GENDER ROLES AS INDICATORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN A
COLONIAL NOVEL: R. E. OBENG'S EIGHTEENPENCE - A

SOCIO-HISTORICAL SOURCE MATERIAL

Kari Dako

The colonised man who writes for his people ought to use the past with
the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and the basis
for hope.1
We are wedged uncomfortably between the values of our traditional culture
and those of the West. The process of change which we are going through
has created a dualism of forms of life which we experience at the moment
less  as  a  mode  challenging  complexity  than  as  one  of  confused
disparateness.2
Colonial literature in Africa hardly deals with the role of men and women
in the changing socio-cultural order. It is therefore curious to observe that
in the first novel of the Gold Coast, Eighteenpence, by Richard Emmanuel
Obeng,3 the author chooses gender as a main theme in his work. Sonia
Lee's  observation  on the  African  novel  (in French), that  'the  feminine
character  often  plays  a  secondary  role'  and  that  'in  the  changing
contemporary society she seems to remain a constant factor because the
societal changes imposed upon traditional life by modern times are seen
almost exclusively in the life drama of the male protagonist4 - therefore
does not apply in this early colonial novel.

Eighteenpence also seems atypical considering Esther Y. Smith's statement:

Studies of inequality in colonial Africa  rarely focus  on the
status of women. Studies of women in African literature rarely
focus on the colonial period, and when they do, tend to show
either  strong  young  women  pursuing  individualistic  and
materialistic goals of modern society.5

and senior schools. He retired in 1937 having been a headmaster for many
years, and then moved back to his hometown. It was as a pensioner in

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Abetifi that R. E. Obeng, 1877-1953, an Akan, native of Abetifi, Kwahu,
was a teacher trained by Basel Missionaries. His adult life was spent in
what is today the Eastern and Ashanti Regions of Ghana, where he taught
in what were then called junior he started to write. Eighteenpence remains
his only major work published in English. R. E. Obeng's lifetime bridges
the era of precolonial and  colonial  Kwahu, and  his adult  life  coincides
with a turbulent political period in this part of the Gold Coast. In the first
decades of the 20* century, Kwahu experienced unprecedented upheavals.
As a  result of education,  the emergence of wage labour, an  increase in
trading  activities  and  the  beginning  of  cash-crop  farming,  a new  class
emerged: a young, educated and wealthy group of men7 who challenged
the authority of the chiefs and the aristocracy, because the traditional courts
had degenerated into tribunals of extortion.2  Konaduwa can thus play on
popular  local  sentiment  when  she  suggests  self-interest  permeating  the
traditional authorities:

When Konaduwa saw him [Kweku Anyinam, a trusted minister to Nana
Addo Kwame, the Adontenhene] she shouted more loudly and repeated
the words she first spoke to Akua Adae, her rival, at the beginning of the
quarrel.  She  then  lay  strong  emphasis  on  these  words:  'You  say  the
Adontenhene and his elders, including Nana Adoma Hemma, the Queen
mother, are all extortioners  [emphasis mine]. You will be answerable to
the owners of this town' (p. 15).8

The novel  is set in  Abetifi,  Kwahu  in  1913. The Kwahu  State had just
emerged from Ashanti overlordship and had been  incorporated  into the
Gold Coast Colony in 1901. The state coffers were empty, and the society
was in a state of transition. Whilst the chiefs and elders wanted to maintain
their traditional Akan predominance within the parameters possible under
colonial hegemony (e.g. judiciary and economic power), the young men
wanted to break the extortionary judicial practices of the chiefs and gain
representation on the traditional councils. Consequently, the period 1905-
1930  experienced  three  destoolments  and  three  abdications  in  the
paramountcy of Kwahu.9 Because the political movement that challenged
the traditional hierarchy was organised  within  the 'asafo  companies',10
women were naturally excluded.

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The effect of these upheavals was the undermining of traditional authority
and an upsurge in individual entrepreneurship unequalled in the colony.
Wealth, as a result of the emerging money economy, came increasingly to
rest with this new class of educated young men, for it was in education
that the colonial system found the most effective means to suppress and
change its subjects. Through the boarding-school  system the child was
separated from its family and indoctrinated with a new religion and social
outlook and promised prestige and wealth as the rewards of assimilating
the alien culture of the coloniser. It was this new, essentially male, middle
class that came to act as a catalyst for the emerging Euro-Christian ideology.
Parallel to the shift in the social status of men towards education and money,
there was also a transformation  in the role of women in society.

Eighteenpence evidences the  changes taking  place  in  Akan  society by
illustrating the transition from a matrilineal polygamy to a Euro-christian
conjugal  monogamy.  This transition  is depicted  through  the  male and
female personae in the novel. The changes in societal ideals and practices
echo Engels hypothesis based  on Morgan's researches, namely that the
transition  from the matrilineal society to the patrilineal society, from the
polygamous to the monogamous,  "coincided  with the  subordination  of
the female sex".11  Engels further contended that:

Monogamy  arose  from  the  concentration  of  considerable
wealth in the hands of a single individual — a man -  and from
the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man
and of no other:12 - and that as a result,  - the reckoning of
descent  in  the  female  line  and  the  matriarchal  law  of
inheritance were thereby  overthrown,  and the male line of
descent and the paternal law of inheritance were substituted
for them.13

Thus according to Engels, it was the emergence of a capitalist economy in
which  wealth  increasingly  came  to  be  the  prerogative  of  males  that
weakened the position of women both within the family and within society.
This hypothesis presupposes that women were economically independent
prior to the introduction of the money economy and that the introduction

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of a new economic order put them at a disadvantage and therefore  made
them subject to oppression. Whether Engels' thesis holds universally need
not  concern  us  here.  The  main  thrust  of  Eighteenpence,  however,
demonstrates that the transition from traditional Akan society to the Euro-
Christian model affected  the roles of women. Thus a changing economic
environment not only caused the changing status of women,  as Engels
suggests, but through the influence of the Euro-christian ideal of marriage
that is conjugal  cohabitation, the role of the wife  within this  institution
changed drastically.

Akan  society  is  matrilineal  and  structured  vertically  and  horizontally
through  a  complex  hierarchy  of  chiefs  and  sub-chiefs  that  formerly
constituted a highly advanced system of checks and balances. Behind every
chief there is a 'queen mother' who is the kingmaker and the final arbiter
in stool matters.14

Though the Omanhene is the'All-powerful'  in the State, yet in his capital
he has some elders, including the Queen-mother, who can correct, oppose
or depose him, if he does not obey them. (p.l23)!5

The human being is central in Akan society and should not be violated. As
a  matrilineal  society, consisting  of matrilineal descent groups the Akan
trace descent through their matrikin to a common ancestress. The children
of any union, although named by the father whose 'soul' they inherit, have
the 'blood' of their mother and belong to her clan.16  A man must provide
for the upkeep of his wife and children, but it is his sister's children who
will inherit from him. His wife and children therefore have no stake in his
property. A woman's offspring inherit from their maternal uncle, and it is
the maternal uncle who  is eventually responsible  for the welfare  of the
children of the family. There is, thus, in the matrilineal system of the Akan
an inbuilt conflict potential between the male and the female, because a
man's allegiance is primarily not towards his wife and children but towards
his matriline, whilst a woman's allegiance is towards her matrikin. Marriage
among the Akan  is therefore  a contractual  arrangement,  as  seen  in the
detailed agreement of Konaduwa's marriage to her new husband, Amoako,
(72-74) which contains specific detailed provisions apportioning financial
and social responsibilities between the two families  involved.

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Polygyny  is practised,  but  is  subject  to  assent  by  the  first  wife,  who
according to  tradition  should  be  given  precedence  over any co-wives.
Marriage in this matrilineal system is a loose union easily dissolved. Not
only do spouses often reside apart, but a woman is expected to be financially
independent, and is therefore involved in wealth generating activities. Their
proceeds are kept strictly apart from the domestic budget, the responsibility
for which rests on the husband. As Meyer Fortes observes, "This ensured
virtual legal equality between the spouses, as regards control over personal
income and freedom  of divorce".17

Francis Pine supports this view,

.. .in certain  pre industrial  societies with complex divisions
of labour, such as the West African indigenous states, although
male and female economic spheres can best be described as
quite distinct, it can be argued that the relatively high status
of women resulted at least partially from their monopoly over
certain areas of the external economy, and their right to control
their own labour and the products of their labour.. ,"18

Again, Meyer Fortes argues that social change as a result of "modernisation"
undermines the "traditional  family  patterns in favour  of a western type
conjugal  family.."19
The most inexorable element of female  subjugation  within the  conjugal
family was her economic dependence on her husband. Christine Oppong
observes:

There is undoubtedly considerable evidence to indicate that matriliny
is particularly vulnerable to the spread of private property ownership
and inequalities in the distribution of wealth.20

It  is not  argued  in this paper that the traditional  Akan past  constituted
some Utopia for women, but that "modernism" eroded her status in society,
for as Elaine Savory Fido observes:

.. .for all the suggestions of possible advantages to women in traditional
cultures, tradition was certainly not ideal, ,<but> modern  influences
such as British sexist colonialsm further complicated gender relations.21

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It is doubtful  whether E. R. Obeng had read Engels (or Morgan for that
matter),22 yet it is obvious that the author of Eighteenpence recognised
that in abandoning the polygamous matrilineal way of Akan society and
adopting a monogamous patriarchal Euro-Christian  societal ideal that is
the conjugal family, the role of the male and the female both in society and
in marriage had to change.

As  societal  realities  change,  so  do  the  societal  roles.  Eighteenpence
chronicles the transformation taking place in Akan society through its main
characters,  male  and  female,  and  defines  the  coeval  societal  realities
existing in Kwahu within the time frame of the novel.

With the folk-tale as the superstructure, Eighteenpence narrates the story
of Obeng Akrofi, the intended hero, who destitute and therefore reliant on
his own  resources, sets  out  on  a quest  for  wealth. He has to overcome
sexual temptation represented by the woman Konaduwa (who also  fulfills
the folkloric role of the witch), the lure of gold in the form of a disputed
treasure trove, as well as obstacles in the form  of  injustices  and natural
disasters, to emerge at the end of the novel successful in his pursuit. Akrofi's
metamorphosis from indented labourer to Midas incorporates the parabolic
lesson of the folk-tale.

Structurally  both  the  opening  and  conclusion  of the story attest to this
format:

In the ancient and salubrious town of Abetifi the country of Kwahu, in the
reign  of Nana Addo  Kese Pambuo, there lived a man whose name was
Obeng Akrofi.  Obeng though kind-hearted, was as poor as a church rat
(P-l)
Akrofi and his wife led a life of happiness, enjoying their wealth and were
kind and compassionate to all who were fortunate enough to fall in with
them (p. 163).

Embedded within this superstructure  are two distinct narratives, so that
Eighteenpence ostensibly consists of two parts hereafter referred to as Part
I and Part II.  Part I of the novel depicts the values of traditional Akan
society  and  narrates  the  woman  Konaduwa's  legal  imbroglios  and

65

embroilments resulting from her desire to divorce her husband Owusu. In
this part the folk-tale  is used as a subversive form with a female hero to
castigate both the colonial and the traditional authorities. It is Konaduwa,
who describes herself androgynously as "a masculine woman" (p.49) and
who  is referred  to  and treated  as mad by her male antagonists, who is
given the licence to criticise the prevailing power structures. As Phyllis
Chesler says:".. for a woman to be healthy she must 'adjust' to and accept
the behavioural norms for her sex .. .'\23
Konaduwa deviates from societal norms when she calls men "fool" (p.5),
"senseless fellow" (p.6) and "ridiculous creatures ... [and] cowards too."
(p. 14). The author tells us on more than one occasion that,"... for a woman,
she had no right to charge him with "Fool", according to the established
custom of the Akan" (p.28). He further  says, "It is a fixed custom among
the Akan that the word "Fool" is not spoken to any man by a woman."
(p.76).24
Part II, which aspires to be more novelistic in form and content, adheres
to the convention  of a male protagonist. It chronicles Akrofi"s journey
towards "assimilation" and thus demonstrates the "modern"  state. This
binary division of the work effects an antithetical balancing of the thematic
as well as the structural texture of the novel, while it at the same time
contrasts  setting,  narrative  action  and  personae.  In  keeping  with  the
novelistic tradition, the protagonist Akrofi is an "individual", beholden to
no-one; yet the individual as exemplified  by Akrofi (a necessary element
of the novel) also ties in with the folk-tale hero: the loner who sets out to
conquer the world.

In the context of African literature, the novel as a distinct form is of course
very recent. In the Gold Coast as elsewhere it presupposes a reading public
that had been homogeneously  exposed to English education, and  in the
Gold Coast this class of people was as everywhere else distinctly middle
class. Obeng thus wrote for an audience that had had exposure similar to
his own. The emerging middle class in the Gold Coast was a first generation
bourgeoisie and was therefore  still familiar with the literary tradition of
their own culture:

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To reiterate, Part I of the novel is set in Kwahu in 1913, in the reign of an
historical Adontenhene.25  The State of Kwahu has been incorporated into
The Colony of The Gold Coast and already the break-up of the old order is
noticeable. Two judicial  systems operate  simultaneously: the traditional
tribunal of the Omanhene, on the one hand, and the colonial courts of the
District Commissioner along with the High Court of the colony's capital
Accra, on the other. The confusion  of this state of affairs  lends itself to
exploitation by Konaduwa, who craftily drags the various lawsuits brought
against  her  from  one  court  to  the  other  till  in  the  end  all  charges  are
dismissed on some flimsy excuse of "jealousy".

Akrofi is used in the opening of Part I as the initiator of the action, when
he borrows eighteen pence from Owusu, Konaduwa's husband in order to
purchase a cutlass to start fanning. After  his first test, temptation by the
woman Konaduwa, he is pushed aside.

Subsequent to his first  encounter,  Akrofi  appears only sporadically and
then only as a minor figure,  for Konaduwa hi-jacks the tale. This erratic
and cantankerous woman  is the real heroine of  Part I, for  it is she who
overcomes  all obstacles to  live  "happily  ever  after"  (p.75).  When  she
appears on the  scene,  it is to  break out of her predicament as Owusu's
sidelined first wife. She hopes to find an ally in Akrofi and therefore plays
on his sympathy. The setting is Owusu's farm where Akrofi is supposed to
work alongside Konaduwa to repay his debt.  She tells him:

I  never  knew that  poverty  was  so  bitter. How  is  it that  on  account  of
eighteenpence a man of your age works until his back is going to break?
Your hands will be sore and painful, and your palms so full of blisters that
you cannot squeeze the water from your towel when you take your bath
this evening (p. 5).

She  taunts  him,  ridicules  him  and  when  he  answers  back,  twists  his
utterances and creates a highly volatile situation. Akrofi's loyalty to Owusu
remains  intact, however,  so he responds rather snootily to  Konaduwa's
onslaught  and  eventually  leaves  the  farm  after  having  described  his
creditor's wife as "dangerous as a loaded gun" and one whose "words are
as poisonous as a snake", (p.6).

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s

Meanwhile Konaduwa remains on the farm and lets her  MJ
away with her. She fears that Akrofi might inform her husband about her
indiscretion and envisages the repercussions, so she mi seinevously plots
her  defence  by  gross  exaggerations  and  vicious  lies  ^™ 
behaviour. Konaduwa's subsequent tantrums are therefore carefully staged
spectacles  calculated  to cause  the  utmost havoc  and  get the _mmmum
attention.  Arrivinghorne late after dark having worked  herself^oastate
of uncontrollable rage as a result of her fear, she accuses Akrofi before all
of Abetifi of physical and sexual assault and insinuates that he has; oeen
bought as aslave. She charges her husband, Owusu, with neglect and with
havingpurchasedAkrofifor  eighteen pence: all very grave matters m Akan
society where sexual behaviour both within and outside marriage is strictly
regulated and where domestic slavery had been abolished by the colonial
authorities upon Kwahu's incorporation into the Colony.26 She then swears
the Oath of the State,27 that Owusu must divorce her, and in the ensuing
exchange, the name of the  Adontenhene  is mentioned.  The quarrel has
now escalated beyond any domestic dispute. An avalanche of litigations is
initiated, and it is the ensuing court hearings that constitute the narrative
mainstay of Part I.

The conclusion of this section of the novel is in many ways an anticlimax
in that Konaduwa is re-suppressed into marriage to get her ofTthe stage so
as to preempt any possibility that she might stalk Akrofi  in his renewed
attempt at gaining riches. Konaduwa is a realistic creation. We know what
she looks like she is desirable as a woman with a gap in her teeth, which is
a sign of beauty among the Akan. We hear her voice in various fora  all
over Kwahu, publicly and privately. We know she stammers, but that she
is a very eloquent speaker. We recognise her intelligence, her stubbornness,
her aggressiveness, her untruthfulness, and her sense of humour. We know
that she has relatives and that these are willing to intercede on her behalt
We know  she  divorced  Owusu  and  later  married  Amoako.  Although
Konaduwa is made to represent the traditional Akan woman in the book,
she does not embody the Akan ideals of a woman: these are that she be a
soft-spoken and modest creature. This, Konaduwa is definitely not, when
she describes herself as a "masculine woman" (p.49). Yet Akan  culture

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accommodates "the Konaduwas", for "strong" women feature prominently
in both historical and folk-loric traditions.28 It is in view of this that Akrofi's
wife, whom he acquires in Part II of the book, is so totally out of context
and must be seen as an ideal of a different  culture.

The character  of  Konaduwa has  several  functions.  She is the one who
symbolises Akan culture and who is the foil to Akrofi's "modern" wife.
Konaduwa  is  the  subversive  female  hero  who  is used  to  expose  the
confusion caused by the two concurrent judicial systems, and to castigate
both  the  colonial  and  the  traditional  authorities  in  her  two  court
representations. The first is addressed to the colonial District Commissioner
and the second to the traditional court headed by the Omanhene. To the
District Commissioner she says:

If you  ask me this  one hundred times, I will remain mum  for  as many
times. Even if I know that I am guilty, I will never tell you that I am guilty
and ask you to pronounce judgement against me. If I tell you that I am not
guilty, you would not let me go scot free; but if I say that I am guilty, you
will at once pronounce judgement. The Governor sent you here to decide
cases before you get your pay, and if you have not fully learnt how to try
cases, you should go back to your own country to learn your law properly
and  also how to judge  cases without troubling  a woman by asking her
"Are you guilty or not guilty", (p.30).

And to the Omanhene:

Is it because of a case between a wife and her husband that all the Kwahu
chiefs and potentates have met here today? The proverb is true -'  Every
knife is out when the bull is down!' If I were not a woman, I would tell you
that  you  have  time  to  spend,  no, to  waste. A  case  which  the  District
Commissioner could not settle, who else has power here to settle and punish
me? If I should have been punished, why did not the District Commissioner
see to it? Let me ask this, or remind you, or waken you, if you are sleeping.
In the olden times when our ancestors judged their high cases in Kumasi,
was any case returned from there to be judged by you so that you could
inflict punishment? Answer me this! If not why do you want to cheat me
because I am a woman? I will make no defence, and if you can judge the

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case and punish me when I have not spoken,... I am a masculine woman,
and if you like try me! I warn you it is dangerous to play with fire, (p.48-
49).

Konaduwa is thus "the Other", whose voice and actions fall outside Akan
decorum, yet she is utilised by the male author to express the sentiments
of the colonised Kwahus.

Konaduwa represents an attempt at balanced characterisation  showing a
complex persona with positive and negative personality traits and actions,
for as the Adontenhene says: "How true it is that women are of  different
kinds"  (p.  80). The  females  created  in  Part  II  of the  book  within  the
approximation  of a Euro-Christian Utopia are, however, deprived of any
semblance of personality. We are introduced to a wife who is not named,
who is permitted to make two utterances, is insubstantial and marginal to
the story, and is introduced more as a necessary piece of narrative inventory
than as a character that has a role to play in the novel. Then towards the
end of the book we are suddenly confronted with three flower-daughters,
Rose, Violet, and Lily. These are also totally irrelevant to the plot and are
there merely as objects for Akrofi's sermonising. When they are introduced
to the story for the reader to know they exist, they are already young women
whom their father (not their mother) fears might be contaminated by the
world. These saintly flowers are totally mute.

Akrofi's modern wife is thus a voiceless and nameless nonentity who enters
a western-type marriage and is created to embody the conventions of the
novelistic  woman,  most  enthusiastically  idealised  and  most  thoroughly
subordinated.

Everything that Konaduwa stands for and exemplifies, every action initiated
by her, has its antithetical manifestation in Akrofi's wife. The latter is thus
created  as  a  shadowy  apparition.  Whereas  Konaduwa  is  beautiful  and
sexually attractive, Akrofi's wife  is plain. Whereas Konaduwa stands up
for her rights as an individual, free to divorce and remarry whom she likes,
Akrofi's wife is commodified as a useful housekeeper and attempts suicide,
when  she believes her husband  dead. Whereas  Konaduwa's voice rings
loudly and assertively at the fora  in Kwahu, Akrofi's  wife  is allowed to

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utter two inconsequentialities in the whole section of the book she features
in: "Little drops of water make the mighty ocean, " (p.93) an utterance that
so impresses Akrofi  that he decides to marry her, and  "Help father!  My
husband  is dying!  (p. 152) voiced towards the end of the tale when she
sees Akrofi dangling from a tree in an attempted suicide. This mute creature
has all her other actions either described or interpreted.

When  Amoako  marries  Konaduwa,  he  is required  to  enter  a  detailed
contractual arrangement as stipulated by Kwahu custom, and he agrees to
leave his home in Akim to settle in Abetifi with his new wife. This is to
safeguard Konaduwa's economic independence, as it clearly spells out the
responsibilities of each party in case of any dispute.

Akrofi, on the other hand, removes his wife from  her family to his farm,
and they both stay outside any kinship system. As Ian Watts commenting
on novelistic conventions of the conjugal family observes,"... on marriage
the  couple  immediately  sets  up as a  new family,  wholly  separate from
their own parents and often  far away from them".29

It is only when Akrofi's uncle Dawoanom (the folkloric villain who also
represents  Akan  demands  on Akrofi  in his new realm) emerges on the
scene to create a crisis situation that Akrofi's wife falls back on her relatives:

...[Dowoanom] turned to Akrofi's wife and said: "In this country, every
woman who marries goes back to her  relatives,... you have never gone
back ... and you never have the mind to",  (p. 148)

When Akrofi's wife is compelled to leave her marital home to go back to
see her relatives, "Her sisters- children, who had not seen her before, hailed
her with enthusiasm.. ."(p. 150). This is most unusual in Akan custom where
these children would be considered as her own.

If  Konaduwa  has children  we are  not told,  but that  Akrofi  had  many
children, we know. Whereas in Akan tradition the offspring of any union
belong to the mother, Akrofi's  children are described as his. How far his
wife  featured  in the procreation is not clear. Her father  states that "They
have given us three grandchildren..." (p. 158), so we can assume that the
three saintly flower-daughters, Rose, Violet and Lily, so pure, modest and

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innocent as if not conceived in a sexual act (155-157) were her  offspring.
But as sons (one of them the successful Sam) feature in the book, we must
assume that these are Akrofi's by other liaisons. In the new order of things,
the woman's mother-right has thus been taken away from her.

As an indication that the author  lost the tale he set out to tell  in Part I,
Akrofi  is reintroduced  at the  opening  of Part II, Chapter  13. The main
character of Part II is undoubtedly Akrofi, and the author, in order not to
lose control of the story a second time, so carefully controls the narrative
that it becomes flat and disjointed. In this section the novelistic conventions
of asexual romantic love within marriage, of individualism and solitude,
feature strongly. The Akrofis live alone in a big house far away from Abetifi
and any relative. The wife is not"... his belter half... but united [they are
their] own better whole" (p. 151). Akrofi has fully devoured his wife. She
cannot exist outside him.

Whereas Part I maintains a linear sequence and adheres to both temporal
and spatial conventions, Part II is circular in that Akrofi initiates his pursuit
in Abetifi and returns to Abetifi having succeeded in his quest and become
exceedingly wealthy. Apart from this definite anchorage, Part II is in many
ways  futuristic,  set  in  a vague  location  within  an  uncertain  time-span
somewhat outside the influence  of Akan  custom,  in a  realm Akrofi  has
created for himself. Here the author sets out to demonstrate the desirability
of the "modern" way. Through  the  extensive  use  of  retrospect,  Obeng
rationalises Akrofi's actions and creates a new persona. We learn that he is
interested in farming because he once worked as a gardener for a European
in the mining town, Obuasi. There he was taught the basics of modern
farming: spacing of plants, weeding and the use of modern insect control.
When Akrofi  gives moral advice, we are shown  personal  glimpses into
his somewhat dishonest and  chequered  past  which  preordains  a flawed
character. Certainly Akrofi  is not the virtuous hero of the folk tale: he is
untruthful  (105), vindictive (104), violent towards his underlings (135),
yet subservient towards the Europeans, whom  he refers  to as "masters"
and to whom he speaks in a broken pidgin mode. We might have expected
this by the author choosing a "nobody' in traditional terms as the protagonist
of the novel. In this way Obeng sabotages his own creation and his own

72

message so that Akrofi becomes progressively unsympathetic, and the Euro-
Christian realm he has created progressively less desirable.

In order to appreciate the changes taking place in Akan society one has to
take a closer look at Akrofi himself. The author, to reiterate, has chosen a
nobody, according to the Akan hierarchy, as the embodiment of the new
mode. He has no family, which is most unusual, (this aspect belongs to the
folk-tale convention). He also does not belong to the new educated elite,
for we are told he is illiterate. Furthermore, the slur of indebtedness and
possibly slave-descent is attached to him. And he gradually evolves as an
antipathetic character.

Akrofi's pretense at being who he is not at Obuasi is repeated in his creating
a  planter  role  for  himself  in  a  non-Akan  setting;  a  manifestation  of
behaviour  that  is  essentially  dishonest.  This  dishonesty  is  further
demonstrated through the climax of the novel; his winning a case against
the  Omanhene  of  Kwahu  in  the  colonial  High  Court  in  Accra.  The
upheavals that have taken place in society are clearly demonstrated here.
Not only is the highest authority in the Kwahu State subordinated to the
colonial  authorities  in Accra,  far  removed from his  own  realm, but an
inconsequential citizen of Kwahu, possibly of slave descent defeats him
in court. Additionally we get the impression that "right" did not win the
case, but rather the craftiness of Akrofi's lawyer. All these suggest that the
new order of things is sinister, hypocritical, and self-serving.

Whereas Akan society is matrilineal, Akrofi in his new realm chooses to
create  a new society based  on patriliny within  which the  institution  of
marriage is conjugal. The author projects this change as progress, which
implies  that  the  matrilineal  system  was  proffered  backward  in  the
developmental continuum, and patriarchy an improvement on it. Senanu30
discussing some early Ghanaian novels (Eighteenpence not included) notes
that  these  early  novelists,  are  the  chroniclers  of  [colonialism  as  the
transmitter of modernising tendencies] through the introduction of Western-
type education. If they convey any awareness of the conflict of traditional
systems and values with colonial  institutions, they nevertheless  suggest
that the overall effect  of the colonial experience is beneficial.

73

At the outset, one could make the same observation about Eighteenpence,
but the author of this book delves deeper than this. Akrofi is not "educated"
(as mentioned above), but an imposter. He creates a make-believe world
in  which  he  masquerades  as  a  colonial  settler  having  abandoned  his
Akanness. The author exposes him by devulging that Akrofi  repeatedly
assumes an  Akan guise  in order to be accepted  by "them".  (136;  150).
Akrofi  is thus on the one hand portrayed  as acculturated,  in that he has
abandoned his own tradition and considers himself apart from and above
his own people; on the other hand, however Akan tradition besieges him
and beckons him again and again and compels him to conform. As a result,
when his "callous and conscienceless brute" of an uncle (151) appears on
the scene demanding to be treated as behooves an uncle in Akan tradition,
Akrofi fails to protect his wife from physical threats, thus leaving her no
option but to seek refuge with her apparently forgotten parents. Akrofi's
cowardice  is further  demonstrated  in his attempting  suicide rather  than
confronting the evil as exemplified by this same uncle. To make sure the
reader appreciates Akrofi's dastard streak, the author twists the narrative
so that Akrofi can rationalise his own suicide as a result of his wife apparent
failure to conform to his wishes. He actually blackmails her into returning
home.

Return to me in two days to meet me alive or in three days to see my grave.
If you come at the time specified, I will drive the callous and conscienceless
brute from the house, so that we may live happily as before... if loneliness
and love will not urge you to come back, let not my letter, (p.151).

Obeng's creation,  Akrofi,  is nothing more than a pathetic  semblance of
what he purports to represent. The author has given the protagonist  his
own name, Obeng. Additionally, Akrofi  is not a Kwahu but an Akuapim
name (from  whence R. E. Obeng's  father  hailed).  Cast as the  author's
alter ego, the protagonist was undoubtedly initially conceived as an ordinary
fallible  human  being who was to demonstrate the moral of  rewards  for
hard work, but as the tale progressed,  R. E. Obeng proved  incapable of
delving dispassionately into his own psyche and therefore abandoned his
own creation, subverting him and undermining him.

74

R.E. Obeng, the author, was himself very much aware of the contradictions
of the  new order  of things. As  a male he  lived  his  life  uncomfortably
straddling the two cultures that made demands on his existence. In the
Gold Coast as elsewhere in Africa Christianity tended to focus on sexual
morality, causing extreme  gender tension  with  regards to  marriage and
procreation. The alien restrictive ideals imposed upon both men and women
created severe anxiety especially in the female who found  herself caught
between the expectations of two cultures.

In Eighteenpence  the  "Other"  exemplified  by the  female  protagonist,
Konaduwa, should be interpreted as Obeng's yearning for a voice, while
the author's alter ego, Obeng Akrofi, represents the despicable reality of
the colonised male. R. E. Obeng's own experience of women was varied
and in many ways contradictory. He had a strong, independent mother: a
wealthy trader who bought slaves in Salaga yet ended her life as a presbyter
in Abetifi. Obeng's  family claims that the character Konaduwa is based
on his mother, Akua Kuru Animwa. His wives, with the exception of his
"matrimonial" wife Rose Nyante, tended to be much younger than himself
and have been described as "quiet" (might the word "docile" be used?).
He severely restricted  the  movements of his own  daughters, and  in his
will he expressed disappointment in them (because they did not live up to
his ideals as symbolised by the fictional flowers Rose, Violet and Lily?).

It should  not be  overlooked  that  an  additional  result  of  economic  and
educational opportunities brought about by colonialism was the privileged
position achieved by males. An educated man could thrive in his "modern"
society. Both the colonial administration and the missionary societies were
male oriented and accorded seme employment opportunities to men; skilled
and  unskilled.  Women,  on  the  other  hand,  had  less  educational  and
employment  opportunities,  and  the role model  imposed  on the women
within the system was totally alien to Akan culture. Whereas the educated
Gold Coast male could get away with the straddling of two cultures; publicly
conforming  to  the  new  establishment  norms  of  acknowledging  one
"matrimonial wife" while at the same time keeping other wives married
according to "tradition", this option was not open to the educated woman.
Akan  culture  expects  a  woman  to  bear  children  and  the  missionaries

75

expected their  converts to  bear  children  within  a  "Christian  marriage".
But few  Akan  men would  (or  could) take on the responsibilities  of an
educated wife who had severed the bonds with her matrikin  and  hence
expected a conjugal marriage. The males in traditional society, as portrayed
by Obeng are not worthy of emulation. They appear weak: Owusu lets his
second wife and his mother do his fighting and quarrelling for him while
he  unsuccessfully  attempts to  play the mediator,  a  feeble  voice  among
hawks. Amoako is totally obliterated under the spell of Konaduwa, even
to the extent of migrating to and resettling in Konaduwa's hometown and
of taking responsibility  for  her  debts. The chiefs  do quite often  appear
frivolous, wasting time and effort on grand appearances and lengthy court
hearings with  indecisive conclusions. The detailed  life histories of both
Akrofi  and  Dawoanom  suggest  fundamental  character  flaws  causing
inconsistent behaviour; unreliability, irresponsibility and cowardice. Obeng
shows that the Akan male is ill equipped to take on the mantel of male
supremacy that is so central to Euro-Christian thinking.

By  marginalising  Akrofi's  wife,  by  reducing  her  to  an  insubstantial
appendix, Obeng demonstrates things to  come. In the new order of the
Euro-Christian hegemony, women are no longer individuals with a stake
in society. The female  as exemplified  by Konaduwa has been  silenced.
This is elucidated by the "climax" of Part I which becomes an anticlimax.
The author, having built up a brave, vocal woman, suddenly deflates her
and suppresses her into the stereotypical mould of a "jealous woman" and
then marries her off  as any other female, thus leaving the message that
unattached  females  are  dangerous  to  established  order.  Konaduwa's
rebellion consequently appears to have been for naught, a temporary upset.
Yet  the  author  could  have  pursued  the  narrative  to  a  very  different
conclusion. Akan society accommodated alternative female role models,
for women did not as a rule cohabit with their husbands. So long as they
had children who had identifiable  fathers, and so long as they contained
their sexual activities within the socially permissible, women  could  live
and function  on their own. It was therefore not "modernism" that killed
Konaduwa but her creator. Konaduwa became too powerful  a female  for
Obeng to cope with. So the "new order" is introduced,  women  are now

76

reduced to marital bondage; dependent, voiceless, and vulnerable. Their
future  role is to  espouse meekness and  self-effacement.  In the colonial
pecking order, where the male has been reduced to a second class citizen
in his own country, it is the woman who has lost out totally: she has been
utterly sidelined.

Notes

2. 

3. 

4. 

1. 

Franz Fanon,  1968 The  Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press.
p.223.
Abiola Irele in privately printed In praise  of Alienation  cited in Kwame
Appiah  1992 In my Father's House._Oxford Univ. Press: Oxford,p. 54.
Some  scholars  may  argue  that  Casely  Hayford's  Ethiopia  Unbound,
published in  1911, is a novel.
Sonia Lee's "The awakening of self in the heroines of  Ousman Sembene',
in Sturdy Black Bridges,, ed. Roseann P. Bell et al New  York: Anchor/
Doubleday  1979 as quoted in Carole Boyce Davies, 'Maidens, mistresses
and matrons: Feminine images in selected Soyinka works', in Ngambika,
ed, Carole Boyce Davies and Ann Adams Graves, Trenton, N. J.: Africa
World Press, 1986. P. 76.
Esther Y. Smith, 'Images of women in African  literature:some examples
of inequality in the colonial period', mNgambika^  ibid.
6.  mmerante (Simensen, below, uses the term  commoner)
7. 

Jarle Simensen, "The Asafo of Kwahu: a mass movement for local  reform
under  colonial  rule',  The  International  Journal  of African  Historical
Studies,  Vffl,  1975:383-406.

5. 

8.  All page references  are from the  1998 edition of Eighteenpence,  ed. Kari

Dako. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers.
See note 7.

9. 
10.  The 'asafo' were groups of young men who in foregone times constituted

the warriors of the Akan.

11.  Rosalind Delmar, 'Looking again at Engles's "Origin of fee Family, Private
Property and the State" in Juliet Mitchelle and Ann Oakley, The Rights and
Wrongs of Women, Harmondsworfh: Penguin, 1972, p. 273.

12.  Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,
ed  Eleanor Burke Leacock, New York: International Publishers, 1972, p.
138.
Ibid. p. 120.

13. 

77

14.  The 'stool' is a symbol of kingship in Akan society.
15. 

a) The Omanhene is the 'primus inter pares' among the chiefs of

the  Akan state.

b) The Queen Mother is not necessarily the biological mother of

the chief, but an elcted female of his matriclan.

16.  The Akan concept of the human being  consists of a soul (kra) and

matter: blood (mmogya).

17.  Meyer Fortes in foreword to Middle Class African Marriage, by Christine

Oppong, London: Allan & Unwin  1981, p.x.

18.  Francis Pine, 'Family structure and the division of labour: female roles in
urban Ghana'  in Hamza Alavi and Teodor Shanin ed.  Introduction to the
Sociology of  'DevelopingStudies',  New York: Macmillan,  1986, p.390.

19.  Meyer Fortes, p. x in Christine Oppong, ed. as note 17
20.  Christine  Oppong,  Middle  Class  African  Marriage,  London:  Allan  &

Unwin. 1981, p.12.

21.  Elaine Savoury Fido, 'Okigbo's labyrinths and the context of Igbo attitudes

to the female principle' in Ngambika  p.225.

22.  So far as can be ascertained, R. E. Obeng's personal library (a glass fronted
bookcase)  consisted  mostly  of  well-known  British  novels  and books  of
law (a subject he was very interested in.)

23.  Quoted form Shosana Felman  'Women  and madness: the critical  fallacy',
ed.  Cathrine Belsey  and Jane Moore,  The Feminist  Reader,  New  York:
Basil Blackwell,  1989, p. 134.

24.  See also Peter Sarpong, Ghana in Retrospect: Some Aspects  of  Ghanaian
Culture, Accra/Tema: Ghana Publishing Corp. 1974. "For a woman to call
a man "fool" for whatever cause, is unpardonable, no matter the degree of
provocation,  or  difference  of  age,  or  degree  of  relationship.  Such  is
conceived of as a challenge of blows. Yet he should not accept it or he is
socially branded as a coward, a fool, a bully -  "a woman fighter"." (p.93).
25.  The  Akan  hierarchy  of  chiefs  is  arranged  in  a  system  that  reflects  the
strategic formation  in which the Akan went to war in days gone by. The
Adontenhene  led the vanguard. The seat of the Adontenhene  of Kwahu is
in Abetifi.

26.  The non-Akan reader of the novel might not consider the significance  of
Konaduwa's  allegations.  Sarpong,  ibid, mentions  as  civil  transgression:
"Sexual  intercourse  in the  open even with one's own wife  " (p.51) and
"Traditionally... if a man touches, not holds, a woman's nose, ear, head or
breast,  he is supposed to have  had sexual  connection  with her. If she is

78

married, her husband is entitled to an adultery fee from the man.. ."(p-115).
Rattray as quoted  by Jack  Goody  in  'A  comparative  approach  to  incest
and adultery' (The British Journal of sociology,. Vol. 7,1956,p. 286-306,)
refers to  'oman akyiwade'  (tribal offences), which include' ahahantwe' as
sexual  intercourse  in the  bush  with  an unwilling married  or  unmarried
woman or own wife. The sanction for this offence was death. If the woman
was willing however,  'ahahantwe'  was defined  as  'efiesem'  (household
offence)  and the sanction was ridicule and adultery payment.

27.  The Oath of the  State constituted the mentioning of the  unmentionable
(the invocation of evil). This was an act that signaled the desire to have
wrongs righted and to have a case heard before the chief.

28.  a)  The famous Yaa  Asantewa, Queen Mother of Edwesa, can be mentioned
here.  She  led the  last attack  by  an  Ashanti  army against  the  British  in
1900. (The Yaa Asantewa War).
b) In the Akan trickster tale, Ananse is often outmanoeuvred and punished
by his  wife.  Women  are  similarly  often  depicted  as wise  and  givers  of
sound advice in Akan folk tales.
29. 
Ian Watt, The Rise  of the Novel, Harmondsworth: Penguin,  1972, p. 157.
30.  K. E. Senanu 'Creative writing in Ghana', ed. A. W. Kayper-Mensah and
Horst Wolff, Ghanaian  Writing. Tuebingen: Horst Erdmann Verlag, 1972,
p.13-31.

79