The Joys of Motherhood

The Joys of Motherhood

Book cover
Author Buchi Emecheta
Country Nigeria
Language English
Genre Bildungsroman
Publisher Allison & Busby
Publication date
 1979
Media type Print

The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was reprinted in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 2008. The basis of the novel is the "necessity for a woman to be fertile, and above all to give birth to sons".[1] 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 centers 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.

In the words of critic Marie Umeh, Emecheta "breaks the prevalent portraitures in African writing.... It must have been difficult to draw provocative images of African motherhood against the already existing literary models, especially on such a sensitive subject."[2]

Plot

Nwokocha Agbadi is a proud, handsome and wealthy local chief. Although he has many wives he finds a woman named Ona more attractive. Ona (a priceless jewel) is the name he has given her. Ona is the daughter of a chief. When she was young, her father took her everywhere he went, saying she was his ornament, and Nwokocha Agbadi would say jokingly, "Why don't you wear her around your neck like an Ona?" (a priceless jewel). It never occurred to him that he would be one of the men to ask her when she grew up.

During one rainy season chief Agbadi and his friends have gone elephant hunting and having come too near the heavy creature he is thrown with a mighty tusk into a nearby sugar-cane bush and is pinned to the floor. He aims his spear at the belly of the mighty animal and kills it but not until it has wounded him badly. Agbadi passes out and it seems to all he has died. He wakes up after several days to find Ona beside him. During this period, he rapes her, and after eighteen days he finds out that his eldest wife Agunwa was very ill and died later. It is thought that perhaps she became ill as a result of seeing her husband pass out.

The funeral festivities continue through the day. When it is time to put Agunwa in her grave, everything she will need in afterlife having been placed in her coffin, her personal slave is called. According to custom, a good slave is supposed to jump into the grave willingly to accompany her mistress but this young and beautiful slave begs for her life, much to the annoyance of the men. The hapless slave is pushed into the shallow grave but struggles out, appealing to her owner Agbadi, whose eldest son cries angrily: “So my mother does not deserve a decent burial?” So saying, he gives her a sharp blow with the head of the cutlass. Another relative gives her a final blow to the head and she falls into the grave, silenced forever. The burial is completed.

Ona becomes pregnant from Agbadi's rape and delivers a baby girl named Nnu Ego ("twenty bags of cowries"). The baby is born with a mark on her head resembling that made by the cutlass used on the head of the slave woman. Ona gives birth to another son but she dies in premature labour and her son also dies a week afterwards. Nnu Ego becomes a woman but is barren. After several months with no sign of fruitfulness, she consults several herbalists and is told that the slave woman who is her Chi (goddess) will not give her a child. Her husband Amatokwu takes another wife who before long conceives.

Nnu Ego returns to her father’s house. She is married to new husband whom she does not like but prays that if she can have a child with him, she will love him. She does give birth to a baby boy, whom she later finds dead. Shocked, she is on the verge of jumping into the river when a villager draws her back and comforts her. She subsequently gives birth to four children. Her husband, a laundryman for a white man, is drafted into the army during wartime, but on her own Nnu Ego ensures all her children have a good life, sending two abroad to study. After she dies a lonely death, her children all come home and are sorry they were in a position to give her a better life but alas! they could not. She is given the greatest burial in their town.

When all her children are unable to have offspring the Oracle reveals that this is because Nnu Ego is angry with them. Stories say that she is a wicked woman even in death. Still, they agree that she has given everything to her children and that this is the joy of being a mother.

Critical reception

The reviewer in West Africa wrote: "Buchi Emecheta has a way of making readable and interesting ordinary events. She looks at things without flinching and without feeling the need to distort of exaggerate. It is a remarkable talent.... this is, in my opinion, the best novel Buchi Emecheta has yet written."[3] A. N. Wilson in The Observer said: "Buchi Emecheta has a growing reputation for her treatment of African women and their problems. This reputation will surely be enhanced by The Joys of Motherhood."[4]

References

  1. ↑ Hans M. Zell, Carol Bundy & Virginia Coulon (eds), A New Reader's Guide to African Literature, Heinemann Educational Books, 1983, p. 385.
  2. ↑ Marie Umeh, "African women in transition in the novels of Buchi Emecheta", Présence Africaine, no. 116, 1980, p. 199.
  3. ↑ K.M. in West Africa, quoted in Zell, Bundy & Coulon (1983), p. 151.
  4. ↑ A. N. Wilson, The Observer, quoted in Zell, Bundy & Coulon (1983), p. 151.
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