ART AND PROPAGANDA IN BUCHI EMECHETA 'S SECOND CLASS CITIZEN Virginia U. 01a Department of English & Literature University of Benin, Nigeria Buchi Emecheta's Double Yoke was published in 1982, the fifth in a series of novels dedicated to the examination of the place of African women and, occasionally, of British women, in society, the disadvantages which make it difficult for them to realize their true selves in society, however talented or ambitious they may be.' Altogether, these novels furnish the most sustained and vigorous defence of the cause of women in African literature. Emecheta's voice is one of direct feminist protest aiming at an explicit confrontation with what she considers to be a male-orie- nted world. Her novels also provide an insight into those weaknes- ses and misconceptions in the women themselves which tend to perpetuate iheir humiliation and state of subjugation. Comment- ing l'n this aspect of her work, Lloyd W. Brown writes: In Emecheta we detect ... an increasing emphasis on the woman's sense of self, as the writer has matured and as that maturity enables her to deal more and more adeptly and convincingly with the subtleties of characterization and private introspectiveness. With Emecheta the fervour and rhetoric of protest - that is, the explicit and une- quivocal denunciation of the sexual status quo - have not diminished. If anything, she has become increasingly successful in blending the rhetoric of impassioned protest with her maturing talent for charactenzation:] Several African writers championed the cause of the African woman in the 19608. Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Idu were some of the earHest attempts in this area. This is Lagos and Other Stories carried Nwapa's campaign from the village to the city and captu- red in a terse style the ongoing sexual intrigues, chaos and mis- 135 UTAFITI- Vol 9 No 1 1987 fortunes under which her women, single and married, have to live.' There is always a brooding sense of tragedy behind her stories. Nwapa approaches the question of female individu- alism from a stance in which it is invariably tempered by what Brown calls "a deep and complex loyalty to the indigenous cul- ture and its own mystique - the mystique of close family ties and sacred family obligations", so that Efuru and Idu remain rebel- lious, self-willed and independent while at the same time respe- cting those obligations which quite often threaten their attempts to achieve a fulfilling sense of themselves as distinct human per- sonalities. Buchi Emecheta's voice and style are clearly more mi- litant; and quite often her hostility and direct denunciation of the social and sexual subjugation of her female characters evoke com- parison with the literary protest of western feminists, who are also, in the broadest sense, engaged in a search for the woman's social equality and individual fulfillment in the west. No other African writer has so far channelled his or her artistic talent so completely to the defence of a cause. Such a dedication has its advantages and disadvantages. Emecheta's strengths are: the convincingness which goes with her first-hand knowledge and ever personal experience of the chara- cters she describes; the intensity, the vigour and directness of her expressions; the social realism which colours her works, the thorough and detailed nature of her descriptions and her total capturing (If the_social picture of Nigeria around the early part of tlie century. 'especially in the yearning of both men and women for education. The disadvantages stem mainly from the propa- gandistic nature of her works which often makes artistic detach- ment a difficult task, leads to generalizations and exaggerations against the object of protest. Her sympathy f\>rher female chara- cters is often counter-balanced by spite for their male counter- parts. There are instances of banality and stylistic sloppiness in most of her work, and the strong autobiographical base of most of her writing forces her to see herself as the paradigm of all women, especially African women, who in her novels feature throughout as victims, but whose own weaknesses of character, the author handles most uncritically. This fault is most glaring in /11 the Ditch and Second-Class Citizen, both of which suffer from a weakness for which John Povey has criticised many African novels, and from which he dissociates Cyprian Ekwensi. In Po- vey's words. The most significant thing is that Ekwensi is a professional writer. Not for him those one-shot "first" novels, the thinly disguised autobiography in which the turns of the plot most precisely mMch the biographical information proffered on the dust-jacket. There ha::. been regular as- sertion that the second novel is crucial in that it is likely l.16 Oll/-Arl ,,,,d rror(/~I/I/(II/ to be the first book that does not present undisguised experience in the form of a tale told by an omniscient author.! Emecheta's first two novels fall into this category, and while it is not impossible to write a successful novel from biographical so- ources the effort on the author's part at artistic detachmenj se- ems much more rigorous. Much of the thematic and stylistic lapses of these two novels stem from this autobiographical foun- dation, which often interferes with balanced character assess- ment and analysis, just as the author's dissatisfaction with cer- tain tenets of Ibuza customs interferes with her perception of the role of her women. In In the Ditch especially: ... Emecheta' s rhetoric of protest often betrays symptoms of an uncritical response to Western modes of perceiving, and describing Africans. Africans appear too often as "natives" in her -works. and there are the familiar Western contrasts between "Civilization" on the one hand, and Nigerian "superstitions" or crudeness on the other. This accepta- nce of the old Eurocentric standards is all the more disco- ncerting, and self-defeating, in a writer who is so obvi- ously preoccupied with inequality and oppression as they are manifest in both language and social custom." In the Ditch traces Adah's struggle. to survive and bring up her five children alone in a'London slum after the break-up of her mar- ,riage with Fra.ncis, a selfish and lazy student of accounting, whom she had married just before his departure from Nigeria for stu- dies overseas. Emecheta's vision here embraces her own trials and those of other women in similar situations. for she- realises that women of all races and national backgrounds share the humi- liations and hardships that flow from the double handicap of be- ing poor and female in London. Her denunciation of African men for their cruelty to their women is most noticeable in this book, and her recourse to vague generalizations detracts from the total achievement of the book. Ironically, _Adah's criticism tends to exclude English men despite ample evidence of such cruelty to their own wives. Such conscious or unconscious oversight stands out in this episode where Adah "cursed all African men for treat- ing women the way they do", because she had heard that an Afri- can student was about to abandon his pregnant English girl- friend (In the Ditch. p. 157). The effectiveness of such an uncri- 137 UTAFlTI- Vol 9 No 1 1987 tical indictment is marred by the fact that the book is devoted ma- inly to the disadvantages of women in English society, and beca- use the victims of unemployment prove that the example of male callousness which the author chooses to attribute to African men is so clearly shared by non-African men as well. This is the case with most of her books. Despite these shortcomings, In the Ditch is significant because Emecheta has used her own personal experiences in Europe, as wife, mother, student and sociologist to produce what Brown called "the only major body of writing by an African woman about the situation of women in the west. "6 The book is even more significant because these experiences are placed within a broad context of social injustices in Great Bri- tain, the west as a whole, and the Third World, thus moving her messages from a particular to a universal level. Seco.nd-class Citizen takes the reader back to the heroi- ne's childhood and adolescence in Thuza. It recreates her deter- mination and ordeal to acquire an education by individual ef- fort, and her job as a librarian in Lagos. This period ends with her marriage to Francis whom she soon joins in England. The hasty marriage shows signs of eventual collapse from the time of her arrival. and the succession of quarrels, beatings, and unplanned pregnancies is narrated in great detail. It is the tragic story of the misfortunes and eventual loss of self-confidence by an erstwhile determined and confident young woman. Her singular fight with her family to achieve this education demonstrates her ambition and foresight. She even undergoes physical punishment for diver- ting the two shillings given to her for meat for the family towards the payment of her entrance examination fee to a secondary scho- ol. She accepts these hardships and impediments as the normal aspects of any dream, such as she had for education and a better life. Her initial strength of character endears her to the reader but her later problems do not come as a suprise. The total portrait of the protagonist is that of a victim, orphaned early in childhood, exploited by a substitute family of an uncle and his children, and finally bullied and abused by a selfish, egotistical and insensitive husband, from whom she finally parts with her five children into a hostile world of poverty and racial discrimination, In narrating this story, the novelist succumbs to some major stylistic pitfalls which mar her total achievement in the work. Once again, the novelist's vision is clouded by her own unfortunate 138 / O/II-A" IIlId ""'l'lIglll/dll marital ordeal which forces her into biased generalisations about Nigerian men, women and society, and prevent her from self- assessment. Characterisation is another weakness in the novel. The cha- racters in the book are sharply divided into villains and victims, the protagonist being the major victim. The family members, the husband and most male members of the society are the villains. This tendency to see human beings iIl such sharp, unqualified distinctions is unrealistic, since the facts of the story show the op- posite. The novelist places most of the responsibility for the he- roine's misfortune on society while in fact her problems are the result of her own unrealistic approach to issues, her gullibility, blind pursuit of her "dream," fear of losing her husband and in- decision on the issue of birth-control. Adah's problems are self-engineered, fuelled and encoura- ged. Her decision to pursue her unbridled ambition, her "dream", "the Presence" is the first cause. She rationalises her hasty and convenient marriage to Francis by saying that all marriages are "a gamble". The second reason is that she needed a home, and for this need. immigration officials are blamed, (p. 43) yet Adah had confessed of dreaming of an early marriage to "a rich man who would allow Ma and Boy to come and stay with her" (p. 20). Most of Emecheta's Nigerian readers, however, know that a hus- band does not have to be excessively rich to respect such nor- mal Nigerian customs. In Adah's words: She would never, never in her life get married to any man, rich or poor, to whom she would have to serve his food on bended knee: she would not consent to live with a husband whom she would have to treat as a master and refer to as "Sir" even behind his back. She knew that all Ibo women did this, but she wasn't going to! (p. 20). The irony is that when the time comes, even without saying "Sir" and serving on bended knees, Adah tolerates more abuse and humiliation than most of those women would ever tolerate. Besides. the statement. " ... all Ibo women did this" is an exag- geration difficult to support with sociological facts. In her relationship with her in-laws, Adah uses guile and deceit. She admits her marriage was most unusual, in fact, "hi- larious", with her illiterate mother-in-law serving as the only 139 UTAFITI- Vol 9 No 1 1987 witness by signing with her thumb. With no family of her own, her in-laws can now exploit her loneliness by encouraging Francis to marry her because all her money would come back to their fa- mily. The ominous circumstances of the wedding forebode the later problems., Adah admits it started on a wrong footing but fails to do anything about that. The fact that they were both under. age crowns all the warnings. Her obsession with elitism and wealth is another driving force in her mistakes. Adah also admits she did not know her husband very well, but typi-::ally excuses that fault with one of her evasive generalisations: She did not know her husband very well because, as most young African wives know, most of the decisions about their own lives had to be referred first to Big Pa, Francis's father, then to his mother, then discussed among the brothers of the family before Ada was referred' to. She found all this ridiculous, the more so if the discussion involved finance. After all, she would have to pay for the plan in most cases but the decision would have been made behind her back (pp. 28-29). The casualness with which she enters and describes this loveless marriage ironically places her on the same level with those pare- .nts whom she criticises for selling their daughters into loveless marriages. To worsen matters, she adopts the motto, "Be a-; cun- ning as a serpent" but as harmless as a dove" in her de.Jings with her in-laws, and literally bribes her mother-in-law with her jewellery in order to obtain their permission to join Francis in Britain. It is clear to Adah from the beginning that her in-laws have always been interested in her more for her present money and future economic prospects than for her own self, yet to convi- nce her mother-in-law to support her plan of going to England she resorts more to pretentious coaxing rather than asserting her will: "Think of it Ma. Francis in his big American car and I in my small one, coming to visit you and Pa when-you retire. You'll be the envy of all your friends. Mind you, in En- gland I'll still work and send you money. All you have to do is to ask, and then you'll get whatever you want. All the girls will go to secondary school. I've almost finished read- ing for librarianship. All I hsve to do is to work, look after Francis and attend classes .in the evening. And when I 140 DIll-An illid rropilJ