The novel Second
Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta can be read as a black feminist text. The
title refers to the condition of the protagonist
Adah in both her native Nigerian society and in the African immigrant community
in Britain. It is set in the period between roughly 1920 and 1960, partially
out of colonial Nigeria. The title suggests an undertone of bitterness
about covert oppression – however, in spite of
her "second-class" condition, Adah is characterized throughout the
novel by her sense of initiative and determination.
The protagonist is
Adah Eke, named after her late grandmother. She is driven and enterprising. Adah
was not allowed to go to school since it was considered an unnecessary excess. Determined,
she snuck out and enrolled herself into primary school, later educating herself
at secondary school on scholarship, and then reading to become a librarian,
financially supporting her husband and extended family. She is iron-willed and
pragmatic yet not one-dimensional. Her dream, to go to the United Kingdom and
live as a Nigerian elite, gives her strength through the trials that the
patriarchy and colonial powers put her through. Second Class Citizen is
a hugely autobiographic novel.
The author has
employed the family as the stage upon which patriarchal hierarchies play out.
Indeed, he first conflict the reader witnesses is that between Adah and her
mother, at the police station. It is not so much resolved as Adah's father
makes a decision her mother is not necessarily okay with but, as a woman, must
obey, and it happens to work out in favor of Adah. Here, the established
patriarchy and power structures are bared and the reader gets a glimpse of the
struggle Adah will be forced to endure later. Essentially, the patriarchy is
the antagonist of the novel - in the form of her family's preferential
treatment of her brother, the family structure that allows the wife and
children of a deceased individual to be inherited, her cousin Vincent, Francis
- all inhibit her progress and growth as an individual.
Speaking of the
stage and setting, the story begins in her home at Lagos. Later she lives with
her cousin Vincent at Pike Street. Upon acceptance into the Methodist Girls'
School, she lived in the boarding house for 5 years and then married Francis
and led an elite life with him until they moved to England, where Adah and
Francis live with their two children in a room in Ashdown street. It was more
like a half-room - small, with a single bed at one end, a new settee at the
other and a Formica topped table occupying all of the space in between. There
was no bath, no kitchen; the toilet was outside, four flights of stairs down,
in the yard.
The novel makes
for easy reading. The writing is lucid, almost conversational, and grounded in
the lived experience of oppression and injustice – both Adah’s and the authors.
The author steers clear of lengthy philosophizing, as is true of the
protagonist. The imagery in the narration is powerful. The details are visual,
olfactory, auditory, tactile - such that the reader experiences as much of the
squalor of the colored immigrant life as Adah's dignity and pragmatism allows
her to dwell upon.
In the first few
chapters of the novel, the reader is alternately proud of Adah and rejoicing
with her about her triumphs and achievements or anxious about the trials and
obstacles she must overcome. Also, the reader is not infrequently frustrated by
the general incompetence and callousness of Francis and the systems Adah is
subject to, not only after marriage but also before, in primary and secondary
school. Adah's interactions with her immediate family are a parallel to the sense
of oppression bitterly referenced in the title – although she is the elder of
the two children, the firstborn, she is denied things she feels entitled to and
which are then given to her younger brother, often at her expense. Before she
got into the Methodist Girls’ School (with scholarship) she was expected to
provide for Boy and facilitate his education in addition to all of the excess
house work she had.
Most of the time,
in the novel, Adah’s oppressors are her own family. Her father and more often,
her mother, would subject Adah to impositions she had no say in. The elders and
patriarchs of the family are consistently expecting far too much of her and
indeed in the end this is a conflicting situation, where, as the woman, Adah is
Francis’ property whereas she literally provides for him and supports the
family basically single-handedly. Although Francis’ father and Adah’s own late
father sometimes come off as lenient or even supportive, there are vested
interests of the shrewdest kind, as well as a skewed sense of justice that
normalizes the statement, “you will pay for me, and look after yourself, and
within three years, I’ll be back…Why lose your good job just to go and see
London? They say it is just like Lagos” at work here so we are forced to discredit
their kindness and seeming affection. The few characters that genuinely respect
her are in no position to help her. Her American colleagues were “diplomats,
not missionaries”.
Immediately after,
when the narrator quips, “A much more civilized man would probably have found a
better way of saying this to his wife. But to him, he was the male, and he was
right to tell her what she was going to do” we gain insight into Adah’s
absolute helplessness – situational as well as ideological.
Christian and
native religious symbols recur throughout the novel. The image of Mary and
unborn Jesus, the river deity Oshiba and episodes from the Bible are quoted
frequently. For the sake of perhaps universal relevance or at least
comprehension, the novel does not have any local figures of speech or sayings.
However, the motif of “cunning as the snake, harmless as the dove” is persistent
throughout, a constant reminder of hope. The story addresses discrimination of
whites against blacks, Ibos against Yorubas, an intensely patriarchal family structure,
gender issues apart from this, along with such socio-political issues as
poverty, slavery, child labor and colonialism.
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