COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EMECHETA’S SECONDCLASS CITIZEN AND NWAPA’S EFURU

TABLE OF CONTENT
PAGE
Abstract
CHAPTER ONE/INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
1.2 Statement of the Problem
1.3 Objectives of the Study
1.4 Scope and limitation of the study
1.5 Significance of the Study
1.5 Methodology
1.6 .1 Biography of Buchi Emecheta
1.6.2  Biography of Flora Nwapa
CHAPTER TWO:
Introduction
2.1 Literature Review
2.1.1 A critique of Buchi Emecheta
2.1.2 A critique of Flora Nwapa
2.2 Buchi Emecheta and Flora Nwapa as a liberal feminist
CHAPTER THREE:
Analysis of  Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen
CHAPTER FOUR:
Analysis of  Flora Nwapa’s Efuru
CHAPTER FIVE/SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
5.1 Summary
5.2 Conclusion
5.3 Recommendation
Bibliography
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Emecheta and Nwapa are earliest feminist writers, whose works serve as the starting point for the independence and freedom of African women in general. They wrote novels about the struggles of African women in a contemporary African society and portray the condition of women in the traditional African setting. Their works promote equality for men and women in political, economic, educational, traditional and social spheres. They believe that women are oppressed due to their sex based on the dominant ideology of patriarchy.
Patriarchy literally means rule by men or by paternal right. It is a situation whereby women are ruled or controlled by men, giving power and importance to men.
Were Nigeria and Africa oppressively masculinity? The answer is “yes” Ghana was known to have some matrilineal society such as Akans; but Nigeria’s traditional culture, Muslim as well as non-Muslim had been masculine – based even before the advent of the white man. The source, nature and extent of female subordination and oppression have constituted a vexed problem in African literary debates. Writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo of Ghana and late Flora Nwapa of Nigeria insisted that the image of the helpless, dependent, unproductive African women was once ushered in by European imperialists whose women lived that way. On the other hand, the Nigeria-born, expatriate writer Buchi Emecheta, along with other critics, maintain that African women were traditionally subordinated to sexist cultural mores.
Colonial rule aggravated the situation by introducing a lopsided system in which African men received a well rounded education like their European counterparts before the mid-nineteenth century, African women received only utilitarian, cosmetic skills in domestic science centers the kind of skills that could only prepare them to be useful helpmates of educated, premier nationalists and professionals such as Nnamdi Azikwe Nigeria’s first president, and the late Obafemi Awolowo of the Yoruba tribalist leader.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
A study of some feminist novels in Nigeria has shown that the new feminist novel deviates from the old forms of creating pictures of women that lived private lives. It focuses more on crediting women with more forms of experience than their personal or sexual entanglements. From the development of feminist world-view, women, many of whom are middle-class, work. What feminism has done in the Nigerian novel is to debunk the claim that women are only mere vessels of home keeping and sexual gratification. It explains that like their male counterparts, women work. When they do not work outside their homes, they devise other means of relating to the external world. Such means could be in writing, communication and even in business relationships as the modern world, with its globalization, has generated various means of livelihood and sustenance.
 
The authors selected for this study show their grasp of the vast differences that really existed between the accepted cultural images of women and what women actually pass through in the modern world. Their abilities to develop their plot on this contradiction really distinguish them as feminist novelists in Nigeria.
 
1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This research work will examine the two novels by comparing and differentiating the novels, since the writers share similarities and differences in their texts.
1.4 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The scope of this work is relatively wide. It will be determined by how affective or relevant a portion is to the study. The study will touch the mainline text, i.e. the area in which the topic is concerned.
It would have been worthwhile to use as many texts for this research but it will be limited to Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen and Nwapa’s Efuru.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This work will serve as a body of knowledge to other researchers who may wish to embark on similar topic especially in the area of feminist.
1.6.1 BIOGRAPHY OF BUCHI EMECHETA
Buchi Emecheta was born on August 14, 1944 in Lagos to Igbo parents, Alice Emecheta and Jeremy Nwabudinke. Her father was a railway worker in the 1940’s. due to the gender bias of the time, the young Buchi Emecheta was initially kept at home while her younger brother was sent to school, but after persuading her parents to consider the benefits of her education, she spent her early childhood at an All-Girl’s Missionary School. Her father died when she was nine years old.
A year later, Emecheta received a full scholarship to the Methodist Girl’s School, when she remained until the age of sixteen. She married Sylvester Onwordi, a student to whom she had been engaged since she was eleven years old. Onwordi immediately moved to London to attend University and Emecheta joined him in 1962. She bore him five children in six years, but it was an unhappy and sometimes violent marriage (as chronicled in her autobiographical writings such as Second Class Citizen).
At the age of twenty-two, Emecheta left her husband. While working to support her children alone, she earned a B.sc degree in Sociology in the University of London. From 1965 to 1969, she worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London from 1969 to 1976 she was a youth worker and sociologist for their inner London Education Authority.
She has visited several American Universities including Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, university of California and Los angels. She was senior fellow and visiting professor of English in University of Calabar Nigeria.
Her major theme is child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom. She is the authorof numerous books including; The Joys of Motherhood, The Bride Price, In the Ditch, Second Class Citizen, Destination Biafra and Head Above Water.
1.6.2 BIOGRAPHY OF FLORA NWAPA (1931-1993)
Flora Nwapa was born in Oguta, Eastern Nigerian, which was then a British colony. Both of her parents, Christopher Ijeoma and Martha Nwapa were teachers. She was educated at the University of Ibadan, receiving her B.A in 1957. Nwapa continued her studies in England, earning in 1958 a degree in Education from the University of Edinburgh.
After returning to Nigeria in 1959, Nwapa worked as an Education officer in Calabar for a short time, and she taught Geography and English at Queen’s School in Enugu. From 1962-1964 she was an Assistant Registrar at the university of Lagos. During the Nigerian Civil war, she left Lagos with her family. Like many members of the Igbo Elite, they were forced to return to the Eastern region after the end of the conflict. She became Nigerian writer, Teacher and Administrator, a fore-runner of a whole generation of African Women Writer.
Flora Nwapa is best known for re-creating Igbo (Ibo) life and traditions from a woman’s view point. With Efuru (1966) Nwapa became Black Africa’s first internationally published female Novelist in the English Language. She has been called the mother of Modern African Literature.
In 1982, the Nigerian Government bestowed on her one of the countries highest honours, the OON (Order of Niger). By her own town, Oguta she was awarded the highest Chieftaincy title, Ogbuefi, which is usually reserved for men of achievement.
As a novelist Nwapa made her debut with Efuru, based on an old folktale of a woman chosen by gods, but challenged the traditional portrayal of women. She died on October 16, 1993 in Enugu, Nigeria. She was married to Gogo Nwakuche an Industrialist. They had three children.
Flora Nwapa is the author of numerous books including Idu, Never Again, Wives at War, One is Enough, This is Lagos and Efuru.