What are the themes in Second-Class Citizen?

The novel Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta presents several important themes including misogyny, immigration, racial prejudice, and female strength.

The novel reveals the deeply engrained misogyny in Nigerian culture. As a young girl, Adah longs for an education, but her family will not send her to school, for they view education as unnecessary for females. Adah goes anyway, however, and is allowed to continue her education when her family realizes that they will get a higher bride-price for an educated young woman.

As Adah grows older, she decides to forgo further education because of pressure from her family to marry. They would like her to marry an older man, but Adah wants to make her own choice and marries Francis Obi. Francis, however, turns out to be just as misogynist as others in their homeland. After Adah joins him in London, Francis forces himself on her, beats and abuses her, and refuses to care for their children. Eventually, when Adah seeks divorce, Francis denies that the children are even his. In his eyes, Adah (and all women) are no more than an object to be used or a piece of trash to be thrown out.

Another theme in the novel is immigration and the experiences of immigrants. In London, Adah must learn how to adapt to another culture, and she is shocked by the differences between Nigeria and Great Britain. Adah has always dreamed of living in Great Britain, but she soon discovers that the reality is nothing like her dreams. She finds the city and their apartments dirty and unwelcoming. Her children suffer at the hands of a daycare provider who behaves badly and lives in filth, and officials refuse to do anything about it, at least at first.

Further, Adah and her family face strong racial prejudice and discrimination. They have difficulty even finding a place to live because of their race, and they are treated very much as second-class citizens. Adah, who has always been a member of the upper class at home, struggles to adapt.

Yet even in the midst of misogyny, the trials of an immigrant life, prejudice, and discrimination, Adah remains surprisingly strong. She finds jobs in libraries, builds friendships, resists and eventually divorces her husband, and even writes a novel. By the end of the story, Adah is on her own with five children, determined to make her way in the world and care for her children as well as she can. She vows she will survive.

What are the themes in Second-Class Citizen?

The necessity of female emancipation is a very important theme in Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen. The protagonist of the story, Adah, comes to realize the importance of breaking free from the constraints placed upon her by a patriarchal society and its values and forging her own path in life.

For most of the story, Adah is trapped in a marriage to Francis, a man steeped in the old ways. He treats her appallingly, regarding her as his inferior, simply because she's a woman.

Having been brought up in a traditional culture, Francis is firmly of the belief that men must keep their wives under control at all times. In relation to Adah, this means that she is unable to exercise freedom in any kind of meaningful sense.

And yet, Adah is determined to become free, and over the course of the novel, she gradually begins to take more and more control over her life. Whether it's by seeking out contraception or writing her book, Adah is slowly but surely breaking free of the patriarchal values insisted upon by her husband.

Eventually, Adah frees herself from the grip of her husband and the value system he represents. In doing so, she is finally able to chart her own course in life, to fulfill her potential and make her dreams come true.

What are the themes of racism, stigmas, and stereotypes in Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta?

Adah has always dreamed of one day going to England. Indeed, it is the pinnacle of her ambition. But when she sets foot in the country as a teen bride, the dream quickly turns into a nightmare. Far from the fairytale land of Adah's imaginings, England is a place where dark-skinned people are unwelcome. Legal discrimination is everywhere; property-owners will openly refuse to let their houses to those from Africa and the Caribbean. Adah even wishes that she and Francis could paint their faces white until they finally manage to find a place to live.

Even after Adah finds a job at the library, she's made to feel inferior by her co-workers. By constantly talking of boyfriends and clothes, they are setting themselves apart from the newcomer, who comes from a completely different culture, where such topics of conversation are not considered acceptable for a young lady.

A further example of racial prejudice comes when Adah tries to become a babysitter. She quickly realizes that British people expect their babysitters to be white. This is because they subscribe to an insulting stereotype of black people as lazy, untrustworthy, and somewhat dangerous. For white British people—or, at least, most of them—it seems black skin color has entirely negative connotations. And this is why both Adah and Francis find that in Great Britain, they are second-class citizens.

What are the themes of racism, stigmas, and stereotypes in Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta?

Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta (1944 – 2017) is a quasi-autobiographical novel based on Emecheta's experiences as a Nigerian immigrant to England. Originally published in 1974, the novel addresses issues of what we would now call "intersectionality," or the way the protagonist's race and gender affect her socio-economic marginalization in a synergistic manner.

In her early life in Lagos, the protagonist Adah Ofili is from a middle class family but encounters being a "second class" citizen when her family and society obstruct her dreams of education because she is a girl. Despite that she persists, completes her secondary education, and gets married in order to be able to move to England and attend university.

Despite her education and intelligence, in England she finds that her race makes her, to a degree, a second-class citizen, treated not as an educated middle-class woman but lumped in with all other Nigerians, within a generically racist set of stereotypes, and pressured to live in ethnically segregated neighborhoods. Her own resentment of being forced to live with lower class Nigerians makes us realize that one can simultaneously be a victim of, as well as a perpetrator of, prejudice and stereotyping.

The novel, however, has an optimistic theme in that Adah realizes that she can assert her worth against racial and gender stereotyping in England and achieve her dreams of being an educated writer.

What are the themes of racism, stigmas, and stereotypes in Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta?

The novel Second-Class Citizen can be analyzed from a perspective of racism. There are many forms of racism in the novel. Clearly, the English harbor their own forms of racism against immigrants, including Nigerians like Adah and Francis. For example, Adah's son has to receive medical care at a second-class hospital when he is stricken with meningitis, and Adah and her family must live in a run-down neighborhood when they arrive in London. Her husband, Francis, tells her:

"Everyone is coming to London, the West Indians, the Pakistanis, and even the Indians, so that African students are usually grouped together with them. We are all blacks, all coloureds, and the only houses we can get are horrors like these" (page 35).

The white English people view all brown-colored foreigners as the same, and they make housing available in immigrant neighborhoods for them, but not in neighborhoods where English-born white people live. The English hold stereotypes that all brown people are the same and should be segregated in housing, medical care, and other areas.

Adah harbors her own stereotypes and class-based stigmas. For example, when she arrives in London, she thinks, "to her horror, she saw that she had to share the house with such Nigerians who called her Madam at home" (36). She has had an elite education and background in Nigeria, and she harbors her own stereotypes of Nigerians from lower-class backgrounds as crude and lesser.

Her husband, Francis, tells her:

"You may be earning a million pounds a day...but the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen. So you can't discriminate against your own people, because we are all second-class" (37).

He says that although Adah would never speak to a bus conductor in Nigeria, in England, the black middle-class are composed of bus conductors. Adah has her own stereotypes of lower-class people, but she realizes that in England, all black people are stereotyped as lower class and undeserving of having educated jobs. She also has stereotypes of her neighbors, who are Yoruba, and of a different tribal background than she has (she is an Igbo).

Though the book also deals with the second-class citizenship that Adah suffers as a result of her husband's cruelty and sexism, it is also clear that both Adah and Francis suffer from the racist attitudes of many English people and that Adah at first has her own stereotypes to overcome. She eventually becomes a proponent of anti-racism and anti-sexism and insists that she and her children fight for first-class citizenship.

What is the theme of colonialism in "Second-Class Citizen"?

Colonialism and its enduring legacy is a central theme in Second-Class Citizen. The protagonist, Adah, is an indigenous African born in Nigeria during World War II and spends her entire childhood under British colonial rule. The limited opportunities for native peoples under colonialism included limited education. The schools designated for native children were inferior to those in which the colonists enrolled their children, but some private schools were available.

Adah uses a variety of tactics to pursue her education at the Methodist school. For adults, economic opportunities in the colony were also extremely limited, which contributed to a “brain drain.” After Nigeria became independent in 1960, although people were free, conditions actually worsened in some ways when many British enterprises were suddenly pulled out. These problems contributed to the decision of her husband, Francis, to emigrate. Once she joined him in England, many of their negative experiences seem to stem from white English people's bias against the former colonial subjects.

What is the theme of colonialism in "Second-Class Citizen"?

In "Second-Class Citizen," the characters uproot their lives from Nigeria to eventually move to the United Kingdom. In the novel, their lives in Nigeria are ruled by the British overlord, as they are a colonial nation. This idea is pervasive in the novel, as the colonial mindset automatically brands the characters as "second-class citizens."

Being distant subjects of the British government, the citizens of Nigeria are not given access to high-quality education or opportunities, in spite of the effort they put forth. When Adah and Francis move to the United Kingdom, in spite of the fact that they are working hard trying to earn a decent living and supporting themselves as well as they can, they are still treated with less respect and dignity, and they don't receive the opportunities they should, simply because they are not native Brits. This theme runs throughout the novel, as they are constantly scraping to get by and make their lives better, but are very unsuccessful.

Discuss the theme of racism based on stigmas and stereotypes in Second-Class Citizen.

In Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen, Adah doesn't really understand how stereotypes and stigmas contribute to racism and discrimination until she joins her husband, Francis, in England.

Adah is used to being among the middle or even upper class in Nigeria. Her family is well off (at least until her father dies), and she receives a good education. She struggles for a while when she has to live with her uncle and is treated as a servant, but even then, racism is not an issue. Adah ends up with a good job after her marriage, and she is really a first-class citizen.

But this all changes when Adah moves to England to be with her husband, who is studying there. Francis tells her at once that life is different in England. Here, they are second-class citizens, and this is because they are immigrants and are Black. Here, people look at Adah and her family with disdain, not because they know them but because they stereotype them. Because they are Nigerian, they must be undesirable.

Adah and her family live in slum-like conditions. The apartments they rent are tiny and filthy, but many people will not rent to them because of their race and their immigrant status. Landlords actually write "Sorry, no coloureds" in their advertisements, and when the family is evicted from their current apartment, they have a very difficult time finding a new place. One landlady takes one look at Francis and Adah and lies that the apartment they have come to look at is already rented, even when it is not. They end up living in a dirty, rundown building owned by another Nigerian immigrant. Adah cannot find good care for the children, either, and her son becomes very ill because of it.

Indeed, Adah learns quickly that people subscribe to all kinds of ridiculous stereotypes about people of different races. They refuse to look at Adah as a person. They cannot see beyond the color of her skin and her status as immigrant.