Summary of Emechetas The Bride Price :: essays research papers

The Bride Price Buchi Emecheta, the author of The Bride Price, illustrates the life of the Odia family and the hardships they go through together, and on their own. The character who stands out the most, however, is Aku-Nna Odia, the protagonist of the story. Because she is an unmarried teenage girl, life is additionally hard for her. Aside from the difficulties she has because of the death of her father, Aku-Nna is faced with the cultural mission as a female in society to get married so the family can receive a bride price. The author of this fictional story weaves in the theme of male dominance and women?s compliance to men. Life in Nigeria is hard at the time, and Aku-Nna is a character who demonstrates the difficulties of life as a female in this culture. It is clear that men play the dominant gender in Nigerian societies. They are expected to be strong, smart, and powerful. They act as the head of the family as they are the ones who make all the money and decisions. Ezekiel Odia, the father of the Odia family, works a full-time job at the ?Loco Yard.? When he dies, his family is left to fend for themselves. They move back to Ibuza where the mother, Ma Blackie, hopes to find help from her brother-in-law. In this African culture, it is believed that after a husband has died, a woman can no longer take care of herself or her family. ?A fatherless family is a family without a head, a family without shelter, a family without parents, in fact a non-existing family? (28). This statement just further illustrates that men are more important than women in society. In Nigeria, women are inferior to men. They tend to them and do tedious household chores that need to be done. At four o?clock, women work especially hard. ?Four o?clock was the time when all housewives stopped plaiting their hair, when they finished off their gossiping because their men folk would soon be home, hungry, tired, and irritable, so the women would rush to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal? (20). Whatever task men asked their wives to do, women were expected to complete thoroughly. Women were demanded to give birth to healthy males and do household work in society. They were also ?supposed to exhibit more emotion? (30) than men were to express.