'Joy of Motherhood' by Buchi Emecheta

 Hello Everyone,

I am Hinaba Sarvaiya, a student of English Department MKBUniversity. This blog is based on African novelist Buchi Emecheta's famous novel 'Joy of Motherhood'. This task was assigned by Yesha ma'am.

About Buchi Emecheta:-

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.

About Novel:-

The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was first published in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 1980 and reprinted 1982, 2004, 2008. The basis of the novel is the "necessity for a woman to be fertile, and above all to give birth to son's. It tells the tragic story of Nnu-Ego, daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing. This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centres on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. Traditional tribal values and customs begin to shift with increasing colonial presence and influence, pushing Ego to challenge accepted notions of "mother", "wife", and "woman". Through Nnu Ego's journey, Emecheta forces her readers to consider the dilemmas associated with adopting new ideas and practices against the inclination to cleave to tradition. 

In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in child bearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.

"The most celebrated female character in African creative writing is the African mother." by Marie A. Umeh according to this, is the character of Nnu Ego celebrating motherhood or not? Explain.

This image of the African mother for the most part reflects traditional African societies' mores. African societies highly regard African women for their reproductive ability, and African writers similarly portray African women in roles where they are protecting, comforting and nourishing their children. 

In Buchi Emecheta's novel, The Joys of Motherhood, one witnesses the collapse of these glorifying images of the African Mother. As a literary artist preoccupied with promoting change, author Emecheta, an iconoclast, breaks away from the prevalent portraitures in African writing in which motherhood is honorific. Children do not always maintain strong and loving ties with their mothers throughout adulthood. As Emecheta states in her novel, "the joy of being a mother is the joy of giving all to your children." 

The title of the book, which is taken from Flora Nwapa's novel, Efuru, is then significant and bitterly ironic. Dazzled by ambitious sons educated outside of traditional Igbo values, Nnu Ego breaks down and her old secure world gives way to a new one. Fully conscious of the irony in her life, she says, 

"A woman with many children could face a lonely old age and maybe a miserable death all alone, just like a barren woman" 

Here Emecheta constructs a wholly different set of economic, socio-political and cultural imperatives which diverge from the existing literary models.

Nnu Ego, the protagonist in the novel, is an offspring of Agbadi, a great chief and elephant hunter, and the proud Ona, who remains the great love of Agbadi's life although she refuses to become one of his wives. Because Nnu Ego, the reincarnation of a slave girl who has come back to live her life again, is barren in her first marriage, she is returned to her father's village. The old chief is reluctant to see her marry a second time but he relents and allows Nou Ego to marry Nnaife Owulum, aman she has never seen and does not know. 

Nnaife Owulum lives in Lagos where he is employed as a laundryman in the home of an English family. Upon arriving in Lagos, Nnu Ego is disappointed with her spouse because of his obesity and his servility before Dr. and Mrs.Meers, his employers. In any event, Nnu Ego remains with her husband and bears him nine children of whom seven live: three boys and four girls. 

When she despairs because of a loveless marriage, she draws comfort from the fact that Nnaife is responsible for her seemingly esteemed position as another. Upon the birth of their first son, Oshia, she reflects:

"She was now sure, as she bathed her baby son and cooked for her husband, that her old age would be happy, that when she died there would be somebody left behind to refer to her as 'mother' "

Instead she draws spirited individuals, not without faults. In this book, the mother figure is described in a variety of situations. One witnesses the mother sacrificing herself for her children, fighting with her husband in order to get financial support for the children, protecting her children from their father's wrath, correcting her children and suffering because of their absence, their revolts against traditional customs, their needs. 

Unlike most African male writers who revere their mothers in autobiographies, recalling their mothers' affection, Buchi Emecheta records the troubled and chaotic moments in a mother's life. Apart from the positive aspects of mother-hood, author Emecheta records the turmoil and anguish of women who long for children and of mothers who worry about their children.

Realizing too late that a single woman can be happy even though she has no children, Nnu Ego in death becomes spiritually committed to heightening the consciousness of the African woman. 

Emecheta falls short of being a serious feminist writer in that her main character, Nnu Ego, acquires her raised consciousness to personhood only as the book closes. Although her character Adaku serves as a model of the liberated woman who conducts herself as a "free woman" and provides us with a glimpse of how an African woman conducts herself as a separated mother with two children, we have yet to see a realistic novel which describes a fully liberated heroine who lives an independent life as a respectable human being within African society. 

Because of the conservative sexual mores expected of women in the Igbo community, Adaku, by renouncing her marriage to Nnaife, choosing to live alone, and entertaining men friends, sets herself apart from the other married women in her community who seek status and protection in the home of respectable African men. Adaku, by contrast, is determined to become a successful trader and keep men at her disposal.

Conclusion:-

The Joys of Motherhood stands as a model for other African women writers who wish to portray the actual condition of women and their responses to their condition and the actual possibilities of overcoming barriers and achieving individuality.

If you know more about this novel, watch this YouTube video...

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