Hello readers !
I am Latta from the department of English MKBU. In this blog I'm going to discuss The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. This thinking activity is assigned by Yesha ma'am. So let's begin with the introduction of the author.
Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta 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(Encyclopedia Britannica). She has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948"(Dawson, Ashley). The introduction of authors is important because somewhere we find the influence of writers in their works. Now let's see the novel The Joys of Motherhood.
The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was reprinted in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 2008. As Hans Zell said, the basis of the novel is the
"necessity for a woman to
be fertile, and above all to
give birth to sons"
(Zell, Hans).
It tells the tragic story of Nnu-Ego, daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing. This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centres on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. Traditional tribal values and customs begin to shift with increasing colonial presence and influence, pushing Ego to challenge accepted notions of "mother", "wife", and "woman". Through Nnu Ego's journey, Emecheta forces her readers to consider the dilemmas associated with adopting new ideas and practices against the inclination to cleave to tradition. In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in child bearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.(Wikipedia)
Glorified Images of Motherhood VS Reality
So here our major concern is to talk about how people are glorifying the image of motherhood and in reality it is different from it. And that is what Buchi Emecheta wants to prove in her novel.
Nnu Ego’s story cannot be recognized as a good example of motherhood. She is an ideal mother, an ideal wife in the eyes of others, but she wants to tell that this motherhood has given her only pain and suffering. It opposes the idea of motherhood that the Yoruba community thinks that having many children is blessed. Because she faced many problems when she was not able to become pregnant with her first husband. The only thing that people want from women is to produce children and continue their ancestry. As P. Sasikumar observers,
Nnu Ego, protagonist of The Joys of Motherhood, is a quintessential African woman whose experiences and responses are perceived as ideal representations of African women's existence and as an indictment of a culture in which women have little control over their lives.
(Sasikumar, P)
Nnu Ego is a kind of person who wants to become an ideal woman and she thinks that people will give examples of her as an ideal woman, wife and mother. And she gained that respect but in doing this she faced lots of problems. If we look at the problems that she faced in her life we find many incidents. Let's see one by one
She got married to Amatokwu, but she was not able to provide a baby to him. Because of it her husband treated her very badly. He behaved very rudely to Nnu Ego. So here we can see that the ultimate goal of marriage is to produce children and become mother.
When Nnu Ego is not able to give a child to Amatokwu he brings another wife and through her he becomes a father. So Nnu Ego treats the child as her own, but her husband and the new wife don't like this and her husband beats Nnu Ego also ! Because they think that Nnu Ego is ominous only because she won't be able to produce a child and become a mother!
When she got married with another man Nnaife, she became pregnant and gave birth to a Ngozi. But he dies after sometime. She became a mother, she was very happy but the happiness didn't stay longer.
After sometime she became pregnant again and gave birth to Oshia, Adim and then two other daughters. During this time her husband lost his job and she started earning money. She rears all children because her husband was doing a job at another place. He is not even sending money. So Nnu has to earn money for her and her children.
Nnaife's brother has died so according to their community tradition Nnaife got all his brother's 3 wives. Now the new struggle starts for Nnu Ego. During this time she is working also and keeping all other wives with her.
In the name of study Oshia cheats his father and goes to the United States. And the other son of Nnu Adim also cheated and went to Canada. Both children escape from their responsibility. Nnaife punished for an attempt of murder and got jail for 5 year.
In the end we come to know that Nnu Ego died on the roadside. When she really needed someone, nobody was there with her. Not even her husband nore her children.
So we can say that she is strong, independent and tolerationist. From this motherhood she only received suffering and pain only. Every culture celebrates the joys of motherhood, but here Buchi Emecheta set a different example of a woman who is proving that this is not the reality. She runs her business of selling cigarettes and matches packets. During her pregnancy and after giving birth to children she has to took all the responsibility, her husband is very irresponsible, we see in the novel also,
"Nnaife as the father of her child, and the fact that this child was a son gave her a sense of fulfillment for the first time in her life.She was now sure, as she bathed her baby son and cooked for her husband, that her old age would be happy, that when she died there would be somebody left behind to refer to her as “mother”."
-The Joys of Motherhood
Nnu Ego was very sad when she was not able to become pregnant, she wants to feel that joy of motherhood. And when she became mother of many children she was looking for joys of motherhood and dreaming of it !! We find this novel portrays another side of motherhood of an African woman, but it can be connected with any woman of any culture. Siva R. rightly pointed out that,
The reader can feel Nnu Ego the protagonist's longing for motherhood in the beginning when she was denied by her first husband for not conceiving later, after begetting seven children she doesn’t enjoy the “motherhood” she was longing during her last days. Buchi describes the predicaments of motherhood and the heart-rending death of the protagonist. Nnu Ego faces all sorts of obstacles at all stages of her life, she strongly believed in one thing that the joy of motherhood is to give everything to the children so that during her old age the children give back joy and love. In contrast, Buchi presents the darker side, or we shall say the bitter truth, despite all the hardships the protagonist faces she is neglected by her husband, children and the society.
(R, Siva)
And what if women are not able to produce a child ? How is she treated ? Isn't it the same as Nnu Ego's situation ? As we are seeing today people said that,
"Women is incomplete without becoming a mother"
I think we are also treating women like all people treated Nnu in the novel when she has not become a mother. As Nnu's first husband believes she is a “barren as a desert”. We also say things like this. So Buchi Emecheta makes satire on these things. Here these two words "Joys" and "Motherhood" can't be with each other according to the writer. Means there is no joy in the life of motherhood for women. And especially for those womens who want to become an ideal mother. They have to lose many things for that. They may forget their own dreams and do the things that are good for their children.
Citation
"Buchi Emecheta | Biography, Books, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
Dawson, Ashley, "Beyond Imperial Feminism: Buchi Emecheta's London Novels and Black British Women's Emancipation", in Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain, University of Michigan Press, 2007, p. 117.
Zell, Hans M. Carol Bundy & Virginia Coulon (eds), A New Reader's Guide to African Literature, Heinemann Educational Books, 1983, p. 385.
R, Siva. M, Ramesh. “‘The Joys of Motherhood’ of an African Woman: A Mirage.” Turcomat.org , Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education, 2021, https://turcomat.org/index.php/turkbilmat/article/download/1138/918/2082.
Sasikumar, P. “The Paradox of Motherhood in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood.” Languageinindia.com, June 2019, http://www.languageinindia.com/june2019/sasikumarjoysofmotherhoodfinal1.pdf.
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