The Bride Price

a story that reflects the subordination of woman in marriage. By the time of the early

“Girl” is a short story in which the author, Jamaica Kincaid, unofficially presents the stereotypes of girls in the mid 1900s. Kincaid includes two major characters in the story “Girl”, they are the mother and the girl. Although the daughter only asks two questions in this story, she is the major character. The mother feels like her daughter is going in the wrong direction and not making the best decisions in her life. The whole story is basically the mother telling her daughter what affects her decisions will have in the future. The mother believes that because her daughter isn’t sitting, talking, cleaning, walking or singing correctly it will lead her to a path of destruction. “Girl” is a reflection of female sexuality, the power of family, and how family can help overcome future dangers.

            A main character in the novel, Okonkwo has several wives. He orders them around like dogs. They are never to question what they are instructed to do; they are expected to be obedient. We see this early in the story, when Okonkwo brings Ikemefuna into his home. Okonkwo tells his senior wife that Ikemefuna belongs to the tribe and that she is

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.

Okonkwo treated his son and daughter very differently. The child-father relationship between Okonkwo and Nwoye was a distant and strained one while Okonkwo exhibited another type of feeling towards Ezinma which is filled with care and concern. This was due to the fact that Nwoye “was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness” whereas Ezinma was thought to have the “right spirit” and “alone understood [Okonkwo’s] every mood”.

The short story “Girl” takes place on a island in the Caribbean. The female role was very important to the culture they were raised in. Each female had to prove to the people that they well worthy on becoming a women. The female are easily judge for their boys, the why they dressed, people were aware of all certain behaviors the women will show. The short story clearly warns on how a women should be, warns her how to behave, and dress like a women because its the role they were meant to carry.

Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna. He drank palm-wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of a rat when it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor. He called his son, Nwoye, to sit with him in his obi. But the boy was afraid of him and slipped

Men have a dominant power over women in the Ibo society. For instant, “At the end they decided, as everybody knew they would, that the girl should go to Ogbuefi Udo to replace his murdered wife”(Achebe 10). If a man killed the wife of another man in a different clan then a virgin, a women whose life

Okonkwo has three wives, who are the primary female figures in Things Fall Apart. His three wives each hold varying roles of importance in the household just as they do in the novel. The characterization of Ekwefi, Okonkwo's second wife, almost seems insignificant to one reading from a patriarchal standpoint, but when reevaluated, one will find that she is a well of knowledge, love, and fierce independence. Although she was married to another

Although it is the wife who is always looking for a husband in her personal life, in the Wife’s tale, it is the man who is forced to find what it is that all women desire. In the end he is obligated to marry, while the Wife is always excited to marry her next husband. The Wife wants the woman in the marriage to make the decisions and to have power, which is also seen in the old woman in her tale. In her tale, the old woman basically tricks the man into marrying her, and then into kissing her. This gives her control and she can then reveal her true self.

This joint family, like any social organization, must face problems such as acceptable division of work, relationships and specific family roles. These familial relationships are managed on the basis of a secular hierarchical principle. In fact, all Indians owe respect and obedience to the head of the family, who usually is the father or the oldest man of the family community. In The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder by Nanda and Gregg, it is explained that, “females [are] placed under the perpetual guardianship of first their fathers and elder brothers, then their husbands.” (Nanda & Gregg 22) Thus, all the spending decisions, studies and profession, or marriage, are exclusively the responsibility of the father after the possible discussions with the other men of the family. Age and sex are the basic principles of this hierarchical system. The eldest sons enjoy greater unchallenged authority than their cadets. Of course men have more authority than women, but older married women have an important role within the family. In fact, the authority of a woman depends on the rank of her husband inside the group. Traditionally, the wife of the patriarch rules over domestic affairs and has considerable power over the other women in the community, especially her daughters- in-law.

The men in “Cinderella” also value women for their beauty. The prince has a ball for all the maidens in the land to find his future wife, which “amounts to a beauty contest” (Lieberman 386) for a new trophy wife. While some argue that Cinderella’s rebellion of going against her stepmother’s instructions of staying home shows that the story has feminist qualities, the prince weakens her achievement when he chooses her only because of her beauty as “girls win the prize if they are the fairest of them all” (Lieberman 385). Her need for independence is transformed into the prince’s need for a pretty wife, making her again an object in her family. Once integrated into the prince’s family, Cinderella goes from the maid of her family to the smiling porcelain doll next to the prince as the “first job of a fairy tale princess is to be beautiful” (Röhrich 110). This gives the impression that the only way

First, Okonkwo starts off as a poor child, as shown when the book states, “Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had, he did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit” showing that Okonkwo and his family were penurious, compared to others in the Igbo tribe (Achebe 16). Eventually, through his hard work and effort, he became a noble leader, which emphasizes his role as a tragic hero. Throughout the story Okonkwo goes through many challenges, but “In the face of futility, however, he maintains his nobility of character”(Gaydosik).

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.

The Bride Price is a novel written by Nigerian writer Bunchi Emecheta, which addresses the problems of women in post-colonial Nigeria. Published in 1976, it illustrates the life of the Odia family and the hardships that they go through. Bunchi Emecheta is successful in portraying the difficulties that women faced in that time and place. The protagonist, Aku-nna Odia, is an unmarried teenage girl who is kidnapped by Okoboshi Obidi 's family and forced to marry him. Later in the novel, she is “rescued” by Chike, a man that she falls in love with and marries. She is not supposed to be with Chike because it is shameful to her family because he is a descendent of slaves. Aku-Nna later dies in childbirth and Chike is left with his baby, Joy. One of her last statements is that only in death will she win her freedom. Although this novel is a fictional story, Emecheta weaves in semi-autobiographical elements and situations. She illustrates the theme of male