Peer-reviewed article
Questioning the Patriarchal Politics of (M)Othering: Re-reading Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood
Elham Hossain ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This is a literary study of Buchi Emecheta's novel The Joys of Motherhood. It asks how patriarchal politics turns a mother into an 'Other', using the main character Nnu Ego as its example. The paper draws on Marxist and Black feminist theory, citing Gayatri Spivak and bell hooks. Its focus is the position of women and mothers in the novel, not the well-being of children.
Key points
- Nnu Ego is deserted by her first husband because she cannot have a child.
- Her second husband treats her as an object even though she bears several children.
- She exhausts herself educating her children and dies unheard and unattended.
- The traditional patriarchal view judges a woman's success or failure by her children's success or failure.
- The paper says this view hinders women from developing their agency.
Limitations
Only the abstract is available, and it is a qualitative reading of a single novel. It contains no data on children's outcomes and evaluates no intervention.
Abstract
Knowledge is constructed through questioning. In line with this, Nigerian feminist author Buchi Emechet a questions the traditional methods of stereotyping the role of motherhood, which overtly demonstrates how deliberately political it is to confine a woman merely within her role as a mother, even if she possesses every possible potential to construct her own multifaceted ‘self’ as an independent entity in the mainstream of society. Nnu Ego, the female protagonist of The Joys of Motherhood, is deserted by her first husband for her inability to produce a child and her second husband, too, though she produces several children by him, objectifies her by disregarding her individual human 'self.' She exhausts herself for educating her children and ultimately dies unheard and unattended. But the traditional patriarchal paradigm defines her success and failure in terms of her children’s success and failure, and thus in general, it hinders women in general from developing their agency and transforms them into 'Other.' This qualitative research will address the research question—how does patriarchal politics work behind the process of transforming a mother into an ‘Other’? This paper will borrow the theoretical framework from the Marxist feminist theorists, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the Afro-American feminist bell hooks.