The Joys of Motherhood

Introduction

This essay examines varying representation of gender within the colonial context in order to consider the complex politics of interpretation. By counter posing Buchi Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood this essay interrogates the impact of colonial rule on African women.

Selected theme

In order to analyze the novel “The Joys of Motherhood”, the theme that is selected is the impact of colonial rule upon African women. With the aid of this elected theme, this paper provides an insight of the text that is used in “The Joys of Motherhood” to express the presence of the selected theme.

Discussion

Buchi Emecheta's novel, “The Joys of Motherhood”, opens with a touching scene. The protagonist, Nnu Ego, flee her home in great distress and despondency, frantically placing as much distance between herself and the latest of the misdeeds attributed to her spiteful spirit. Nnu Ego and her community read her situation as resulting from her spirit's malevolence thus drawing our attention to the connections between questions of interpretation, constructions of justice, and Emecheta's career-long preoccupation with gender (Emecheta, 14).

Reading “The Joys of Motherhood” through a specialized analytical lens valuably reveals a complex nexus of overdeterminig social, cultural and political vectors at play in the life of Nnu Ego. Such an analysis finds Emecheta's protagonist positioned at the conjunction of multiple and compounding interests that give rise to her increasing dilemmas and dis-case. Her most profound challenge is not merely to be a proper daughter, wife and mother but rather successfully negotiate the virtually endless forces that populate her world, forces which powerfully frustrate her attempts to perform a socially acceptable subjectivity (Sharpe, 140)

In a colonial society so fundamentally structured upon the marginalization of colonized women, Nnu Ego faces an additional set of interstitial spaces that tests her ability to come to terms with her ever changing ...