The Joys Of Motherhood Analysis

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In Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, certain gender norms are set for both males and females in Africa in the 1940s. Being the male gender is considered superior to being the female gender. For example, in The Joys of Motherhood, men are allowed to have multiple partners, while women are “supposed” to accept it and respect their husband’s decision no matter what. Moreover, polygamous marriages are encouraged and perceived as dominance for men to have multiple partners. This male dominance of power accepted by the society is called patriarchy. Being in a patriarchal society, women’s rights tend to get oppressed often and they are forced to conform to anything their husband or father tells them to do. Moreover, along with women’s rights, …show more content…
If everyone followed the rules that the society expected us to follow, then there would be no independence, unity, communication and the society would destroy itself. However, there are a few characters in The Joys of Motherhood that fall in this category. With all the gender norms that the society had laid out for her, Ona decided to fulfill her father’s expectations and become a capable and self sustaining woman; “Ona grew to fill her father’s expectation. He maintained that she must never marry; his daughter was never going to stoop to any man” (Emecheta 7). Rather than living her entire life under the footsteps of her husband, Ona does exactly the opposite and decides to marry no one. Ona’s courageous acts and her care-free independent nature allows her to seem more attractive to Agbadi. Since, Ona believes, “that a woman does not need a man to be complete, neither does selfhood mean perpetual motherhood” (Emecheta 7), it allows us to infer that Ona had succeeded in breaking the gender norms that the society expected her to follow by doing exactly what her father expected her to do. This is a great way of combating oppression of any norm. Moreover, this allows us to understand more about the path to achieving self satisfaction and independence from unjust laws and the patriarchal society. As exemplified by Ona’s courageous acts, all that is necessary to achieve personal freedom is; to identify any immoral rules/laws, and simply act upon them by either speaking up or not following them at
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