A Womanist Study of Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price and The Joys of Motherhood

Author(s): Shyam D Gayakwad and Dr. KG Ranveer

Abstract:

Buchi Emecheta (1944 - 2017) was a Nigerian Igbo writer. Her novels deal with difficulties and the different roles of women in immigrant and African societies. Her characters explore the tension between tradition and modernity. Originally a protest writer, Buchi Emecheta's early, stinging critique of male chauvinism in Nigeria and England is clear and passionate. Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta has been the most vocal and persistent advocate of direct feminist protest in modern African literature. Buchi Emechetas the Bride Price examines how women in African society are consistently assigned a subordinate status and are always reliant on their husbands, fathers, or men. However, the story's heroine defies this tradition and goes for her own path, illustrating how things have changed even in rural Africa. Set in Lagos, her novel The Joys of Motherhood exposes the dehumanizing effects of colonialism on the urban segment of society. The heroine of this book, Nnu Ego, cannot respect her husband, Nnaife, who, in contrast to the "guy in her town," is degraded to the point where he takes pride in cleaning his mistress's smalls and must ultimately go to fight in the battle to protect her nation. The present research paper aims to study womanism in Buchi Emecheta’s two novels- The Bride Price (1976) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979).

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