INTRODUCTION:

Chinua Achebe's novels have become a medium for understanding African literature and what are the tradition and culture followed by Africans. Under the spirit of dignity, Achebe portrays the black people and their culture in a sympathetic way. He has written novels exploring his culture, while still staying true to his roots. However, the culture itself is portrayed as something that is vibrant.It is dynamic and possibly changes from time to time and from one place to another. The dynamiccovers many aspects of African cultureat the end of 19^th Century, including the way how people and their tradition treat women in a patriarchal community.

During his own time, the societieswere strictly male-dominated and women played very limited and suppressed roles which depicted inin his novels.The patriarchal community gives a clear idea about the reality of thesocial and cultural condition of the African people where man act as the patriarch and woman as his subordinates.This is truly expressed in Achebe's most authentic novel, ‘Things Fall Apart’.

‘Things Fall Apart’ (1958) is a novel whichportrays Okonkwo as the main protagonist, along with the tradition and culture of a communal Igbo society in Nigeria, Africa at the time of the community’s encountering with the White missionaries. The story of the novel is set in a period of 1890swhen colonial missionaries made its interventioninto Igbo society. Okonkwo, the protagonist seems to beambitious and aninfluential leader of the community withgreat physical strength and courage. As the strong and powerful man in a clan, Okonkwo’s life is good as he is hard working, his compound is large, he has no troubles with his three wives, his garden grows yams, and he is respected by his fellow villagers. However, one day accidentally, Okonkwo kills a clansman, and he got banish from the village for seven years. During the seven years of exile, he thinks that he will soon return and gains his power and pride in his village, Umuofia. But his downfall is triggered by his impaired vision that he couldn’t see thechanges that happened due to certain circumstances like the missionary church is set up in his village which brings a new authority of the British District Commissioner. In this process, Okonkwo is destroyed, because his unwillingness to the change set him apart from the community. He fights alone against colonialism, and thus, ends his life tragically.

Different Perspectives of Women’s Position:

In my point of view, the world presented in Achebe’s first novel, ‘Things Fall Apart’ is a male-dominated world whereman is everything and woman is nothing. Woman is considered to be a man's property as the other acquisitions. Of course, Achebe never intends to portray women as weak in Igbo social and cultural lives. He is fully conscious about the significant roles of Igbo women in feeding, loving and caring the family as well as preserving the family’s social and cultural traditions and whichalso play considerable parts in building family, society and nation. However, he is not one-sidedly ideal thinker and writer. He is fully aware of the realistic situation existing at the family and social levels during his time. He has attempted to make the novel as precise of the time period as could be expected under the circumstances. He doesnot attempt to put forward some expression and statement about the maltreatment meted out to women but he is simply telling the realities as they were in those days.

1. From African Perspectives:

First, we will see how Achebe explains the women’s position in pre-colonial Africa.In Africa, blacks are consideredmarginalized but particularly when we discuss about women, they are suppressednot only as blacks but as women also.We find many referencesin ‘Things Fall Apart’ thathighlightsmarginalizedposition of the women in Igbo community. According to Igbo belief, menhave rights to dominate bothfamily as well as society whereas woman doesn't possessany power or authority to lead a family or the society. Igbo believed that women shouldn’t interfere in social, political and economic matters. Man is able to handle all the things without the help of woman, she is only a sharing partner to man. She must agree with each and every opinion of man as man always takes right and good decisions regarding all. These are some facts shown in the novel.

The women’sidentity in the novel reveals the patriarchal society. Patriarchy intrudes into any sphere of life. Igbo men are permitted to marry as many times they want as it is a belief in Igbo society that a man who has more and more wives is a wealthy person. The number of wives a man has, affects his social status. Men should possess women as wives and other things like yam barns, and titles (honours), and the one who has all these possession will be respected and get the highest title in the clan.

“There was a wealthy man in Okonkwo's village who had three huge barns, nine wives and thirty children, His name was Nwakibie and he had taken the highest but one title which a man could take in the clan. It was for this man that Okonkwo worked to earn his first seed yams.” (Achebe 5).

Further, women are supposed to be the head of household duties by taking care of the children and hens, performing domestic activities like scrubbing the walls and growing the crops like coco-yams, beans, maize, melons and cassava which are inferior to the yam crop grown by men. But domestically, women belong to the man. The man will do anything to keep his prestige and dignity as the head of the family. The misconception of ‘more wives, wealthier person’ continued throughout the novel. Achebe doesn’t hesitate from depicting the inequalitiesand gender discrimination in the Igbo society. Okonkwo has a masculine attitude towards his family as he lives in a male dominantsociety where he doesn’t express any love and affection, and thus, hethinks that if he shows any kind of love and affection, then it would be a feminine quality and disgraces his masculinity.

“Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children.” (Achebe 4).

Women in this novel are not expected to question men as men are supposed to be self-decisive and the power of expression accumulated in the hands of male person in a family.The voice of women is always neglected and unheard. Men do not like their wives questioning them. The woman is given a secondary status. She is neither the head, nor the decision-maker. She has to obey the orders given by her husband. When Okonkwo brings Ikemefuna, a fifteen year old boy from a neighbouring clan, Mbainoto his household, he orders his most senior wife, Nwoye’s mother to take care of him. She asks Okonkwo about the duration of Ikemefuna’s stay with them.

“‘He belongs to the clan’, he told her, ‘so look after him.’ ‘Is he staying long with us?’ she asked, ‘Do what you are told, woman; Okonkwo thundered and stammered. ‘When did you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia? And so Nwoye’s mother took Ikemefuna to her hut and asked no more questions.” (Achebe14).

Women in Igbo society are bought and sold for marriage purpose and after marriage, they have to accept and follow the orders from their husband without knowing the reason or otherwise they are insulted and beaten. Obierika, a respectable man in Umuofia village and a best friend of Okonkwo,needs Okonkwo’s help for negotiating the bride-price of his daughter, Akueke. Obierika tells Okonkwo: “My daughter’s suitor is coming today and I hope we will clinch the matter of the bride-price. I want you to be there.”(Achebe 21).

First, Obierika gives a small bundle of thirty short broomsticks to Ukegbu, father of Ibe, the suitor, which means thirty bags of cowries. They negotiate on Akueke’s bride-price from thirty bags of cowries to twenty five and then to twenty. “In this way Akueke’s bride-price was finally settled at twenty bags of cowries.”(Achebe24).Okonkwo and Obierika talk about other communities like Abame and Aninta customs for bride-price that: “They do not decide bride-price as we do, with sticks. They haggle and bargain as if they were buying a goat or a cow in the market.”(Achebe24).

Achebe portrays the condition of woman after marriage through a couple, Mgbafo (wife) and Uzowulu (husband).Odukwe, Mgbafo’s brother, mentions Uzowulu, her sister’s husband as a beast because it is for nine years that they have married but “nosingle day passed in the sky without his beating the woman”…“Two years ago,”continued Odukwe, “when she was pregnant, he beat her till she miscarried”(Achebe 30).

As the mirror of a patriarchal society at that time, the novel shows that beating a woman is very common. A woman has to stay at home all day just to serve the husband and do household work. During thePeace Week, Okonkwo beats Ojiugo,his youngest wife because she is not in her hut and has gone out without informing him and also without preparing food for her children. Okonkwo gets angry because he thinks that he is free to do everything without informing and consulting his wives. But the wives are expected to seek his permission to do anything. Then,when Ojiugo returns:

“He beat her very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace. His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week.” (Achebe 9).

Achebe shows that Igbo society gives more importance to their sons than to their daughters.Okonkwo frequently wishes and laments that his favorite child,Enzima, should have been a boy. Okonkwo shouts at her, “Sit like a woman!” (Achebe, p. 13). When she offers to bring a chair for him he replies, “No, that is a boy’s job” (Achebe 13).

Being a male-dominant society, the Igbo also lays stresson a woman’s capabilityto give birth to more than one child, especially sons. They believe that if wives give birth to the third son in succession, then the husbands would happily slaughter a goat for their wives.When Okonkwo‘s first wife, Nwoye’s mother gives birth to “her third son in succession, Okonkwo had slaughtered a goat for her, as was the custom” (Achebe26).

2. From European Perspectives:

Second, we will see how colonialism influence Achebe in depicting the women’s position in ‘Things Fall Apart’. The subjugation of womenas ‘weak and second class citizen’ finds its root in the history of the western democratic traditions that have influenced African writers through colonial education.Africa, particularly Nigeria, even before the arrival of the British, was masculine but due to colonialism, the situation deteriorated. Women are even marginalized twice: as colonized individuals and as women.

Achebe’s depiction of female characters is simply a manifestation of colonial constraints regulating the lives of men and women. In modern time, one of the most important tasks is to find a system where women, who differ from men in race, religion, gender, educational and political outlook, may live in peace and contribute to each other’s prosperity.Thus, this is the task which Achebe tries to find by writing Things Fall Apartand challenging the colonialists’ view of Africa.

For centuries, African women were neglected, exploited, degenerated, and indeed, treated as outsiders. They were not invited to give their presence when men were engaged in any discussion. The decline in power of the Igbo women of Nigeria is the result of the British colonialists’ views about women. They thought that anything strong is associated with man and anything weak is associated with woman.

For instance, Achebe explains that women are socially construed as worthless because anything in association with evil objects that have evil traits will be referred to the femininity. This happens with Unoka, Okonkwo‘s father who was a weak and poor man. He had no rights, nofood for his family and had much debt. When he consulted his fate to Agbala, the priestess who has power from her god, he got the answer to work hard and struggle like a man. This means when a man is not powerful enough, not respected by his clan, then he is not considered as a man. He is thought to have some womanly attributes.According to a critic,“Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, is considered an untitled man, connoting femininity”.

Essentially, Igbo life is gender-specific - from thecharacterization of crime tocrops that people grow. In this novel, crops are given gender attributes like yam considered as ‘the king of yams’. The most prestigious and admired plant brings with it the owner’s respect and dignity so the yam particularly stands for manliness, the plant for men. And coco-yam, of smaller size and lesser value than other yams, is regarded as female.

“Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another was a very great man indeed . . . . Yam, the king of crops, is a very exacting king” (Achebe 10).

3. From Critical Perspectives:

Third, we will see what different critics think about Achebe’s portrayal of women in ‘Things Fall Apart.’ As we know, fromthe time being many texts and materials are made available to study and discuss gender discrimination from feminist perspectives. Different critics have their different point of views about what position women possess in thesociety and how the male characters of the novel viewfemale and their feminine traits in the Igbo society.

According to Reddy, “Okonkwo sees things and judge the same from a purely masculine point of view. He cannot imagine a man endowed with the finer qualities of gentleness and softness. For him these are nothing but feminine traits.” (Reddy 31).

The main protagonist, Okonkwo is affected by almost absence of female, and has little or no respect for women. In her article ‘Women in Achebe’s World’, Mezu primarily studies “Achebe's portraiture of women”, “the factors that state male attitudes towards women”, and “the consequences of the absence of a moderating female principle in his fictions”. According to Mezu, Achebe make women invisible but they can be seen throughout the entire novel: “It was clear from the way that the crowd stood or sat that the ceremony was for men. There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe like outsiders”. Women are genuinely treated little better than slaves as they care for children and pick the yams, which Achebe’s narrator explains, are the symbol for “manliness” quality. Even though “women form the center of the rural workforce” in ‘Things Fall Apart’, they perhaps can be beaten and treated brutally as animals. Examples of such disrespected characters are all three of Okonkwo's wives and in the society of ‘Things Fall Apart’, “man is everything and the woman is nothing...women are quantified as part of men's acquisitions”. As a result of absence of a strong female authority in ‘Things Fall Apart’ brings the downfall of Okonkwo. He has never acquiredany positive influence from a womanand has developed negative feelings for ‘femininity’. If Okonkwo didn’t indulge himself with power and manliness, Mezu argues, then he wouldn’t be able to become master of his pride.“Excessive emphasis on virility, sex-role stereotyping, gender-discrimination, and violence create an imbalance, a resultant denigration…such denigration brings Okonkwo to ruin” (Mezu 3).

However, the entire story of ‘Things Fall Apart’ revolves only around the men. Dathorneasserts that Things Fall Apart is “essentially infused by the dominant presence of a man…”The set of rules and norms fixed by the society over-ruled the relationship between men and women and considered women as marginalized.Women usually have domestically oriented jobs and complimentary positions to men. For instance, women are expected only to cook, to clean the house, to look after the children. According toUmeh, “the recent feminist readings of Achebe are discovering differentattempts made by the author to place history in proper perception that resulted in a masculinist literary creation in which the character is male and the other female”.

Thus, Achebe’s portrayal of women, in ‘Things Fall Apart’, is no doubtwithout due considerations and as an outcomeat large they are often beaten for mere misconduct. But as the most hardworking individuals in their societies, women constitute the core of the rural work such as farming, tending animals and nurturing children. The imposition of colonial ideology and Victorian attitudes make the Nigerian women suffer the loss of their traditional status during the colonial and post-colonial periods.Juliet Okonkwo, a Nigerian critic, states that:“Achebe’s cultural universe is one in which women are to be seen, not heard, coming and going, with mounds of foo-foo, pots of water, market baskets, fetching kola, being scolded and beaten before they disappear behind the huts of their compound”.

4. From Contemporary Perspectives:

Fourth, as we have discussed earlier that Achebe is fully aware about the roles of Igbo women in day-to-day life and he has not forgotten to highlight them and bring to the notice of his readers. But people have not paid much attention to the important position of women both in family and in African patriarchal society.

At first glance, we see that Chinua Achebe's ‘Things Fall Apart’ leaves little room for the projection of feminine values. The novel presents women as a marginalized group with an unfair, limited authority and responsibility. Thisrepresentationof Igbo women is true to some extent. Just as originally Igbo womenseem to be very weak, those without power hence useless in the society. However, later as time goes by, this is again proved wrong when a bigger significance is revealed about the women’s position in the Ibo society. It is evident that even though Igbo men beat women and discriminate them in many ways but still women hold their important role in men’s life.

When the reader uncovers the diverse roles of the Igbo women throughout the novel, we see that the women of the Igbo clan hold some very powerful positions such as that of the householders, the helpers to their husbands in farming, the caretakers of the yam crops, and the most prominently – mothers as well as educators of their children. They also function as the spiritual leaders, the caretakers of the Ibo people, and carry out other very important roles in the Ibo society.

CONCLUSION:

I would likeconclude that Achebe, through his novel ‘Things Fall Apart’, shows women’s position inthe traditional Igbo community. For countless of years, women of Africa have suffered from the oppression in every aspects of traditional, cultural, social, political, economic and educational field.

According to the Igbo cultural norms or culture regulations, the social position of the women is rooted in the patriarchal culture that gives priority to the men. Men are the authority and women are their belonging. In such culture, all aspects of life centered on men. Anything positive, good, and strong deals with men while the opposite one deals with female. Women’s identity is suppressed in the patriarchal society as their voice are not heard. They are neither allowed to take important decisions nor question the male authority. They are also not allowed to marry the person of their choice and after marriage their husband beats and insults them. Theydo not have definite position among the public and are considered to be outsiders. These conditions reduce the roles of women in the real life and leads the leader of the community towards destruction.

In the Igbo society, the sons’ duty is to give attention to farming for getting the yam, seedling reeds and keep the farming instruments ready for farm work. Theyparticipates in masquerades, wrestling matches, meetings and accompany their fathers to ceremonies, while the daughter begins and ends their world by getting married, giving birth to children and serving food to their husbands and children.Thus, the positionof women in pre-colonial Africa was mainly disrupted because of the existingtraditional and cultural aspects of the Igbo society. Later, this male dominated African tribal culture adhered to be even more oppressive in regard of femininity, and yet formedstrict norms for women in the society. This reflects the impact of colonialism on the Nigerian society.

Therefore, femininity is an interesting principle in ‘Things Fall Apart’ and the societythroughoutthe novel has scorned the idea of women and their influence being positive in any way.

REFERENCS:

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1995. Print.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Introduction To Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Print.

Azodo, Ada Uzoamaka. “Masculinity, Power and Language in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart”. Emerging Perspectives on Chinua Achebe Volume-1. Africa World Press, 2004. Print.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Carroll, David. Chinua Achebe: Novelist,Poet,Critic Things Fall Apart. Ed. AbiolaIrele. New York: Norton, 2009. Print.

Reddy, Indrasena. The Novels of Achebe and Ngugi: A Study in the Dialectics of

Commitment. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1995. Print.

Mezu, Rose Ure. “Women in Achebe’s World.” Womanist Theory and Research (Summer1995). Web. 2, Sept. 2018. <http://www.uga.edu/~womanist/1995/mezu.html>

Mezu, Rose Ure. Women in Chains: Abandonment in Love Relationships in the Fiction of Selected West African Writers. Owerri, Nigeria: Black Academy, 1994. Print.

Okonkwo, Juliet. “The Talented Woman in African Literature.”African Quarterly 15.1-2. Print.

Strong-Leek, Linda. Reading As A Woman: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart And Feminist Criticism. (January, 2009). Print.

Received on 18.07.2019 Modified on 30.09.2019

Int. J. Ad. Social Sciences. 2019; 7(3-4):41-45.

DOI: 10.5958/2454-2679.2019.00009.4