Theme Of Sexism In Things Fall Apart And Wide Sargasso Sea

Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea handle women’s situations in once-colonial countries quite differently. While both novels were written by writers who are actually from cultures with colonised pasts, Rhys is more effective in conveying a more feminist angle by having a female protagonist in a post colonisation period and being a woman with similar personal/racial history herself. This, however, doesn’t mean Things Fall Apart is excused from being potentially sexist. On the other hand, it’s problematic to assume the women in two texts, who are from different far ends of the world, would have the same problems. McLeod suggests that while looking at women in countries with a colonial past as a whole is ignoring their local

What would suggest he is sexist is his role as a narrator. If he is using his own voice, then his portrayal of the attitude towards the sexism in the Umofia society, if not his portrayal of women, is a sign of sexism in his part. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The narrator is not entirely an outside voice, as understood in some cases such as when he comments about the marriage customs being “a woman’s ceremony” (104). He doesn’t say it was considered a woman’s ceremony; it’s a direct comment. This voice, throughout the novel, only ever makes observations about the state of Umofia and its people, along with what goes on in various characters’ heads, so it would make sense he is observing their understanding of the customs and conveying them from the eyes of a Umofian. It could be argued Achebe’s calling Conrad’s Heart of Darkness racist (Achebe qtd. in Stratton 23) is an indication of his approach to the narrator mirroring the writer’s mind, which would make his own narrator a mirror of his own mind and therefore himself a sexist, but there is a difference between two novels as Heart of Darkness have first person and TFA omniscient narrator. Heart of Darkness was written from the perspective of a European lived at the time, so it is certain his portrayal of Congo is assumed to be that of an average European mind. Achebe’s omniscient narrator on the other hand could give more voice or observations on Umofian women while not changing his narrating attitude. Stratton argues that even in representing the only powerful woman in the form of priestess Chielo, Achebe is comparing her incompetence and unreasonable methods (such as the decision to kill Ikemefuna) with the more effective and reasonable methods of egwugwu, an exclusively male dominated court of law based on more democratic ways (31). Moreover, if the first person counted as a mirror for the writer’s own mind, then Rhys