A single example of the ambiguous position of women in
Achebe's Things Fall Apart can be gleaned from the incident between
Okonkwo and his "most senior wife" in the second chapter. The incident reveals, through
one woman, how women are both venerated and
marginalized.
The Mbaino had just fulfilled the terms of
their compensation for having killed "the woman," the "wife of Ogbuefi Udo." Okonkwo had
been granted care of the compensatory boy Ikemefuna. He had "called his most senior
wife" to him to instruct her to care for Ikemefuna.
The
wife's ambiguous position is shown in that she was once venerated and chosen to be
Okonkwo's senior wife. Yet now, she is marginalized as he denounces her for speaking to
him to get clarification. In addition, since she is the "most senior wife," Oknokwo
marginalized her as a woman more pronouncedly by adding more wives to his
household.
"Do
what you are told, woman. ... When did you become one of the
ndichie of
Umuofia?"
The earlier
mentioned incident with the "wife of Ogbuefi Udo" might serve as a second example. After
her murder, she is so venerated that a war is contemplated as revenge for her. Yet she
is so marginalized that Ogbuefi Ezeugo doesn't even bother to name her--calling her only
"a daughter of Umuofia"--in his speech denouncing Mbaino and calling for a decision
against them:
"Those sons of wild animals have dared to murder
a daughter of Umuofia. ... That woman was the wife of Ogbuefi
Udo."
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