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Summary
Childhood
Adah tries to remember when her dream of going to the United Kingdom first began. She starts
with childhood, explaining that since she was born a girl she was a great disappointment to her
family and tribe.
She is a young girl when her mother and the other society women prepare themselves for the
return visit of a lawyer to Lagos; he was from their town of Ibuza, which makes them full of pride.
Her parents always touted the virtues of Ibuza over Lagos, and the Ibuza women are very excited
for this lawyer, who had spent time in the United Kingdom. They talk of this place with reverence
and Adah hears this in their voices and marvels at it.
Unfortunately, Adah has to go to school the day of the lawyer’s visit. School is important to the
Ibo people, who know that it saves them from disease and poverty. Boy, Adah’s brother, already
goes to an expensive school named Ladi-Lak, but it was not certain if Adah was going to go
because she is a girl. She had decided to attend on her own one day, sneaking off to the local
Methodist School around the corner. When she showed up, the children looked at her with
amusement, but Mr. Cole, the teacher, took it in stride. He told her he would be happy to teach
her if her parents allowed her to come. Adah worried about what Ma would say (and knows now
her mother was responsible for her own poor ideas about women). Ma was punished by the police
for child neglect, and forced to swallow gari, a white flour. Yet they told her to send Adah to
school because she looked like a girl keen to learn, which impressed Ma and she relented. Even
Pa, who gave her a few perfunctory hits with the cane, started treating her differently.
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Adah started school, but Pa died not long after, dashing her hopes of going to Ladi-Lak. Boy was
also withdrawn, and both were sent to an inferior school. Adah had just started, which is why Ma
does not want her to attend the lawyer’s visit.
The women arrive at the wharf, dressed colorfully and waving gourds. Europeans gawk at them
and take pictures; these are the days before Nigerian Independence when many Europeans are
constantly going to and fro.
Adah reflects on how the men said that it was a good thing Lawyer Nweze did not bring a white
woman with him or else Oboshi, the river goddess, would have sent leprosy on her. She finds it
amusing how her countrymen still hold on to these sorts of superstitions; it seems a “doleful grip”
(16).
The talk about Nweze goes on for months, and this is when Adah decides she has to go to the
United Kingdom someday. It is the “pinnacle of her ambition” (16).
Analysis
As a child, Adah demonstrates most of the same traits she will as an adult. She is determined,
tenacious, intelligent, ambitious, and pragmatic. She knows education is a necessity, so she
sneaks away to go to school when she is very young. She also pursues secondary school, doing
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what she needs to do to take the exam—taking a bit of money from her uncle’s household—and
passing the exam to get a scholarship. Her goal of being a librarian never fades, and she works
extremely hard to make it a reality. Though she isn’t really interested in marriage, she knows that
she has to do it in order to continue studying. She is also able to effectively manipulate her in-
laws in order to get what she wants—joining Francis in London—congratulating herself on being
“as cunning as a serpent and as harmless as a dove” (34).
Her marriage will soon prove to be the most disastrous thing in Adah’s life, but to her credit, she
could not have known this when she chose Francis. She likes that he is not rich or snobby, that he
is quiet and studious. Even though their wedding is a bit “hilarious” (24), as she sees it, when they
have their first child “she and Francis were both delighted with the baby” (24). They enjoy their
early prosperity and Francis shares her dream of going to the UK. Everything seems to be mostly
rosy at the end of these first two chapters, and the reader may be as surprised as Adah to see
what Francis turns into.
Emecheta skillfully undergirds the sense of hopefulness Adah feels with allusions to her future
problems and disappointments. Nigeria is now free from colonial rule, and there is a sense of
optimism, change, and modernity sweeping the country, particularly Lagos. Adah views herself as
a modern woman, and decides that “Elders or no elders, [she and Francis] were going to live their
own lives” (27). She is committed to moving to “a new surroundings, a new country and among
new people” (27). On the ship, she experiences what it means to be an elite, which gives her “a
taste of what was to come” (34).
Yet there are warning signs that this happy future will not be easily attained. Adah sees how
spoiled Francis is by his family, and how he turns to them to make big decisions. When he
suggests that he go to London and she stay behind because it is what his parents want, she
decries how he is “an African through and through” and that a “much more civilized man would
have probably found a better way of saying this to his wife” (28). She cannot bring herself to cry
when Francis departs, only seeing the tears come when she thinks of her father’s death. She
laments that the “romantic side of her life…[is] shattered, like broken glass” (28) when she hears
Francis tell her it is a good idea that just he go to London.
Critic Abioseh Michael Porter provides more analysis of why Adah makes the deleterious choice to
marry Francis: “As descriptions of life with her husband show, she enters into a hastily arranged
and ill-conceived marriage without the least idea about the real nature of love, marriage, and the
related notions of individual liberty and mutual support. This situation is so because Adah has
grown up in environments where she has been deprived of learning about or experiencing such
concepts that are so vital for successful marital relationships. In fact, it is shown that up to the
time Adah and Francis get married she has neither experienced any serious love relationship nor
has she ever thought deeply about the implications of marriage. She sincerely believes that all it
takes to have a successful marriage is to be married to a young spouse of modest means.” As we
will see with further analyses, despite Adah’s boldness and determination and feminist assertions,
she is still a psychological victim of the patriarchy in her assumptions about men and women’s
roles and the institution of marriage.
SECOND CLASS CITIZEN BY Identify five varnacular use in the Feminism in Literature
BUCHI EMECHETA text second class citizen and The feminist lens with which we
I'm not sure that I see Francis as a trace the page may want to regard the novel is
foil to Adah's character, as I see As the majority of the novel's anachronistic, but that does not
him to be her antagonist. Francis characters are Nigerian, the author mean Adah does not evince
manipulates Adah, and as a result, uses occasional words and phrases qualities, characteristics, and
she changes from an independent, from the Yoruba language to behaviors that point to a feminist
problem solver, who attacks her enhance the reader's ethos. She wants to balance
problems head on, to a young understanding of their culture and motherhood and a career; she...
woman in... provide authenticity. For instance,
Asked by Rose R #1262931
Adah is beaten by her...
Asked by Emmanuella O #1282474 Answered by jill d #170087 on
Answered by jill d #170087 on Asked by Jeriq J #1271086 10/14/2022 11:16 AM
1/9/2023 11:20 AM Answered by Aslan on 11/15/2022
5:40 PM