapidly changing because of colonialism, the influx of Western culture, and education (Hay, 2000). Her subject is provocative because it also encapsulates the effects of capitalism and the role of women in the emerging economic and political order. She chides traditional values that confine women to child bearing and reduce them to servants.
Chapter’s Summary
The first chapter opens with a dejected Nnu Ego who is running away to drown her life in the river (Emecheta, 1988). She has struggled with child bearing, later she married and remarried to achieve this important fete. The second chapter goes many years back to show the protagonist’s upbringing in a polygamous homestead. She is a pampered girl born of a traditional chief in a wealthy family. Emecheta introduces some Igbo’s cultural practices like slavery. The third chapter deals with Ego’s marriage to an influential chief. Subsequent chapters deal with the influence of British colonialists on the life of local communities. The colonial administration, for instance, prohibits brewing and consumption of local gin.
Correspondingly, the 10th chapter onwards shows Ego as she tries to raise her children in a post-colonial society (Emecheta, 1988). Her community has socialized her to believe in the inferiority of women and she is keen to maintain the status quo. Therefore, the theme of fertility and childbearing recurs in all chapters in the book. The most significant event in the plot is the marriage of Ego to Amatokwu. Unfortunately, she could not bear children and she returns to her father’s house after a beating by her husband. She remarries to Nnaife and moves to Lagos. Nnaife works as a cleaner to a British family. Their marriage bears a son and thus brings happiness. He also allows his wife to venture into business on the streets of Lagos. However, their fortune is short-lived as their son dies and Nnaife loses his job with the departure of his employer. Later, he gets a job at a far away place, leaving behind his wife and son in abject poverty. Nnaife returns with fortunes and another wife, having inherited his brother’s wives as dictated by customs. The new family set up brings conflict, with the family oscillating between poverty and financial windfall before culminating to Ego’s imprisonment.
Major Topics of Debate
Emecheta’s major thematic concern in ‘The Joys of Motherhood’ is the obscure gender role and mixed fortunes of motherhood in a colonial and post-colonial Africa. Ego’s traditional and conservative upbringing has socialized her into believing the role of women is to bring forth and take care of the children. As a sixteen-year-old girl, she thinks about child bearing with such great relish and looks forward to it (Emecheta, 1988). After her marriage to Amatokwu, she realizes, with much pain, that she could be barren. When her husband marries another wife to bear children for him, Ego acquiesces to this reality placidly. She fantasizes about childbirth and at one point, she lactates and breastfeeds her husband’s child from the other woman. Amatokwu gets irritated and hits her, marking a turning point in her life.
However, the joys of motherhood in Ego’s life are ambiguous. Her idealized version encounters the harsh reality of what motherhood entails (Nfah-Abbenyi, 1997). Her marriage to Nnaife is fruitful in the sense that she bears children. However, she has to contend with sacrificing everything, notably her own life, for the sake of the family. With the departure of Nnaife to work for Englishmen in a far land, she struggles, amidst abject poverty, to fend for her family. Her family suffers from malnutrition, prompting help from neighbors. She has to give everything to raise her family, a stark contrast to the life she had envisioned.
In addition, the gender roles in this book are also blurred (The Joys of Motherhood: A Complete Guide, 2009). In Nigeria’s traditional society, different genders performed different roles. In particular, the society expected men to provide and protect their family. Hence, the responsibility of women was to attend to house chores and raise the children. Emecheta portrays a flux society coming to terms with new gender roles. Ego and Nnaife best embody this change. Nnaife performs laundry for a British family, a role traditionally reserved for women. Ego does not hesitate to show her displeasure with the thought of her husband washing clothes for a woman. She, however, performs a role reserved for men without flinching. When she goes to the street to sell cigarettes and match boxes, she is trying to provide for her family, something that she, traditionally, should not be doing. Therefore, this epitomizes the blurring of the lines between what each gender ought to do in the family.
Emecheta also captures the influences that colonialism has had on Nigeria, and Africa, some desirable and others destructive. The British colonialists brought with them a new economic system, religion, and education, mostly with aspects repugnant to Africans’ traditional culture and practices. The Owulum family best captures how colonialism disintegrated African values. Emecheta depicts Ego as a girl whose main dream is to settle down in the family and enjoy the protection and joy that came with deep social and family connections. This social tranquility and family cohesiveness characterized traditional African society. Colonialism has, however, brought new values that threatened her ideal version of the worl