HIDDEN SPACES, SILENCED PRACTICES AND THE CONCEPT OF <I>IGBA N'RIRA</I>

Igbo male literary writers—Chinua Achebe, Onuora Nzekwu, and Cyprian Ekwensi—have been criticized for the sexism in their writings.¹ Much of this charge is based on what is seen as their patriarchal representation of Igbo culture. As if to undercut the legitimacy of these critiques, the works of Igbo male legal theorists provide support for the writers’ views. For instance, in Modern Family Law in Southern Nigeria, S. N. Chinwuba Obi asserts that the smallest sub-division of families: “consists of a man/patriarch and his wife or wives with their unmarried children and any other dependents such as wards and domestic servants” (1966, 9). The society he described in Ibo Law of Property and the range of laws he examined were fundamentally patriarchal, masculinist and male privileging.² There is no question that Obi’s description of Igbo family overlaps with Achebe’s picture of Okonkwo and his family. Okonkwo was a patriarch in the legal sense in which Obi defined it. In the words of his maternal uncle, Uchendu, he has “many wives and many children...[is] a great man in [his] clan” (134).³ He ruled his compound with a heavy hand, and roared at them ever so often. Driven by fears of his father’s failure in life, Okonkwo obsessed about being a man and was painfully sensitive to both real and imagined slights. Consequently, he was stern, inconsiderate and short-tempered. His temper, always bubbling just below the surface, left his family vulnerable to his fits of anger. Like his children, his wives endured physical beatings and, so great was their fear of him that they would not even come to the aid of each other when he was beating one of them.

In this essay, I examine the female spaces and the institutional practices in Igbo society that were hidden in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.⁴ This concealment enabled Achebe to paint a patriarchal picture of Igbo society. In the later part of the essay, I focus on the concept of igba n’rira (elopement)⁵ and on how Igbo women had used it over the ages. I argue that to take this concept seriously is to apprehend a different Igbo society, and to perceive the hidden Christian framework that was all along writing patriarchal relations onto the social landscape.

THE ISSUE OF FAMILY CHARACTER

Okonkwo’s relation with his wives raises troubling questions about why they stayed with him, and indirectly about Igbo culture. Is the culture so misogynistic that it traps women in unwholesome marriages? In the development of the character of Okonkwo, Achebe portrayed the latter’s wives as battered women who, in comparison to their husband, lacked a strong sense of self. As well they lacked the attitudinal and behavioral characteristic of females who are nurtured in cultures with community wide Women’s Councils (e.g. Inyom Umuofia) and village level women’s associations.⁶ The wives demeanor toward Okonkwo was obeisant; it conformed more to the temperament of women who had accepted the deferential values of Christianity. Although, structurally, being a wife in Igbo society meant being in a subordinate position to di (husbands, and all lineage members), this subordinate status did not entail abjection and the dissolution of the wife’s identity into the husband’s as mandated by the patriarchal rules of spousal fusion. On the Igbo reference scheme, wives neither became the legal subjects of their husbands, nor were her body his property. Wives were economic producers, and notwithstanding their marriage remained a vital part of their birth families and lineages; there was no spousal fusion.

For a culture in which women were economic producers, the all too brief appearances of Okonkwo’s wives, portrays them as inconsequential. Consider that, although Nwoye’s mother was in a leadership position, we never saw her rule the compound as Nwakibie’s first wife did (20). The third wife Ojiugo was presented as flighty and irresponsible. She went to make her hair and “thoughtlessly” forgot to both feed her children and prepare Okonkwo’s noonday meal (29). The second wife, Ekwefi, was the only one who showed some spirit, but even she was reduced to muttering her grievances rather than speaking directly to Okonkwo who had just beaten for no justifiable reason (38-39).

As part of the process of making Okonkwo a patriarch, Achebe selected marital scenes that emphasized his wives dependency. These scenes privileged the wives singular connections to Okonkwo over their consanguinal kinship affiliations and women’s group connections. This narrow focus on the wives’ lives effaced their empowering roles and amplified their submissive state. Because we never see them in any dominant role (and there is no hint that they have any), readers never learn that there were other dimensions to their lives. They have no way of knowing that some of them may have important obligations and affiliations that were far more emotionally and economically meaningful than their conjugal relationship to Okonkwo.⁷ This strategically created blackout presents the wives in a vulnerable and submissive position in their marriage. The ensuing picture of vulnerability and submissiveness comes out forcefully in their lack of vigorous resistance to Okonkwo’s beating. But when we factor in that these women were members of powerful women’s organizations that were part of the society’s administrative structure, we realize that their passive responses to his beating were inappropriate for women with solid family and institutional support. At the very least, they could have involved inyom di (lineage wives) in the matter. Their non-combative responses were inconsistent with the behavior of individuals who were primarily defined by their natal identity and their connections to multiple social groups. It is not only that these multifunctional connections nurtured assertive personalities since individuals have to resourcefully negotiate multiple interests, multiple power centers, and multiple personalities. It is more that as members of such a culture, Okonkwo’s wives had institutional bodies to call upon for support, and they would have honed their verbal and fighting skills that they would have used to defend themselves.

The existence of this high level of self-awareness and self-assertiveness, a consequence of women’s active social roles, explains why Igbo society did not develop the overarching masculine scheme required for patriarchal rule. It also explains why the passive behavior of Okonkwo’s wives did not make sense. Their response falls below the mark of what it means to be a female in regular Igbo communities. Although Igbos are famed for their individuality and resourcefulness, the sort of individuality the culture nurtured was the relational, non-atomistic kind. It is firmly anchored to family structures and the training experiences provided by negotiating the multiple power centers in these familial and social groups. No one—woman or man—is every truly alone.

Because of the prevailing social principle of relationality, umuokpu (lineage/village daughters/sisters), inyom di (lineage/village wives) and umunna (lineage members) constantly interact to shape, challenge and produce assertive individuals who embody clearly defined ethical frames of conduct.⁸ As we saw in the beating of Ojiugo, Okonkwo’s action was a public act: “neighbors heard his wife crying and sent their voices over the compound walls to ask what was the matter. Some of them came over to see for themselves.” (30). Although it took place within his compound, it was neither a private nor secret matter, but one that activates a whole range of community actions and responses. Had Achebe’s tale been sociologically accurate, Inyom Umuofia (the Women Council of Umuofia) would have demanded an official account of the beating from inyom di who, in turn, would have obtained the relevant details of the event from the victims, Ekwefi and Ojiugo. Depending on their accounts and a variety of other factors, inyom di may take up the matter with Okonkwo directly. In the clearly unprovoked beating of Ekwefi, would admonish him to desist from beating mature older women, and that any future beatings would be construed as beating inyom di. If that happens they would threaten, they would come out en mass to take him on. This is a fight that no targeted man has won.

The collective action of inyom di is designed to circumvent the vulnerability of wives to the affinal kin group. In a certain sense, inyom di is a political action group. It is a hierarchically structured administrative unit into which every wife in the village is inducted. Owing to the exogamous rules of marriage, wives were always alienated from the protective support of birth villages and natal families. A lineage/village wives’ association, therefore, provided them with protection against spouses and critically reinforced their assertiveness by mitigating their alienation. With inyom di (lineage/village wives) acting as one pressure group, a wife’s umuokpu (lineage/village sisters) constitute another effective pressure group. They weigh in defense of their sister in two ways: one, by calling on her to uphold the personal identification frame of reference of their lineage/village as well as the ethical codes of propriety befitting them. This means that she should not tolerate any beatings, but should fight back, and if necessary call on them for physical support. The second way is for some “hot head” umuokpu to show up at the aggrieved sister’s home to curse out or rough up the husband. In a communal society such as Umuofia, the responses generated from these female spaces and institutions act as checks on husbands’ and men’s excesses. But more importantly they helped to ensure that wives’ were not exploited by affinal kins.

There were other female spaces and institutions that would have intervened to check Okonkwo’s bad behavior. This intervention would have been made by his own multigenerational umuokpu (lineage/village sisters). Earlier on in his life, his umuokpu would have stepped in to modify his behavior as part of their spiritual and peacekeeping duties. His short temper notwithstanding, there is no way that they would not have interfered in Okonkwo’s business. They would have chastised him for beating Ekwefi who at 45 years old, was an older woman. They would have advised him to exercise more patience with the younger Ojiugo as well as chastise him for his ill-advised decision to participate in the killing of Ikemefuna. A great man is only as powerful as his umuokpu and his umunna (lineage siblings). Okonkwo would have learned long ago not to alienate them since they can be most unforgiving.

The pertinent point here is that, given the historical period under discussion in Things Fall Apart, it would have been very difficult for Okonkwo to live the kind of atomized life that physically separated him from his kinsmen, kinswomen and Igbo family law. In the first instance, his neighbors would be his umunna and the incredibly nosey and smart mouthed inyom di. They would concern themselves with, and get into his personal and public affairs. Contrary to Achebe’s storyline, his umuokpu, inyom di and umunna would have featured much more extensively in his life than friends. This familial community of interests would have targeted, opined on, and modified his behavioral excesses. That none of these groups including his two sisters appeared at all in the novel is an indication that Achebe’s Umuofia is not exactly a sociologically accurate Igbo community. Although the speech parlance and village activities were quintessentially Igbo, the dynamics of intersex and family relationships were captured with an externalist, male privileging lens that does not quite reflect the lineage embeddedness of individuals and the character of spousal interaction. In very suggestive ways; Achebe’s Umuofia is probably an early Christianized community of unrelated families in which friends, not relatives, were neighbors as was the case in regular village life in which Christianity had not subverted the kinship based responsibilities and social values that so implicitly characterize Igbo family.

ON FEMALE ASSERTIVENESS

By contrast to what exists in patriarchal Christianized communities, females in non-Christianized community were not raised to be subordinate or deferential to male opinion. In regular Igbo communities, wives were not accustomed to treating their spouses as sovereigns, especially since the concept of sovereignty and its corollary relation of domination was anathema to the Igbo social scheme. The following example will illustrate the sort of dynamics that existed in an Igbo conjugal unit. The influential Odu Isaac Mbanefo, who by his death in the 1990s was in his nineties and was the undisputed patriarch of the Mbanefo family of Onitsha, inadvertently confirmed in his memoir, that women of his generation were not the docile creatures Achebe made out Okonkwo’s wives to be. By his own account, his marriages were very turbulent confirming that women of the time refused to condone actions they found to be intolerable. He wrote:

Margaret M. Green’s account of Agbaja women’s life in the early 1930s corroborates Mbanefo account of assertiveness of Igbo females.¹⁰ It also accords with women’s restive attitudes during the turbulent days of the Native Authority regime (1906-1940).¹¹ Even as late as 1967 during the 1967-70 Biafran War, both senior and junior wives in diverse Igbo communities hardly stood on ceremony with their spouses. They rarely placed their husbands on pedestals; they spoke directly and squarely to them. They used invectives whenever they perceived him to have stepped out of line, and they heckled him in public to bruise his dignity.

Achebe’s failure to treat women’s lives much more seriously meant that he did not see the spaces and institutional practices that nurtured their assertiveness ideology. The sort of deferential relation he imagined between Okonkwo and his wives did not exist because power did not exclusively coalesce in men. The operative notion of power did not disempower women and did not install a principle of husband dominance. Before strangers, some Igbo wives may feign obedience and submission, and others may not. But for those who do, once the strangers are out of earshot they revert back to their normal behavior. They refuse to compliantly submit to physical punishment from spouses. Typically they spurned such treatment on the ground that marriage did not empower husbands to treat them as if they were minors who are being trained on the rules of proper behavior.

Even with husbands who are older men, the typical young wife does not accept that husbands’ seniority mandates him to discipline or beat her. Their automatic response to any attempts at disciplining is to remind him that one is not a child especially before the animal she felled (nwayi aburo nwata na any ogba tu lu). In other words, spousal intimacy (the metaphoric felling of the animal) has placed both parties on the same level as well as assigned her the right to receive respect from him. In fact, Di gba kwo oku! Let husband/marriage be consumed by flames! is a modern Igbo female expression that draws from this root to reject the idea that a wife’s life options and interests should totally revolve around a husband or marriage. To the extent that Achebe’s patriarchal scheme was secured by effacing practices, centers and spaces of female power, its account of Igbo social and marital conventions are seriously deficient.

A DIFFERENT FEMALE RESPONSE

If we relocate to the non-Christianized Igbo women’s world, we can better review the options available to a woman in a similar circumstance as Ekwefi, for example. Of all Okonkwo’s wives, she had the best reason to leave in the early years of the relationship before she buried over nine children. Her presence in Okonkwo’s home was different from the others given that she had left her first husband, Anene, for Okonkwo and he was unable to show affection (28). Even if initially she had loved Okonkwo, unrequited love does turn sour! Her continued stay, especially with no surviving child, defies imagination. It demands an explanation that Achebe did not provide. After the death of her third child she could have left by interpreting her children’s deaths as signs that the relationship was doomed. She could then justify her departure by upholding it as an act that would break the cycle of having ogbanje children. After all Ezinma’s iyi uwa was later dug up from under the orange tree in front of Okonkwo’s compound, proving that the cause of the ogbanje births lies close to Okonkwo. The issue being raised is not the philosophical one of whether or not such beliefs are justified, but rather what sets of beliefs would function as justifiable rationalization in the Igbo conceptual scheme for Ekwefi to break up with Okonkwo.

The only reason Ekwefi’s choice to stay with Okonkwo makes sense to Achebe is because of his Christian ethics and that he had set her up to be punished for leaving her first husband. The guiding Christian ethical belief that people must pay for their sins compels him to find a way to punish Ekwefi for breaking her marital vows. The subtle punishment he devices for her is one that is calculated to break her spirit and her confidence in herself by questioning the very centrality of her being: her motherhood possibilities. Of all Okonkow’s wives, he afflicts her with a monumental predicament. She sequentially buries nine out of ten children and the last child’s life is filled with moments of anxiety. For the first nine years of Ezinma’s life, Ekwefi remained in a quandary as to whether or not she will live. Without making a case for it, it seems that in Achebe’s inner mind, this demoralizing experience is a fitting punishment for a village beauty who thinks that she can trifle with the emotions and dignity of men. She has to be humbled and brought to her knees by transforming her into an embittered, dispirited barren woman. That she remains in Okonkwo’s home until finally Ezinma was born is subject to Okonkwo’s benevolence, and is a tribute to his magnanimity and mercy. The implicit lesson here is that the Igbo moral scheme coheres with the Christian moral framework, in which headstrong women must atone for their assertions of autonomy and self-actualization. In Ekwefi’s case, the penalty for displaying a spirit of independence and arrogance, is sentencing her to years of traumatic experiences. Only patiently accepting her lot, and loyally serving her husband finally made her whole.

But this moral belief to punish a wife for leaving a husband together with its framework of women subordination comes straight out from Christian moral texts and its gender-biased framework of good and bad. Achebe utilizes an inappropriate husbands-are-sovereign framework rather than the correct husbands-are-strangers one that characterizes Igbo marriages. Within the Igbo conceptual scheme, there is no sin or moral repercussion involved in leaving one’s spouse and choosing another. Igbo marriages are primarily social acts not religious acts that stipulate a spiritual cleaving of a wife to a husband. Also, since Igbo marriages do not subscribe to the rule of coverture, and marital break ups are in fact accommodated, Ekwefi cannot be punished for putative ethical breeches that are not part of her own moral universe. If we all see the world through the latter universe, as Achebe also should, we would quickly realize that Ekwefi has nothing to gain by staying with someone who finds it difficult to be endearing and who cannot even give her a surviving healthy child. Although he has children in his loins, the fact that he could not give her a surviving one until her tenth child is adequate ground for her departure.

It is true that Okonkwo is the main character that Achebe was interested in developing in the novel and so he invested all his imaginative resources on him. But the simplistic sketches he produced of the women in Okonkwo’s life became the weak spot of the story. It exposes the uncanny manner in which the Christian morality standard surreptitiously crept into the content of the story and was being upheld for, and used to measure women. Only a Christian patriarchal imagination would assume that Ekwefi would go against the grain of Igbo motherhood precepts, and obligingly stay with a man, after burying three of her children in succession, and without any surviving one to console her. At the very least, she would have returned to her natal home to review and check out things. So, the fact that Achebe assumes that Ekwefi would patiently stay and bury nine children in succession is evidence that he is ignorant about the choices that women make on matters of motherhood and the way the latter determines their actions in a marriage. Also it show that then he was on some evangelical mission to convince modern Igbo women to stay with their husband whatever they do; of course the beating is merely his way of either chastising or showing affection. No doubt, the biblical message of Ruth’s blind devotion remains a powerful model of wifely duty in the imagination of many men.

Again, it is true that Things Fall Apart is not a sociological study and therefore should not be read as such. But even if we grant Achebe his artistic license we can still ask why he went to great lengths to banish women in empowering roles from his story. Explicitly, why did he banish Inyom Umuofia (Women’s governing council), inyom di (lineage wives), and umuokpu (lineage daughters) from his novels especially since, historically they had played very important roles in Igbo communities. For one, Inyom Umuofia should have had jurisdiction of spousal abuse cases that he reassigned to the egwugwu (masked spirits). The point in bringing this up is to show the extent to which artistic license has been used to conceal an author’s masculinist bias and his reading of patriarchal relations into a society even as he provides accurate readings in other areas. It also highlights the dazzling contortionist maneuver Achebe had to make to establish Evil Forest as a marital judge over Inyom Umuofia, the institution that should have had jurisdiction over such cases.

Typically, egwugwu’s do not handle such cases as a character in the novel even pointed out. “I do not know why such a trifle should come before the egwugwu...” (94). Achebe rationalizes his substitution in ways that conceal his male bias and his own Christian sensibilities. He shifts the onus onto Uzowulu, the recalcitrant husband: “Don’t you know what kind of man Uzowulu is? He will not listen to any other decision...” (94). But in taking this tack, he actually ridicules, through misrepresention, the institution of masked spirit, which some may think he was glorifying. This is because his account treats this institution as fundamentally designed to assuage the vanities and insecurities of men. Those who are old enough to know the strident disputes, debates, and ridicules that occurred between Christian converts and Ndi ogo mmuo (those who worship spirits), will see in Achebe’s misrepresentation echoes of the Christian voices in those disputes.¹² The standard ploy of Christianized Igbos was to heap ridicule on indigenous religious practices and institution, deliberately representing them as illogical and stupid.

Thus, the length to which Achebe went to highlight men’s institutions and to appropriate women’s practices for men, reveals a complex consciousness that is out (1) to install a Christian social logic for Igbo culture; (2) to undercut the idea that Igbo women could have authority; and (3) to reaffirm that Igbo society is patriarchal. It is clear now that non-Igbo theorists who limit themselves to novels such as Achebe’s in a bid to understand the social dynamics of intersex relationship between men and women in Igboland run into deep conceptual problems.¹³

PRACTICE OF IGBA N’RIRA (ELOPEMENT)

The issue being addressed is not that there cannot be a real life person such as Okonkwo, but that even if there was, his umuokpu and inyom di (wives) would have exerted a substantial amount of influence on him that the Okonkwo Achebe portrayed must have undergone some familial modifications that he failed to admit. The upshot is that the Okonkwo we saw would have been a much more hideous character without these social modifications by lineage members. It might very well be that the large events in Okonkwo’s life may be true, but the causative factors would be different. This is the genius of Achebe. He can draw on the real, intermingle and animate it with dimensions that are not sociologically accurate and still the story is believably real. However, when we focus on the matter of glosses and areas of conceal and silenced practices, we sometimes find these practices jutting out in places and intruding into the story. Consider that even as Achebe was painting in broad patriarchal strokes, he inadvertently mentioned practices that affirmed women and that were inconsistent with the patriarchal picture he was painting, but he did not elaborate. Consider this illustration:

This event is retold again at the end of the chapter in which Chielo, the Agbala priestess, had taken Ezinma to the cave.

Many have read these passages and probably thought nothing of them. Achebe barely missed a beat in the telling of the story. On the two occasions it was told, he matter-of-factly used it to integrate Ekwefi into Okonkwo’s family as if there was nothing unusual in their union. But we know that there is a big difference in this marriage and the conventional ones if we compare their union with Achebe’s description of Akueke’s (Obierika’s daughter) marriage. The elaborate ritual that constituted the engagement and eventual marriage gives us an idea of the seriousness in which marriage was taken. Relatives, friends and neighbors were present in this union of two families. Given the elaborate process and character of the marriage ceremonies, the question one cannot help but ask is why did Achebe not think that it is important to fill us in on how a married woman could easily leave her husband and move in with another man? How could this have occurred in a dominantly patriarchal society without community uproar?

For late twentieth century readers’ schooled in the importance of love and romance, many would have been too distracted by the idea of “bride price” to ask this and other important questions. These would be, Is the idea and practice of husband desertion common in the society? If yes, what do they say about wives and a wife’s rights in the society? If Achebe and Obi’s putative claim that Igbo family is patriarchal is true, how did igba n’rira become part of the fabric of the society? What did the deserted husband Anene and his family do to seek redress for this marital “transgression”?

In standard patriarchal societies, wives do not just get up and walk out of marriages. Not only would this be perceived as a flagrant challenge of men’s rights, permitting it to happen would narrow the range of men’s marital rights and the unlimited power required to be a patriarch. A patriarchal community would not accept such institutional disruptions for what would subsequently destabilize the polity. Thus, if Igbo culture allowed practices such as igba n’rira, that should tell us that we are not dealing with a patriarchal society. That women could successfully build into the society, practices and conventions that were amenable to their welfare is an indication that we should be wary of only accepting African men’s interpretation of themselves and their position in societies.

CONCEPT OF IGBA N’RIRA

Being a brute is not exactly a cherished trait in Igbo marriage as Uzowulu’s in-laws and Evil Forest made clear to him (90-94). However, a husband does not have to be a brute for a wife to decide that she no longer wants to be his wife. Wives could then decide to end their marriages without social stigma, a situation that is impossible in truly patriarchal contexts. As Ekwefi’s case demonstrated, wives who leave one husband could either move in with another man, or return to their natal home. Should the latter option be chosen, the returnee is accommodated in the family compound, where she continues with her trading activities, and may or may not enter into a relationship with another man that may or may not lead to marriage.

The path to ending a marriage may begin with them entering into clandestine relationship with a paramour, and subsequently “eloping” to his house. The paramour’s family and lineage would receive the “elopee” (the woman) with fanfare. Cannons would be fired if the personalities involved were sufficiently prominent and affluent. This elopement has social ramifications. First, it tells both women and men that marriage is not necessarily a permanent enduring state in which a man has exclusive rights over a wife. Secondly, it alerts them too that married women are never removed from the pool of eligible prospective brides, which reinforces their attractiveness and eligibility. Thirdly, this state of affairs ensures that the favors of married women are available for solicitation; fourthly, husbands know they have to be more accommodating if they want to minimize the risk of a wife’s unanticipated departure; and fifthly, marriages survived because both parties choose to commit to being together.

The concept of igba n’rira is one of the most unemphasized social practices in Igbo culture in the novels of both male and female writers. It is hardly mentioned even in the context of extensive discussions on polygamy and the options it gave to men in their relationship with women. In the process of their storytelling, writers systematically neglected to discuss igba n’rira and the options it gave to women who may or may not be in a polygamous marriage. Yet, igba n’rira was an escape hatch, a practice that mitigated the restrictive elements of polygamy. Unlike some polygynous societies where wives were locked up in seclusion, or where their access to the polity was curtailed, the Igbo variant did not provide for the locking up of wives who may decide of their own accord to end the marriage.

In an interesting way, igba n’rira forestalled the formation of patriarchal relations. Central to it is the concept of oyi (friend) which connotes a process of iyi oyi (having a friend/lover). A woman chooses a mature, fairly prosperous lover to whose home she would relocate. She enters into this clandestine relationship for a number of reasons. When the time is right she spirits off to her lover who sends back the returnable portion of her bride wealth to the former husband. Contrary to male writers claims, igba n’rira shows that marriage does not give a man ownership of a woman as his wife. She still owns her sexuality and exercises it the way she wants. The existence of the practice works to the advantage of wives and impressed upon men that they could not take it for granted that their wives will stay at any cost. For example, a year into the marriage if the wife is not expecting a child, she is recalled by her natal family to take some medications and to try out with other men. Because of the importance of motherhood, extramarital relationships were allowed and did not necessarily result in the end of a marriage. Although igba n’rira happened much more frequently before the woman had children, there have been cases of women who had left even after having children. Other strategies that wives had for dealing with non-compliant men was to step up their visits to their natal home. By this means, they effectively built in periods of absences into their marriage; or they may urge him to marry another wife to create a buffer between him and them. ¹⁴

Permanency in marriage is not something that only wives are worried about. Wives did not fret that their husbands will marry another wife. They expected them to if have the resources and means to do so. Sometimes, they were the ones who insisted that the husband marry another wife. By contrast, the practice of igba n’rira left husbands in a very vulnerable position. For while he has to officially notify his wife/wives of his intention to marry another wife and secure her/their approval, she does not have to notify him of her impending departure. For this reason, the onus is on him to tread more softly because he never really knew her/their mind and what she/they may be planning. Wives usually gave a variety of reasons for separating from a current husband, including, the desire for a child, his inability to sire one, lack of sexual gratification, incompatibility, beating, not an industrious man, not affectionate, not assertive, and lack of the desired social profile. Moreover, husbands knew that if their wives are personable, they would have a stream of admirers and may be wooed by some of the prosperous men in the community offering them more than the husband’s have. To circumvent this possibility husbands would play up their personal advantages as good husbands, declaring that they are very reasonable, cooperative, and affectionate men. In short, a better partner than the opposition.

Relationally the concept and practice of igba n’rira created more reasonable husbands who knew that nothing was to be gained by being boorish. Rather, there was a lot to be gained by being a good husband since no law or code existed that would make a woman his property. Because people tended to be much more responsive when treated with decency and respect, husbands who did that had a higher chance of retaining their wives. In more ways than one, igba n’rira contributed to the creation of the convention in which husbands dispensed with behaviors that were potentially injurious to their marriage. It tells us a lot about the flexibility in Igbo society, its marriage institution, its rules of marital separation, and the choices that were available to women should their marriage prove unbearable. While polygamy made it possible for a man to marry more than one wife, igba n’rira made it possible for women to have extramarital relations and to change their marital conditions and avoid being trapped in an unhappy situation.

One may argue that not many wives engaged in this practice of elopement. But that is hardly the point. It is not necessary for many women to have taken advantage of the practice for it to be socially significant. Its very existence is all that counts. It is important that a practice like this existed given its actual and potential impact on people’s consciousness and the institution of marriage. The late twentieth century subordination of Igbo women is a recent phenomenon that owes its cause to the growing Christian evangelism that is sweeping the continent. This is leading to the final erosion of remaining female friendly spaces and practices. Igba n’rira and all other practices and institutional spaces that, historically, had given women a measure of social autonomy have been relentlessly attacked by Christian fundamentalists as unacceptable spaces and practices. They are even compelling total subjugation to husbands, and it is distressing to see Igbo wives comply willingly and happily. The closure of these spaces and the attendant diminution of the worth of women have relationally inflated the powers and importance of men. The resultant and growing lack of appreciation for women today has led to the corrosion of the spirit of female assertiveness that historically marked Igbo women. In these new Pentecostal religious congregations, wives are required to treat their husbands as masters and sovereigns, and to privilege above all their singular connections to them. In insisting on spousal unity, Christian marital values have promoted conjugal domination of wives since it is women who are expected to give up their identity for the man.

References

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. (New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1994).

Amadiume, Ifi. Reinventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion, Culture (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1997).

Davies, Carole Boyce. “Motherhood in the Works of Male and Female Igbo Writers: Achebe, Emecheta, Nwapa and Nzekwu,” Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Eds. Carole Boyce Davies & Anne Adams Graves (Trenton: Africa World Press, inc., 1986), 241-256.

Fido, Elaine Savory. “Okigbo’s Labyrinths and the Context of Igbo Attitudes to the Female Principle” In Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Eds. Carole Boyce Davies & Anne Adams Graves (Trenton: Africa World Press, inc., 1986), 223-239.

Green, Margaret M. Igbo Village Affairs, (London, Frank Cass and Co Ltd., 1964).

Mba, Nina Emma, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activities in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965, (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1982).

Mbanefo, Isaac Anieka. Isaac Anieka Mbanefo: A Friend of the Gods: An Autobiography (Onitsha: Etukokwu Publishers, 1990).

Nzegwu, Nkiru. “Chasing Shadows: The Misplaced Search for Matriarchy,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 32, no. 3 (Fall 1998), 594-622. Republished in West Africa Review, vol. 2, no. 1 (August 2000).

---------. “Philosophers’ Intellectual Responsibility to African Females” American Philosophical Association’s (APA) Newsletter, 90, no.1 (1996): 130-135.

Nussbaum, Martha. “Emotions and Women’s Capabilities,” Women, Culture Development, eds. Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 360-395.

Obi, Samuel Nwankwo Chinwuba. Modern family law in Southern Nigeria (London, Sweet & Maxwell; Lagos, African Universities, p., 1966).

Ogunidpe-Leslie, Molara. Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women & Critical Transformations (Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc., 1994).

Okoro, Nwkamma The Customary Laws of Succession in Eastern Nigeria (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1966).

Nzegwu, Nkiru (2002). HIDDEN SPACES, SILENCED PRACTICES AND THE CONCEPT OF IGBA N'RIRA . West Africa Reivew: 3, 2


	See Carole Boyce Davies, “Motherhood in the Works of Male and Female Igbo Writers: Achebe, Emecheta, Nwapa and Nzekwu,” Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Eds. Carole Boyce Davies & Anne Adams Graves (Trenton: Africa World Press, inc., 1986), 241-256. Molara Ogunidpe-Leslie, comments are much more general but she does make mention Ekwensi in on of her chapters in Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women & Critical Transformations (Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc., 1994), 49.


	I have extensively critiqued the works of legal theorists S. N. Chinwuba and Nwakanma Okoro in a recently completed chapter of a manuscript that examines the effectiveness of feminist concepts in African philosophy of culture. The chapter examines how colonial laws were used to legalize patriarchy. See Obi, Samuel Nwankwo Chinwuba. Modern family law in Southern Nigeria (London, Sweet & Maxwell; Lagos, African Universities, p., 1966); Obi, S. N. Chinwuba. The Ibo Law of Property (London: Butterworths, 1963); and Nwkamma Okoro The Customary Laws of Succession in Eastern Nigeria (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1966).


	I have written elsewhere about the psychological portrayal of the character of Okonkwo. As well, I have also argued that we cannot discount the influence of Christianity on Achebe’s conceptualization of social institutions and practices. See Nkiru Nzegwu. “Philosophers’ Intellectual Responsibility to African Females” American Philosophical Association’s (APA) Newsletter, 90, no.1 (1996): 130-135.


	It is quite possible that other Igbo communities have other terms for this practice of elopement. Even in Onitsha where this terminology was used, new ways of describing the process is now in use and “igba n’rira” has gradually fallen out of use. Today, the process is simply described as “leaving the husband.”


	Some writers who have written of the role of Igbo culture in producing assertive Igbo females: Nkiru Nzegwu, “Chasing Shadows: The Misplaced Search for Matriarchy,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 32, no. 3 (Fall 1998), 594-622. Republished in West Africa Review, vol. 2, no. 1 (August 2000); Ifi Amadiume, Reinventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion, Culture (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1997); Elaine Savory Fido, “Okigbo’s Labyrinths and the Context of Igbo Attitudes to the Female Principle” In Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Eds. Carole Boyce Davies & Anne Adams Graves (Trenton: Africa World Press, inc., 1986), 223-239.


	Some find that being associated or identified with a particular family was more important than the conjugal relation they had with their mate.


	Mba, Nina Emma, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activities in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965, (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1982).


	We must not forget Achebe’s background. His father was not just a teacher in a missionary school, he was a devout evangelical protestant. This means that in his early days, Achebe was caught in the strict divide between Christians and those whom they called “heathens.”


	An example is American white female philosopher Martha Nussbaum who is convinced that women all over the world are similarly subjugated by men. This misreading allows her to assert unequivocally: “So for fear of ‘female’ emotions and its weakness, Okonkwo kills his foster son lkemefuna, whom he loves. So, for loathing of his love and the ‘womanish’ passivity into which it casts him, shaming him before others, he kills a piece of his own upbringing and his own character” (1995, 360). This view, familiar in Western and non-Western traditions alike, has for thousands of years been used in various ways to exclude women from full membership in the human community” (emphasis m ine; 1995, 360). Nussbaum, Martha. “Emotions and Women’s Capabilities,” Women, Culture Development, eds. Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 360-395.

West Africa Reivew (2002)

ISSN: 1525-4488

HIDDEN SPACES, SILENCED PRACTICES AND THE CONCEPT OF IGBA N'RIRA

THE ISSUE OF FAMILY CHARACTER

ON FEMALE ASSERTIVENESS

A DIFFERENT FEMALE RESPONSE

PRACTICE OF IGBA N’RIRA (ELOPEMENT)

CONCEPT OF IGBA N’RIRA

References


	Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart. (New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1994).


	Unless otherwise stated, the Igbo terminologies in this essay follow the Igbo dialect of Achebe rather than the author.


	Isaac Anieka Mbanefo, Isaac Anieka Mbanefo: A Friend of the Gods: An Autobiography (Onitsha: Etukokwu Publishers, 1990).


	Margaret M. Green, Igbo Village Affairs, (London, Frank Cass and Co Ltd., 1964).


	Only captive wives and slave women would stay and endure a man’s brutish behavior because they had nowhere to go.