Women´s Roles in hings Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is based in pre-colonial Nigeria. This novel portrays

African men as being very strong and protective of their families. Okonkwo the

protagonist of the novel ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the

youngest, live in perpetual fear of his fiery temper. In the novel women are

restricted to the home and possessed little decision making power. “His mother and

sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women’s crops, like coco-yams, beans,

cassava. Yam, the King of crops, was a man’s crop”(chapter 3). This also tells us that

the women were regarded as weak people because they were not allowed to plant

the King crops. Achebe portrays the female characters in TFA as being weak and submissive though occasionally powerful which is a direct reflection of the nature of the male dominated world in which they lived in which also values the role of women e.g. as a spiritual leader.

In the novel TFA , we see that Okonkwo has three wives who were not allowed to do anything without his permission. If his wives did anything without his permission, they were beaten. “Do what you are told women,” Okonkwo thundered, and got very angry. “When did you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia?” (Achebe.14) This tells us that the women were very weak; they would not talk back to their husbands because they feared getting beaten. Women were treated as maids, Okonkwo’s wives had to do whatever he tells them to do. The women lived in fear; they had no freedom of speech. Okonkwo beats his wife, Ojiugo when she does not prepare dinner for him, she was plaiting her hair instead of cooking and he beat her during the weak of peace. The Igbo believe that a man shouldn’t beat or fight with an...

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...g makes the children learn important lessons and it makes them learn about human conditions for example the story of the bird and the tortoise. The Igbo women are playing a big role in the Igbo society.
When I first started reading this book I felt that the role of women appears to be unfairly limited in terms of the authority and the power of women. But its not true because as I read further I noticed that the women of the clan were holding very powerful positions, spiritually as a priestess, symbolically as the earth goddess, and literally as the nurturers of the Igbo people, the caretakers of the yam crops and the mothers and educators of the Igbo children. The women are portrayed as people who are not important in the beginning of the novel but as the novel starts picking pace , the reader gets to know that women are very important to the Igbo society