At first glance the treatment of women in an Igbo marriage is appalling, the woman may be beat if she is out of line, she raises the children, does the housework and even some farm work without hesitation. For the Igbo clan, a marriage is the union between a man and as many women as he desires and can afford to buy. A marriage is done for the purpose of having numerous children and love between man and wife is not even a requirement. The wife is given the option to leave if she is unhappy and despite the fact that the choice to leave or to stay seems obvious, the pros seem to outweigh the cons for an Igbo woman.
For the most part an Igbo marriage takes into consideration two factors: religion and the fertility of the couple. Children are one of the main focuses for the Igbo tribe and being married is among the first essential steps towards having children. It is extremely vital for a married couple to have children, actually a woman is not welcomed into her husband's family until she bares him a child. "The birth of the child gives her the title of wife, before this time she may be said to be a wife only in anticipation." (Obi, Celestine). The birth of a male child is much more accepted than the birth of a female child. A male child will eventually do the harder labour, go to war, and carry on the family name where a female child will marry into another family. In Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart Okonkwo clearly illustrates resentment toward his daughter Ezinma simply because she should have been a boy, she is however his favourite daughter. Okonkwo's resentment towards his favourite daughter demonstrates how stressful life would be as another one of his daughters.
When the main importance of a woman's life is to produce chi...
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... raised in a religious household and will continue the traditions of the family and of the religion (Brians, Paul).
Although it has obvious flaws according to our society, an Igbo marriage is well-built and the foundation is strong. Women have the choice to leave if they are unhappy and men have the option to marry a second wife if there are problems with the first one or if they can afford to take more wives. This system is undoubtedly unethical but has proven to be more productive than a monogamous marriage.
Works Cited:
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Oxford: Heinemann, 1996.
Brians, Paul. "Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart."
www.wsu.edu:8000/~brians/anglophone/achebe.html Date accessed: February 23, 2004.
Obi, Celestine A. "Marriage among the Igbo of Nigeria." www.nigeriamasterweb.com/igbomarriage.html Date accessed: February 23, 2004.
The role of men in the Igbo culture is to provide food. Meanwhile, women are given easier tasks as to just serve the men. Work is shared equally in American culture.
Men are still looked at as the dominant gender and still believed to “own their wives.” According to BBC News, women are still looked at as property and are perceived to be pure and submissive to their parents and husbands. Yes, society has changed in the world to where women are allowed to have “equal right as men,” and women are allowed more freedom. Nonetheless, women in Nigerian society have not had that same change and are now standing up for themselves. Women went from being valued in culture, to being submissive housewives. Men went from being strong warriors who cared for women’s rights, to not caring about women. It was always seen in the Igbo culture that women are supposed to be pure and able to bear multiple children for their husband, but it has taken a bigger turn than expected in their
While livelihood is used as a sign of virility in both cultures, Igbo culture focuses on work ethic, whereas Western society tends to focus on field of work. The author exhibits Okonkwo's work ethic by saying that “during the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms from cock-crow until the chickens went to roost” (11). This passage shows the importance of hard work in the Igbo culture. In contrast, Western media often displays a masculine man as having a high salary job, while mainly delegating work to lesser staff., because of their position in “power.” Media emphasizes this idea, with ...
...exiled to his motherland. Uchendu, his uncle, notices Okonkwo's grief and powerfully explains to Okonkwo how he should view his exile: "A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. And that is why we say that Mother is Supreme”. The only credit and fulfilment these women enjoy is motherhood. They receive respect and love from their children. They are strong for their children. Women are viewed to be very gentle and caring. They are expected to take care of their children with the best of their ability. Women are trusted totally by their children. This honorable portrayal of women is used by Achebe to identify women's role in the Ibo society. This portrayal is necessary to show that women indeed play an important role in society.
http://moodle.oakland.k12.mi.us/internationalacademy/pluginfile.php?file=%2F68302%2Fmod _ folder%2Fcontent%2F0%2FAfrica%20Essay%2FAchebe%20Interview%20An%20African%2 20Voice.docx&forcedownload=1>. Arinze, Francis A., and Kalu Ogbu. The "Igbo Religion" www.ic.galegroup.com.
"Nigeria: Prevalence of Arranged Marriage within the Igbo (Ibo) Community; Description of Traditional Betrothal/marriage Contract and Marriage; Whether Groom's Family Is Financially Responsible for the Bride upon Betrothal; State Protection Available to Women Forced into Marriage." Refworld. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.
To start with, the advantages of the Igbo social structure included a balanced society, equality, distribution of labor, a surplus of food, separate huts, a collective society, and some form of government. A centralized society was achieved through the Igbo social structure. This structure served the purpose to impose the same religion upon the people to enforce a common belief. By organizing the society, the people could follow the idea of “unity” to prevent any conflicts or disagreements within the community. Along with a unified society, some kind of equal status came as a result of the social structure that has been established within the clan. Although the social hierarchy did not promote equal status between men and women, it did, to some extent, promote equality within the division of labor among the people. It relieved the pressure of stress, which may have been bestowed up...
Before the arrival of the Europeans, Achebe did a excellent job portraying how the life of Igbo was before they were forced to oppose their own culture. To support this theme, Achebe included detailed descriptions of social rituals within each family, the justice system, religious practices and consequences, preparation and indulgence of food, the marriage process and the distributing of power within the men. Achebe shows how every man has an opportunity to prove himself worthy to achieve a title on the highest level, based merely on his own efforts. One may argue that the novel was written with the main focus on the study of Okonkwo’s character and how he deteriorates, but without the theme that define the Igbo culture itself, we would never know the universe qualities of the society that shaped Okonkwo’s life. The lives of the Igbo people was no different to the actual lives of the Ibos people back in the early days of Africa. Just like in Things Fall Apart, in actual African tribes there was never a ruler. “Very interesting thing about these villages is that there is no single ruler or king that controls the population. Decisions are made by including almost everyone in the village” (AfricaGuide). Using the theme, Achebe educated readers on by mirroring real African life in her
Also, as many of the natives ran to the new Christian faith, many family bonds were broken. Before colonialism took place, family was an important thing in the Igbo society. It was not often that a man would give his son away for any reason, but because of the English coming in and teaching a new faith, many families were forced to give up their sons, daughters, and even some men were forced to give up their wives. The new religion also affected the way certain customs took place in the Igbo society. An example would be when one of the newly converted Christians killed the highly honored snake.
Johnson, Diane. Traditional Marriage in Africa: The Dowry. 7 October 2010. 11 May 2011 .
There are constant struggles between gender, identity, commodification, and class. Among the men and women in many African tribes that still exist today, there are divergences, which will always remain intact because of the culture and the way in which they are taught to treat each other. Chinua Achebe wrote the novel, Things Fall Apart, which is a great piece of African literature that deals with the Igbo culture, history, and the taking over of African lands by British colonization. The ongoing gender conflict is a prominent theme in Things Fall Apart presenting the clash between men and women of the African Igbo society. Throughout history, from the beginning of time to today, women have frequently been viewed as inferior, men’s possessions whose sole purpose was to satisfy the men’s needs. Maybe it's because men are physically stronger than women and have always had the ability to control them that way. In Things Fall Apart, the Igbo women were perceived as being weak. They received little or no respect in the Igbo society and were harshly abused. The recurring theme of gender conflicts helps drive the novel Things Fall Apart by showing how important women are to the men, yet they do not receive the treatment they deserve.
The novel Things fall apart depicts the cultural battle between the Igbo and the British: one was trying to keep its tradition, and one wanted to change those traditions by replacing them with a new religion. Finally, the British won because of they could figure out the falsehood in the indigenous people’s degenerate customs and attack it. Nothing in this world is perfect, and it is hard for a culture to be perfect. However, if a culture wants to develop and thrive, it should respect the value of its entire people. That was the reason why the Igbo culture was destroyed, because of its conservativeness, gender differentiation and superstitiously killing of the innocent.
Throughout history, there have been many instances of people struggling to identify and cope with change and tradition, and this is no different in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
The synergy between Igbo spirituality and secular life suggests that harmony among members of society was just as important as h...
“Polygyny is the marriage of one man to more than one woman at the same time” (Powell 167). This structure of marriage is prevalent among the families of Okonkwo’s village, and Okonkwo himself has three wives. A man with many wives was looked upon in a better light than a man with only one wife or no wife at all. In the novel, Okonkwo is said to have had a hard start as a young man because “he neither inherited a barn, nor a title, nor even a young wife” (Achebe 18). Men view wives as a means to gain titles and respect as well as extra labor power for thier combines. Women bring a number of benefits to a man: sexual services, reproductive power, labor, farms for women’s crops, in-laws with goods, land, and livestock. Men typically have only one wife if they lacked wealth (Amadiume 30-31). This is a feminist issue because the people of the village treat women as property that can be inherited. A feminist critic sees how polygyny devalues women and treats them the same as animals. According to Nigerian law, a woman is categorized “as an object who is not quite human” (Bazza 176). In Nigeria, if a woman is involved in polygyny and her husband divorces her for whatever reason, she cannot remarry and often turns to prostitution or extreme poverty for herself and her children (Kunhiyop 44). There is no good that comes from polygyny for