[In the following excerpt, Loflin examines the significance of household environments and architecture in The Joys of Motherhood as indicative of tension between traditional Nigerian communal life and the social pressures of Western modernization.]

AFRICAN WOMEN'S LITERATURE

African women writers are sensitive, perhaps to a fault, to the preexisting images of woman's space. Their preoccupation with motherhood and/or barrenness as the crucial element in women's lives, in novels such as Efuru, The Joys of Motherhood, The Bride Price, and So Long A Letter has led Obioma Nnaemeka to characterize these works as “motherhood literature.” Elaine Savory Fido has identified the original “motherland” as the mother's body—that with which we identify, from which we learn to separate. The mother country is also the mother's cultural and national identity, which gives children their first social identity. Thus the mother is at the center of the motherland: “[she is] the one who is the starting point of all journeys and the point of reference for all destinations. … In a sense, we know that there is no homecoming unless mother is at the end of it.” Fido uses this definition to explore the painful separations of Buchi Emecheta, Bessie Head, and Jean Rhys, not only from their mother countries, but from their mothers, and she sees this pattern replicated in their fiction: “Ona's death makes the condition of mother-loss the crucial factor in Nnu Ego's difficult life, and thus is Emecheta's own estrangement from her mother also re-enacted.” Fido shows that women writers also may blur the distinctions between mother, The Mother and Mother Africa.

Within African women's literature, the equation of womanhood with motherhood is asserted, but it is also probed and questioned. African women writers explore the space of motherhood, sometimes exposing it as illusory (The Joys of Motherhood) or claiming it as a liberatory space for self-reflection and self-discovery (So Long A Letter). Ama Ata Aidoo's ambivalent attitude is typical: “Oh, being a mother! Traditionally, a woman is supposed to be nothing more valid than a mother. Sometimes one gets nervous of such total affirmation and total negation in relation to other roles that one has played. But I think that being a mother has been singularly enriching.”

In every novel in this chapter, the central character is a woman who is or becomes a mother. African women's literature, by centering stories on the experience of motherhood, shapes the African landscape from a woman's perspective, moving outward from the family, with mothers and children at the core of the novel. African women writers, through their focus on womanhood and motherhood, are testing the boundaries and exploring the possibilities of that marginal “woman's space.”

BUCHI EMECHETA

Buchi Emecheta was born near Lagos in 1944 and has been living in London since 1962. She has written ten novels, including the now-classic novel The Joys of Motherhood (1979). In The Joys of Motherhood Emecheta shows how the traditional background and experiences of a village woman, Nnu Ego, become dysfunctional in Lagos. Her attack on the “joys” of motherhood in Nigeria is a sophisticated analysis of the betrayal of women in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

Nnu Ego is brought to Lagos before World War II to marry Nnaife, a man she has never met. This is her second marriage. When she meets Nnaife, his potbelly, pale skin and demeaning job (washerman to a white family) are shocking to her. A friend of Nnu Ego's underscores the problem: “Men here are too busy being white men's servants to be men.” Gender roles are dependent on appearance and status, as well as sex; without the appearance or the work of a typical male, Nnaife is seen as “a middle-aged woman.” These remarks foreshadow Nnu Ego's own struggles to maintain her identity in the antagonistic urban space of Lagos.

At first, they live in one room in the “boys’ quarters” belonging to Dr. and Mrs. Meers, Nnaife's employers. The name “boys’ quarters” itself is a reminder that this is a space designed for the servants of Europeans, imagined, again, not to be men, but boys. Nnu Ego herself is not supposed to be present at all—these quarters were designed as if servants did not have families. To Nnu Ego, the place is initially disgusting: “This place, this square room painted completely white like a place of sacrifice.” In this image, the squareness of the room and its whiteness identify it as a European-designed space, which, reinterpreted in Nnu Ego's aesthetic and architectural categories, is awkward, even ominous: “a place of sacrifice.” The Meers' proximity to the boys' quarters controls certain aspects of Nnu Ego's behavior: she is not allowed to make noise, and her pregnancy has to be hidden from Mrs. Meers. When her baby son dies, even her grief has to be restrained. The arrangement of the Meers' compound, with the boys' quarters within the grounds but not actually part of the house, is a classic example of the architecture of colonialism. The architectural environment has political and social relations of power built into it.

Shaheen Haque has asserted in her discussion of British architects' plans for low-income housing in England that white male middle-class architects “create the physical environment in which we live and reinforce through their designs their problematic definitions of women, Black people and the working classes.” Similarly, the Meers' compound suits their needs, but forces Nnu Ego to accept a foreign geometry and design for her home. Further, the design of the compound forces her to repress her feelings and make her behavior conform to the Meers' standards, not just in their presence, but even when she is alone within her apartment. The size, location and design of the boys' quarters reinforce the unequal relations of power between the white masters and the black servants.

Nnu Ego's pregnancy is supposed to reconcile her to her new situation; her husband says he has given her everything a woman wants. After the birth, Nnu Ego herself agrees to this, saying “He has made me into a real woman.” Her motherhood is central to her sense of self, and makes her content with her husband Nnaife and their life in Lagos. Nnu Ego's baby son dies, however, when he is only four weeks old; Nnu Ego discovers his body lying on the floor mat in their apartment. The loss of her baby, the loss of motherhood, almost drives her insane. She flees through Lagos, gradually determining to drown herself by throwing herself off a bridge. These scenes, which open the novel, show Nnu Ego to be completely disassociated from her environment: “Nnu Ego backed out of the room, her eyes unfocused and glazed, looking into vacancy. Her feet were light and she walked as if in a daze, not conscious of using those feet. She collided with the door.” Without her child, she feels no connection to her surroundings, and brushes past buildings and people without seeing them. Her grief is caused by the loss of her baby; Nnu Ego, who was barren in her first marriage, now feels that she will never have a child that lives, never be a mother.

Even in Lagos, the flight of a young woman so clearly in distress arouses people's concern: “She dodged the many who tried to help her.” Emecheta shows that there is still a sense of community in Lagos' urban environment. On the bridge itself, a crowd grows as a man tries to prevent Nnu Ego from killing herself. Emecheta reveals both the crowd's idle curiosity and their underlying values:

[The crowd] appreciated this free entertainment, though none of them wanted the woman to achieve her suicidal aim … a thing like that is not permitted in Nigeria; you are simply not allowed to commit suicide in peace, because everyone is responsible for the other person.

Here, Emecheta claims that there is a national ethic of behavior in Nigeria, a code that transcends ethnic and regional divisions. In Lagos, that code is present, but somewhat fragile; people are anxious to get to work, and can see Nnu Ego's behavior as entertainment, even as they try to stop her. Providentially, a friend of Nnaife's arrives and recognizes Nnu Ego, and he is able to convince her to return home. Only someone who knows her is able to dissuade her from suicide.

Nnu Ego gradually becomes accustomed to her new environment, and her one room apartment becomes a reflection of her state of mind. As she begins to accept Lagos standards of material wealth, she improves the room with her savings from petty trading: “They now had attractive mats on the floor, they had polished wooden chairs and new patterned curtains.” When Nnu Ego is grieving for her son, Emecheta shows how Nnu Ego's friend Ato “reads” her home to discover the extent of her grief: “Nnu Ego led her into their room, which was unswept; the curtains had gone grey from lack of timely washing and the whole atmosphere was disorderly. Ato, knowing how clean and meticulous her friend normally was, tactfully said nothing.”

Emecheta emphasizes the interrelationship between women and their immediate environment: their feelings, desires and creativity are written on the walls of the homes that they maintain. Traditionally, West African women decorate their own homes, painting the walls with designs and symbols that are drawn from their culture and are expressive of the individual woman's creativity. These designs continue to be produced today, examples of an African art form that is uniquely female: “Wall and body motifs … are a woman's response to the world around her and, above all, adorn her home, enhancing an otherwise cheerless landscape.” Emecheta uses Ato's reading of Nnu Ego's room to show how Nnu Ego's creativity is limited to the choice of furnishings, and to the habit of cleanliness. She is unable, for example, to paint the outside walls of her home, or to add to them; living in the boys' quarters of the Meers' compound, she would not be allowed to express herself so publicly. Ato's readings of Nnu Ego's room are readings of the inadequate space alloted to African women in a Western-designed home.

Nnu Ego learns to adjust to Lagos; her husband gets a different job and they move into a new apartment with their growing family. Traditional practices clash with modern living when Nnaife's older brother dies and Nnaife inherits his four wives, one of whom comes to live in their one room apartment. The added burdens of the new wife, her daughter and the children she has by Nnaife ultimately cause a collapse of the family; so many people can't be fed on Nnaife's salary, or live under one roof. The urban compression of living space makes traditional polygamous relationships unbearable.

Ibuza, Nnu Ego's native village, is described in strong contrast to the impersonal, Westernized architecture and urban anonymity of Lagos. Here, where Nnu Ego was born, the organization of the compound reflects the social ordering within the family: her father's hut is in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by the huts of his wives. In this world, Nnu Ego has an acknowledged and respected role. Emecheta, while acknowledging that motherhood is the central concern of women in Ibuza society, describes a society that can allow for exceptions. In Nnu Ego's first marriage, she fails to have a child and must return to her father's compound, yet the women there make her feel that she is a welcome member of their extended family. This is the environment in which Nnu Ego is most at ease: “Nnu Ego sat contentedly in front of the hut she had to herself, enjoying the cool of the evening.” Here, the larger living spaces within the compound allow for less stressful relationships between family members, and the agricultural economy offers some security: “If it came to the worst, she could always plant her food at the back of her hut.” Yet Nnu Ego finds only a temporary respite for herself in Ibuza. Having married Nnaife, whose work is in Lagos, she can only visit, not return to, her native village.

Nnu Ego's daily life is lived most intensely within the home. Lagos, for her, is made up of isolated locations: markets, bridges, and the places where she has lived. She has only a vague idea of the world outside of Lagos and Ibuza; she hears of the end of World War II “when people began saying that the war was over, that the enemy, whoever he was, had killed himself.” Nnu Ego's sketchy understanding of international events reflects her vision of the world, firmly centered on her family and her family's interests. The novel itself, however, is located within an international political and economic horizon: the Meers leave for England and Nnaife is sent off to Burma because of World War II; Nnu Ego's sons leave Nigeria for the United States and Canada in search of better economic opportunities. Lemuel Johnson's remark that “in The Joys of Motherhood, Emecheta is running Igbo culture through an enormously complex international geography” (personal communication) seems particularly apt. While Nnu Ego's perspective is limited, the reader can see that her family's history is caught in a web of international concerns.

Within The Joys of Motherhood, the significant boundaries are Ibuza, Lagos, and the international horizons of colonialism, World War II, and Western capitalism. National politics are conspicuously absent, in contrast to many African novels by men. Ibuza and Lagos, for example, are usually represented in opposition to each other, rather than as two aspects of a national Nigerian community. This may be the result of the circumstances of the creation of the text: although the novel is set in the time period around World War II, Emecheta wrote it after the Biafran war. The nascent Igbo nation-state was defeated, and forcibly reintegrated into Nigeria. Thus it is not surprising that The Joys of Motherhood does not have a strong national boundary. In addition, while the most significant contrast between Ibuza and Lagos is that between the traditional village and a Westernized city, there is also an ethnic difference. Lagos is primarily a Yoruba community, within which the Igbo immigrants are a small minority. Although Emecheta doesn't emphasize ethnic conflict in this novel, part of the characters' sense of isolation and alienation in Lagos comes from their position as part of a minority community.

Nnu Ego's life does have a larger, spiritual horizon, which is an integral part of her experience of the world. Nnu Ego's family believes that she inherited the malevolent spirit of a slave girl, murdered to serve her mistress (a member of Nnu Ego's family) in the afterlife. This spirit is blamed for Nnu Ego's initial inability to conceive a child, and figures in her dreams throughout her life, giving her babies but taunting her at the same time. Nnu Ego herself, after her death, is supplicated as a spirit by her grandchildren. Because she has had eight children, they believe she will help them conceive, yet she “refuses”: “However many people appealed to her to make women fertile, she never did.” This spiritual horizon expands the novel into the past and the future, and suggests that Nnu Ego, a tormented woman in human life, has freedom and power in the afterlife. The slave woman protests against her inhuman treatment; Nnu Ego protests the virtual enslavement of women in motherhood by refusing children to her descendants. Emecheta is very careful in her description of spiritual beliefs; her narrative neither asserts nor denies the validity of Nnu Ego's spiritual powers. The slave girl's spirit may be a real influence on Nnu Ego's life, or a dream figure, created by her family's mythology. Nnu Ego's “refusal” to help her grandchildren conceive may be simply the silence of the grave. Yet the image of the slave girl's spirit shows how Nnu Ego (and her family) sees her life interacting transgenerationally within the family, and the time span of the novel is extended beyond the limits of her own life.

In traditional Igbo societies, Nnu Ego's numerous children would have been her guarantee of an honorable and prosperous old age. Certainly, it would have been expected that her children would house and clothe her. Yet Nnu Ego is disappointed here as well, caught in the social upheaval created by Western colonization in Nigeria. Her two eldest male children, educated in British style schools, leave Nigeria for Canada and the United States. Their dislocation makes them unavailable to their mother, even if they had seen it as their duty to support her; Oshia, her eldest son, refuses his father's direct request for help with the family's expenses. Oshia has accepted Western ideas of individual ambition and self-sufficiency, and will not accept any responsibility for his extended family. Instead of being cared for by her children, Nnu Ego dies by the roadside: “She died quietly there, with no child to hold her hand and no friend to talk to her.” Motherhood, which should have guaranteed and strengthened her connection to the land, has betrayed her; her death is the death of the homeless, the abandoned.

In the course of the novel, Emecheta provides a description of the disjunction between the urban, Westernized environment of colonial Lagos and Ibuza culture: the architecture of Lagos is itself hostile to the preservation of large, polygamous households. In this way, Emecheta emphasizes the interrelationship between society and landscape; the landscape of the village, the compound and the separate huts is created by and suited to a traditional life. Lagos, that amalgam of Western imitations, is hostile to it. The new urban landscape of Africa demands a new kind of society.

While Emecheta critiques contemporary attitudes towards women and the “double bind” of the collision of African and Western culture, she provides only a limited image of the African landscape. The contrast of the Westernized city and the traditional village is a commonplace in African literature, and reinforces the image of traditional societies as static havens from the modern world. Perhaps this is the result of Emecheta's own life history.

Emecheta did not grow up in a village. She describes herself as an observer of rural life: “I was intrigued by the whole way of life. For example, some women will sit for hours just peeling egusi (melon seed) or tying the edge of cloth.” In The Joys of Motherhood, while Ibuza life is valued, there are few descriptions of what women's work entailed, other than the care of children; it may be that Emecheta did not feel she knew enough about other experiences in village life to describe them.

Before she became a writer, Emecheta left Nigeria for England, which has been her principal residence since that time (except for a stint at the University of Port Harcourt). In England, she has become critical of African English and African literature: “My vehicle is the English language and staying in this society, working in it, you master the nuances. Writing coming from Nigeria, from Africa (I know this because my son does the criticism) sounds quite stilted.” She feels that women in Nigeria “are riddled with hypocrisy.” For Emecheta, Nigeria has become a foreign country: “I find I don't fit in there anymore.” In light of these feelings, it is easier to understand the sweeping criticism of Nigerian society in The Joys of Motherhood: no one in Ibuza or in Lagos is, finally, willing to support Nnu Ego. Her loneliness, and her death by the roadside, may be not only an appeal to Emecheta's audience to address the problems of African women, but also a figuration of the exile, alone in a strange land. The landscape of The Joys of Motherhood is a description written from a distance. It combines Emecheta's fond memories of village life with her reasons for leaving Nigeria; it is the landscape of memory and desire. Her most recent novels have focused on the experience of immigrants in Britain. The landscape of Africa, in Emecheta's life and works, has faded into the background.