The document critiques Igbo tradition through Buchi Emecheta's novel 'The Joys of Motherhood', focusing on the oppression of women in four key areas: polygamy, belief in the afterlife, childlessness, and bride price. It highlights how these customs dehumanize women and treat them as property, particularly emphasizing the societal value placed on women's fertility. Ultimately, the paper argues that the novel serves as a critical lens on the oppressive nature of these traditions.

1. THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD AS A CRITIQUE OF IGBO TRADITION:
DISCUSSION OF AREAS THAT ARE OF CONCERN TO THE AUTHOR 2015
Buchi Emecheta's novel, The Joys of Motherhood is about suffering of a woman by the
name Nnu Ego (Robolin). Robolin claims that, “Nnu Ego seeks to terminate the excruciating
pain that accompanies her long succession of failed attempts at motherhood" (76). Robolin
asserts that, in the story, Nnu Ego’s success to achieve motherhood has yielded nothing but
grievous loss for her. According to Derrickson, the story is “set in the British colony of Nigeria
in the 1930s and 1940s” (2). The novel contains acts of oppression in the Igbo society.
According to Sabanpan-Yu, “in traditional African society, women were certainly oppressed”
(278). As such, there are many areas of the tradition that are of concern to the author that cause
the oppression. The paper discusses only four areas which include, polygamy, belief in the
afterlife, problem of childless wife and the issue of bride price.
One of the areas that are of concern to the author is the issue of polygamy which leads to
objectification of women. Al-Krenawi and Kanat-Maymon (2015) defines polygamy as a “form
of marriage in which a man has two or more wives at the same time” (10). In Igbo tradition, a
man is allowed to marry as many women as possible. Derrickson comments that polygamy
“secured men's power over women in general” (2). Polygamy gives men power to use women as
objects of satisfaction and stop to use them when they are tired of them due to their age and
motherhood. This oppressive nature of the Igbo tradition is shown in Emecheta’s reference to
Nwokocha Agbadi's behaviour on the treatment of women: " He marries a few women in the
traditional sense, but as he watched each of them sink into domesticity and motherhood he was
soon bored and would go further afield for some other exciting, tall and proud female"
(Emecheta 10). In this case, the tradition allows Agbadi to treat women as objects of satisfaction
and once he is tired of and lost interest in them, he searches for other women to marry.

2. THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD AS A CRITIQUEOF IGBOTRADITION: DISCUSSION
OF AREAS THAT ARE OF CONCERN TO THE AUTHOR
2015
J O H N L A S T O N M U S O N G O L E : j o h n l a s t o n m u s o n g o l e @ g m a i l . c o m Page 2
The other area of concern to the author is a belief in the afterlife. This belief leads to the
death of innocent people in the Igbo tradition. When a wife of a chief dies, the Igbo tradition
allows the people to bury the body of the dead woman together with her live personal slave who
is also a woman. This is oppression among the Igbo people as it removes the lives of innocent
people who are not willing to die. The Igbo tradition deprives people from enjoying their right to
life. In the novel, Emecheta portrays this oppression when Agunwa, Agbadi’s first wife dies and
her slave is forced into the grave to be buried alive together with the body of her dead mistress.
Though the slave girl pleads for her life, men kill her and buries her body together with that of
her mistress. Emecheta emphasizes this oppression in the novel:
Then her personal slave was ceremoniously called in a loud voice by the medicine man:
she must be laid inside the grave first. A good slave was supposed to jump into the grave
willingly, happy to accompany her mistress: but this young and beautiful woman did not
wish to die yet. She kept begging for her life, much for the annoyance of many of the
men standing around. . . . The poor slave girl was pushed into the shallow grave
(Emecheta 23).
Emecheta shows her disapproval of these customsby making the slave woman’s spirit avenge her
death through tormenting Agbadi’s family in form of Nnu Ego’s chi who makes her suffer.
According to Robolin,“shortly after, the Slave Woman returns in the form of the chi of
Nnu Ego, Agbadi's daughter, who subsequently pays for her father's own indiscretions and
fault” (78).The spirit of the slave woman ". . . inflicts . . . Nnu Ego with illness, infertility" as a
punishment to Agbadi’s family (Ward 93).

3. UNIVERSITYOF MALAWI CHANCELLORCOLLEGE
THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD AS A CRITIQUEOF IGBOTRADITION: DISCUSSION
OF AREAS THAT ARE OF CONCERN TO THE AUTHOR
2015
Furthermore, the area of concern to the author is the “problem of childless wife in a
society that honors fertility” (Umeh 2). Women are taken as inferior beings when they do not
have children. They are treated as complete human beings when they have children. Amatokwu
portrays this behaviour when he starts treating Nnu Ego as his helper on the farm rather than his
wife because she do not have children. Amatokwu further portrays this behaviour of treating
childless women as inferior when he tell Nnu Ego that “I have no time to waste my precious
male seed on a woman who is infertile. I have to raise my children for my line . . . , you don't
appeal to me anymore. You are so dry and jumpy" (Emecheta 32). In this case Amatokwu treats
Nnu Ego as a useless being because she is unable to bear children for him. According to
Amatokwu, a woman who is unable to bear children for him is nothing as that woman does not
appeal to him anymore. This is oppression of this tradition because it acknowledges the value of
a woman only through her capability of bearing children.
The issue of bride price is another area of concern to the author who see it oppressive to
women. In this practice, a man is expected to pay something to the family of a woman whom he
wants to marry. This practice oppresses women by treating them as property of men in exchange
for the bride price. The practice gives men a right to claim that they own their wives and they can
command their wives to do what their husbands want. The practice limits women choices as it
forces them to behave according to the will of their husbands. Nnaife portrays this kind of
oppression when he tries to control Nnu Ego's behaviour by making her behave according to his
own wish not according to her wish because her husband is her owner as he paid bride price to
own her. When Nnu Ego try to protest her husband's controlling behaviour over her, the husband
portrays this oppression by saying that “Did I not pay your bride price? Am I not your owner?"

4. THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD AS A CRITIQUEOF IGBOTRADITION: DISCUSSION
OF AREAS THAT ARE OF CONCERN TO THE AUTHOR
2015
J O H N L A S T O N M U S O N G O L E : j o h n l a s t o n m u s o n g o l e @ g m a i l . c o m Page 4
(Emecheta 48). This is one of the oppressive nature of the Igbo tradition as it gives men the
power to claim that they own their wives. This is complete objectification of women.
In conclusion, the paper has discussed polygamy, belief in the afterlife, childless wifeand
bride price as the four areas of the Igbo tradition that are of concern to the author of The Joys of
Motherhood, Buchi Emecheta. The paper has discussed that the four areas are some of the
factors that cause the Igbo tradition to be oppressive to women. Therefore, we can use the four
areas of concern discussed in the paper as our stand point when reading the novel as a critique of
Igbo tradition.
Works Cited
Al-Krenawi, Alean and A. Kanat-Maymon. "Psychological symptomatology,." International
Social Work (2015): 1-12.
Derrickson, Teresa. "Class, Culture, and the Colonial Context: The Status of Women in Buchi
Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood." The International Fiction Review 29 (2002): 1-9.
Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. Oxford: Heinemann, 1994.

5. UNIVERSITYOF MALAWI CHANCELLORCOLLEGE
THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD AS A CRITIQUEOF IGBOTRADITION: DISCUSSION
OF AREAS THAT ARE OF CONCERN TO THE AUTHOR
2015
Robolin, Ste'phane. "The Joys of Motherhood," Interpretive Acts, and Postcolonial Theory."
Research in African Literatures 35.3 (2004): 76-92.
Sabanpan-Yu, Hope. "Women Coming to Voice in Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood and
Espina-Moore's Mila's." Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 38.3 (2010): 274-
289. 3 July 2015. < http://www.jstor.org>.
Umeh, Marie A. "The Joys of Motherhood : Myth or Reality." Colby Quarterly 1 March 1982:
39-46.
Ward, Cynthia. "What They Told Buchi Emecheta: Oral Subjectivity and the Joys of "Otherhood
and." Special Topic: African and African American Literature 105.1 (1990): 83-97. 3
July 2015. < http://www.jstor.org>.