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Gender Role
Gender Role
Feministic studies have well unveiled how the question of gender discrimination
is inextricably related to prevalent power structure in the society. In the traditional
symbolic order of representation, the male genital, known as “the phallus”, has been
taken to be the principal signifier of power and authority: the index of male. This has
resulted in gender discrimination and patriarchy. In societies living in the tradition-
bound ambience, as the pre-colonial African clan life Chinua Achebe portrays in Things
Fall Apart, the gender discrimination is quite blatant. A close study of the novel
explicitly brings out the spirit of patriarchy prevalent in the society in question.
Much of the traditional Igbo life presented in this novel revolves around
structured gender roles. Essentially all of Igbo life is gendered, from the crops that men
and women grow, to characterization of crimes. In Igbo culture, women are the weaker
sex, but are also endowed with qualities that make them worthy of worship—the ability
to bear children. The dominant role for women is: first, to make a pure bride for an
honourable man, second, to be a submissive wife, and third, to bear many children. The
ideal man provides for his family materially and has prowess on the battlefield.
Okonkwo, the protagonist in the novel is extremely concerned with being hyper-
masculine and devalues everything feminine, leaving him rather unbalanced. His
development as a successful and powerful person of the clan and his fall as a man cover
all patterns of gender discrimination. His whole life is devoted towards establishing
himself as a ‘male’ figure. He feels hatred for his father as an "agbala" or an effeminate
character. Okonkwo has taken three wives to establish his masculinity. He misbehaves
and even beats his wives and children and also quarrels with his neighbours to keep up
his image of masculinity. He may be said to be obsessed with being a ‘man’.
As Adrienne Rich asserted, "every mind resides in a body”, meaning, everyone is
made of ‘male’ and ‘female’ traits, Okonkwo possesses many feminine tenets. It is in
his efforts to ignore them that he engenders his hamartia. In this society, art or works of
imagination may probably be rightfully located within the domains of the female
mystique.
Okonkwo’s efforts to shun of everything feminine lead him to commit ever-
escalating crimes that lead to his downfall. Both his murders of Ikemefuna and the
messenger of the white colonisers are provoked only by his over-eagerness to show off
his masculinity. His application of brute force in confronting the European colonisers
leads to his tragic fall and ignominious and unmanly death. The novel also explicates
the effeminacy of the Umuofians in face of the approach of hegemonic colonialism.
Things Fall Apart may also be taken as a tragedy of over-masculinity.
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