Society and Achebe's Stories

I understand when readers say that women characters in some of Chinua Achebe’s writings were portrayed as being subordinate to men to a large extent. Hence, the women were limited in how much they featured and how deeply they evolved through conversations as each story progressed. A longing for the female characters to be more.

Women were simultaneously present and absent in key decision-making scenarios, almost as if all the decisions were left to the men. If you have read “Things Fall Apart”, “Man of the People”, and the early stages of “Arrow of God”, the role of women was not exactly inspiring, to say the least. Somehow, it’s as though a woman’s agency peaked at being a wife or a mother or a concubine. Even when she had a more powerful spiritual role, being a mother or wife was tagged to her existence and self-worth. The social relevance and inherent value of living as a woman had to be tied to catering to the needs of others, especially the men. Hence, barrenness was of a much bigger burden to the woman than to the men.

Women who did otherwise were dressed up as rebels. A woman who was asked too many questions was either too nosy, a local gossip with nothing to do, or branded as useless. For how dare she ask questions? She could see around here how other women carried on with the culture. However, men could sit around kegs of palm wine and talk, which would not be termed as “gossip”.

Men were raised as providers and, as such, deemed their farm work of greater importance than the work the women were doing, like fetching water from the stream, cooking, raising children, etc. Boys were auto-superior and were preferred over their sisters in the family. Even when a girl was more successful and “not disgracing” anybody, it was never enough because the parents had this hunger for the preferred male by virtue of being male, which was enough validation, even with their worst temper and character.

As a fan of Chinua Achebe’s brilliant style of writing and his very bit-by-bit, simple English storytelling pattern, I can understand this was a state of the society. He was writing these fictional stories from a place of well-researched expression that was plausible and relatable as a Nigerian because somehow, you can easily pinpoint 1, 2, or 3 persons and places that those characters would be existing in the real world. The stories were the lived experiences of real people somewhere, and those characters came to life as you flipped the pages. If someone told you those stories were real, it was easy to believe.

Achebe’s writings at that time reflected the lives of women and young girls. A reminder of a male-preferred society; a male preferred at his peak of masculine, ego-tripping, self-centered, and overachieving nature. A man who has been groomed to consistently choke on the belief that softness and tears are for women. Men whose physical strength was supposed to be a match for the whims and caprices of life. A man who had to be so certain of himself and had no room for failure. He dared not have any trace of a fragile emotion. A man with such an overflowing ego that it has eaten deep into his personality, such that it becomes his weakness.

He cannot afford to fail, and he beats himself over through torture when he thinks or recognizes that he no longer fits into the space and the frame of reference that he has known all his life. He is hard on himself because his life will become a constant struggle to achieve something, anything that distracts him from ever embracing the thought that he can be enough without loosing himself. What he defines as shame and “being inadequate” are also burdens he will carry the rest of his life.

With his baggage, he somehow continues to hold on to the belief that his labor will always be superior when he gets the slightest opportunity to weigh it against “what women bring to the table”.  I must painfully agree that Achebe’s stories may have been extremely male-centered, and it was more about what the men wanted. Therefore, everything revolved around setting the male characters up to find the things they wanted to achieve and their need to continue to have control.

It did not matter the casualties along the way, or who suffered; a man will get whatever he wants. When they fail, everyone else will suffer the misfortune, and their ego will not let them admit or embrace failure. This male setup is what I would argue also made the stories relatable because most of us have heard similar stories like that and can literally point a finger at someone who embodied that masculine ego seen in Okonkwo, Ezeulu, and Odili.

The stories exposed men who deliberately willed control over the women in their lives, even though the women barely had any say in the men's decisions. Daughters are raised to understand “their place” and accept the hierarchy of men in their culture. Girls clung to the approval of their fathers, which translated to being subservient to the men at different stages of their lives. Women had to somehow rely on men’s providence, approval, and gaze as a mark of culture and acceptance. Daughters would challenge their mothers but dared not question their fathers because even their mothers’ sole existence revolved around serving the needs of their fathers and keeping the homes, even sometimes at the expense of their own self-will and happiness.

As much as we want to say that society has evolved and Achebe’s stories are now in the past, one gets shocked daily in this internet age that young men continue to show us that there are still Okonkwos and Ezeulus and Odilis out there. Men and boys who are looking for subservient women to cater to their ego and needs; women raised to still believe that self-denial will be an added advantage to get the approval and affection they desire from men.

No one can take away from Achebe's pacesetting brilliance through his writings and his enduring legacy in literature. Achebe has inspired so many people to read and enjoy the act of reading as well as the labour in expressive writing. Chinua Achebe is an icon. He will always be a legend. The society we live in has a way of defining who we are and the stories we tell. Importantly, it shapes how we tell these stories, whether the characters be relatable, a mirror to understand ourselves more in our society, or that we stretch our minds to otherworldly mythical creatures.