Using at least four specific examples from both Things Fall Apart and Breath, Eyes, Memory, compare and contrast the ways the roles of men and women are portrayed. What do these roles say about the culture and about the ways they value or de-value males and females within the culture?
In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe portrays the roles that men and women as they are regarded in Igbo, a pre-colonial African community. This is a society is deeply rooted in their culture. Masculinity is seen as bravery and violence while Feminism is passive where women are regarded as a man’s property. The masculine role is overemphasized in Things Fall Apart as opposed to Breath, Eyes, Memory which pays attention to women and their needs.
The male protagonist, Okonkwo is depicted by the villagers as a warrior who will save his society from the ‘horror of civilization’. Okonkwo is afraid to become weak as his father and eventually emerge as a failure which he describes as “become like a shivering old woman” (Achebe 72). In a desire to portray his strengths, to achieve a social status he neglects other important roles such as his family. Unlike his father, Unoka, he hates having to die an insignificant man with no titles. Unoka is compared to a woman since he was a weak and lazy man. Okonkwo treats his family without any compassion. Instead, he is strict to his own children and wives. Having to display caring traits shows a person is womanly or a weak person in the society. This is seen in the way he appreciates his son when he complain of women since this shows that he would be to males while weaknesses to females. Okonkwo is a polygamist since he got three wives, who cares for him and whom he ironically, mistreats violently. Yet, the villagers do nothing about it and this enables men to control them. In Igbo village strengths are attributed about being like Okonkwo. Women on the other hand are defined by their men’s status and are treated as defenseless creatures similar to the Breath, Eyes, Memory.
Nevertheless, women are also seen as having significant roles to play in the community. For example, they engage in the rural workforce such as in painting Egwugwu’s houses, and in religious roles such as the priestess in control of Oracle of Agbala who is and authoritative spiritual leader. Just like the Breath, Eyes, Memory women are also are the best teachers of their children since they bear them, expose them to the social life, guide their conduct and helps them to cultivate and embrace the social norms especially through storytelling and entertaining them. In this instance, they are shown as being skillful and constituting to a source of extensive workforce as the pillars of Igbo village. In other cases a man’s first wife is highly valued since, the first wife is the first one to drink the wine followed by the others as in the case of Nwakibie’s ceremony where his first wife Anasi, is given a priority. Yet another significance that women are awarded in the Igbo community is during Okonkwo’s exile. He is advised by Uchendu, his uncle that “A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland” (Achebe 216). This emphasizes that women are always present in both good and bad times and also the supremacy of motherhood as he able to transmit life and existence emanates from them.
In Breath, Eyes, Memory, the Haitian setup depicts the female protagonist, Sophie Caco who was born as a result of violence and is neglected by he mother and is beckoned to America where she realizes the insensitive set of laws that Haiti enforce. Her untie brings her up lovingly who comforts her. She falls in love with Man, Joseph whom her mother rejects and thus has to test her virginity. She voluntarily frees herself from an oppressive tradition when she breaks her virginity with a spice pestle. After she is chased out of her mother’s house due to this fact, she marries Joseph. Joseph has no time for the family just like Okonkwo but instead, tours around the world. This frustrates her wife, which express the psychological turmoil that he causes. Men as a source of women’s psychological turmoil is also expressed when Sophie’s mother commits suicide due to falling pregnant again and also, the rape incident. Like Women in the Things fall apart, the Haitian women are defenseless but unlike in the things fall apart, these women perpetrate their fellow women’s distress.
Sophie, while in America reunites and interact with her mother who points out it is her responsibility to find out whether she is a virgin or had any romantic encounter with a male. She becomes aware of how Haitian strict rules are imposed on her mother. Her mother explains that “When I was a girl, my mother used to test us to see if we were virgins. She would put her finger in our very private parts and see if it would go inside. Your Tante Atie hated it. She used to scream like a pig in a slaughterhouse. The way my mother was raised, a mother is supposed to do that to her daughter until the daughter is married. It is her responsibility to keep her pure.” (Danticat 60-61). In this case, mothers bear the responsibility of ensuring that their daughters’ virginity is maintained. As Sophie continue to learn .from he grandmother more about Haitian culture, she understands that mothers violate their daughters privacy unknowingly when pursuing to keep them sexually naïve until marriage. She wonders why mothers do it but she is told that it is a disgrace especially when the father is absent in the daughter’s upbringing. Men accepts nothing less than a virgin girl (Danticat 156).
In an instance from storytelling, when a girl is virgin she has to bleed on the sheets on her honeymoon to depict that she was pure. A man could cut her to protect his self image at the expense of the girl’s life. This expresses that these men are egocentric just as portrayed in the Things Fall Apart. Men benefits from this norm since they are able to control their wives sexual life for a paternal basis. The Haitian men want virgin girls for them to become homemakers with roles such as cooking, mothering, washing among others. Sophia is frightened and at the same time is aware of her social norms. Such a cultural norm is not only oppressive but its outdated. It is traumatic and the testing ritual haunts these girls for the entire life. They become humiliated and lowers their self image and destroys her sexual life when one becomes married which is demoralizing (Danticat 123).
Things fall apart and Breath, Eyes, Memory depicts the fight between conservativeness and civilization in the in a community. For instance, there is a disintegration of these attitudes when Christianity, is introduced in Igbo village where women embraces it passionately to save the existence of Igbo from oppressive traditions. A woman’s role shifts from being a homemaker who has no power to an agent of change through frequent contacts when trade and farming notably, the yams which initially were associated with manliness (Achebe 33). This not only has no place for male chauvinists such as Okonkwo but also enlightens the society on need for change. In communities, women subordination and being subject to Humiliation was by no means significant. Women eventually emerge as bold since they are not afraid of change that comes with the Europeans (Achebe 184). On the other hand, Breath, Eyes, Memory portray women as Sophie appreciate motherhood but never lets this takes the best of her though we was a product of rape. Men are depicted as violent especially during sex and do not care the psychological distress they cause on women. This is seen in the rape of Sophia s mother and also in the oppressive social norms that instigate fear and anxiety, which may be the reason being the women aggression for each other. They show their anger is due to the test ritual done on them just because the society dictates so. Both stories portray women’s weaknesses, their fragility, vulnerability and the feeble nature to which they quickly fall victims of men’s oppression.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Oxford, UK: William Heinemann Ltd.1958. Print.
Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. Vintage Books. New York. 1994. Print.
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