Gender and Sexuality in Second Class Citizen by Emecheta Buchi

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In the book Second Class Citizen, Emecheta Buchi uses gender and sexuality to express the many ways in which society treated women and the obstacles that they had to overcome. Buchi uses this book and the many issues discussed throughout the book as a tool in the argument of gender and sexuality as a social construct; however, the ways of the world and the views of society do not see how the way women were treated back then as anything but normal. Adah, the main character of the book is a child who wants a Western education but is denied the opportunity to get one because the mere fact that she is a girl and the privilege of school goes to the boys of the family even though she is the one that wants the education. The theme that is openly used throughout the book is one of vehement animosity of gender discrimination that is often found in the culture of Adah’s people. Buchi portrays the way that African women are discriminated and victimized by the men and older women in their lives.
Emecheta’s novel, Second Class Citizen, opens up with Adah already being discriminated against by her family and the readers know this because in the opening paragraphs Adah is states that, “She was a girl who arrived when everyone was expecting and predicting a boy, so since she was such a disappointment to her tribe, nobody thought of recording her birth she was so insignificant” (pg 7-8). Within the first few sentence of the book, the reader is well aware of the fact that girls/women were not a welcome to one’s family or tribe. The females in the family are more of a burden then they are considered part of the family. However, Adah felt that more of the discrimination came from what the older women expected and when she talks about wanting to go t...

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...the water fetcher, the cook and any other assorted chores that the family needed her to do. Finally, the when she marries Francis, the oppression that Adah has to endure is one that no women she have to go through. When Adah wanted to go to work, Francis’ father’s response to Francis was, “You are a fool of a man you are…Where will she take the money to? …The money is for you, can’t you see? Let her go and work for a million Americans and bring, their money here, into this house. It is your luck. You made a good choice in marriage, son” (pg 25). With the consent of her husband by the some persuasion of his father, Adah went to work, but her sum was now responsible for paying for the rent of the family, schooling for Francis’ seven younger sisters, feeding herself and his family while providing the payment for his schooling while he was in London becoming “educated.”

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