Igbo Tribe Essay

In the novel, “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe the Igbo tradition revolves around structured gender role. Everything essential of Igbo life is based on their gender, which throughout the novel it shows the role of women and the position they hold, from their role in the family household, also planting women crops, to bearing children. Although the women were claimed to be weaker and seemed to be treated as objects, in the Igbo culture the women still provided qualities that make them worthy.

The treatment of women and children has changed over time all across the world. In the Ibo tribe of Nigeria, the changes have been drastic. Although women and children were mistreated in the traditional Igbo culture, they have gained many rights and better treatment with the spread western cultures and advancement of technology.

In the Ibo tribe, women and children were seen as inferior compared to men in the eyes of society. Women have weddings arranged by their parents. After getting married, the women are considered to be the property of the husband. The main purpose of women in the Ibo society was staying home and taking care of the home and children. It was very important for a woman to give birth to a child, preferably a boy so that

The way in which the women of the Igbo village are presented, by Achebe, make it seem as if they serve very little purpose to the society. The main character, Okonkwo, is infatuated with making sure he does not turn out to be like his father. By living in a village where manliness was crucial and weakness was not, Okonkwo viewed his father as being a weak and cowardly mean because he could barely support his family. To make sure he did not become an adult that resembled his father, he developed the characteristics of being brave, wealthy and even violent. Since he acquired these traits, it gave him a sense of superiority over his wives and the other women of the village. Perhaps because of Okonkwo’s behavior, the women of the village are treated with less respect. It is portrayed by Achebe that the women of the Igbo village only purpose is looking after the children and helping their husbands when or if it is needed. Although the women of the Igbo village are described as being insignificant, the women are the people that fill in the gaps in the society. For example, the women are the ones that cook, clean, take care of everyone, help harvest and grow food, as well as all the other everyday tasks that are easily overlooked.

Women are often thought of as the weaker, more vulnerable of the two sexes. Thus, women’s roles in literature are often subdued and subordinate. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, women are repressed by an entrenched structure of the social repression. Women suffer great losses in this novel but, also in certain circumstances, hold tremendous power. Achebe provides progressively changing attitudes towards women’s role. At first glance, the women in Things Fall Apart may seem to be an oppressed group with little power and this characterization is true to some extent. However, this characterization of Igbo women reveals itself to be prematurely simplistic as well as limiting, once

The Igbos used consensus to run their villages. They had the ndichie also known as the leading citizens run meetings where they would argue about issues. The Igbo had set up a system to stop men from achieving too much power. For men to be able to claim a higher title they would have to pay money to to the poor. To be able to reach the highest rank in the tribe you had to pay the debt of every man in the tribe, resulting in many men not achieving this rank. Unlike in many cultures, women held a spot on the social structure. Daughters of the clan were known as the umuada, they were the authority in the markets and they handled the civic. Men who abused their wives in public were abused with hurtful signs from the women in the rest of their village(McDougal

As the key holders of life women are seen to be powerful in that sense, which allows them to be important figures in the Igbo religion. Unlike many western religions the Igbo allow women to serve as priestess. The idea of women is also highly revered in the sense that The Igbo believe in and “earth goddess” that is seen to be a female. The earth goddess plays and important role due to that fact that the whole Igbo society is based on crop. This all ties into the idea that women are providers and are strongly needed for the society to function and

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart gives us a vivid description of the Igbo culture through the stories of Okonkwo and his village, Umuofia. In regards to Igbo culture, contributions of women cannot be ignored. Although their position and status seems to be underestimated by the people in the novel, women do play an important role in the Igbo culture in four aspects: women take care of the children, do all the housework, serve as priestesses, and build relationships with other villages.

In some places around the world, women are treated different from men. In the Igbo society women, are treated like pieces of property and not humans, they are made to act and dress a certain way, and everything in their society is gendered. This relates to women in the world now. Today, women are standing up, and being treated equally. In the Igbo society, women did not stand up for their beliefs because, they would not be treated equally

In every culture the mother is usually the one that will comfort you in the bad times and will support you and she will protect you. In the story, the mother protects her children. For example Achebe says, “ But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you” (134). After Okonkwo accidentally shoots Ezeudu sixteen year-old son, he is send to his motherland. Even though Okonkwo’s mother is not there anymore, she is still protecting him by providing a place to stay until Okonkwo’s punishment is over. Also, her kinsmen treated Okonkwo well and they gave him yam seeds to start a farm. Ilika describes the relationship between the children and mother when they get older. The children are most likely aligned to their mothers when they become adults (Ilika 85). The children are aligned with their mothers when they become adults because their mother is the one that cared for them in the childhood more than their father. In the book, Okonkwo found refuge in his motherland when he was an adult. Those are some examples why the role of the mother is very important to an igbo

In the U.S. it is perfectly normal for a woman to have custody of her children, but in the Igbo culture that is completely unheard of. Achebe’s purpose for writing this book was to eliminate the stereotypes on the African culture, as well as to instill pride in his own people. The main theme in the novel is that women are respected, but not valued. Achebe reveals this through the inability of women to perform certain task, Chika the priestess and finally, through the Igbo marriage process. The source of evidence will be Chinua Achebe’s

  Women were once little more than slaves to their male "betters." Some women might have been respected, but their places were limited to roles as wives and mothers. They might rule a home, but were not believed intelligent enough for any other role. This chauvinistic attitude is well reflected in the novels Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, and Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.

It has been shown above how the woman as a religious figure has power over the trive. But there are other ways found thoughout the novel which illustrate women’s power. One such way is through the mother. A mother is of obvious importance to a child and to a community as a whole. The best illustration of this occurs during a talk Okonkwo is having with one of his uncles, Uchendu. Uchendu tells him:

When a man wanted to marry a woman, he had to pay the bride price to her relatives if htey accepted him. Each day, the wives had to prepare their own dishes for their husbands and would have to obey them for whatever reason. Although their order might go against the wives' will, they could not question their husbands because it's against the cultural traditions. When a child was born, it belonged to its father and his family instead of the mother's because the man was the head of the family and the wife was always supposed to obey his command. But when a man was in an exile, he  would have to return to his mother's kinsmen until the period of exile was over . Furthermore, when a woman died, she was taken home to burry with her own kinsmen and not with her husband's. Chinua Achebe described these customs clearly in the story because they revealed the distinctness of the Igbo women at that time and these traditions made the story more appealing to the readers.

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe portrayed men as the dominant sex in Igbo culture; however women were as dominant or potentially more dominant than men in their own ways. He