Fractured Selves and Fragmented Realities: Trauma, Repression and Modes of Healing in Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe
Abstract
In South Africa, there has long been a difficulty in addressing trauma, particularly in a manner which ac-counts for both western and traditional forms of healing. This article examines Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe, an engaging narrative which has not received a wealth of academic criticism, and explores the lasting effects of childhood trauma. Drawing on the findings of Melanie Klein’s childhood studies as a means to interpret protagonist Faith’s behaviour, which occasionally borders on the schizophrenic, I attempt to provide a viable paradigm for delineating traditional African healing within western clinical terminology. In understanding the role that traditional healers play in South Africa, I draw on Gavin Ivey and Tertia Myers’s study, “The Psychology of Bewitchment”. In their study, Ivey and Myers make extensive use of the Kleinian psychoanalytical model to interpret a more traditional African belief and integrate its manifestations within a western therapeutic understanding. Although the two models appear to be divergent, the integration of two different schools of thought that nevertheless reveal an epistemological congruity in treating ideas as things allows psychotherapists to manage a broad spectrum of patients.
Key words: trauma, narrative, traditional healing, repression
Fantasy and the dialectic of memory and forgetting
Gem Squash Tokoloshe (GST), says Rachel Zadok, is “a book about belief, and how a child’s parents, her society and her schooling all mould her reality and the way she views her world” (quoted in Russouw 3). Seven-year-old Faith’s major belief structure centres on the fairies that her mother, Bella, insists are real. “They lived on the peripheries of my vision,” Faith tells the reader, “well hidden from my curious eyes, but I knew they were there. Mother was forever warning me about the dangers of bad fairies” (GST 7). Understanding the imaginative construction of these fairies, the role they play in both Bella and Faith’s lives, and the results of this psychic experience on the developing child requires careful analytic work. Drawing on the theoretical work of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein proves illuminating in analysing the fantasy construct of the fairies and the manner in which mother and daughter use the fairies as a receptacle for traumatic experiences, while a general engagement with trauma theory aids in better understanding Faith’s character as well as the novel’s narrative structure. I conclude with speculation on the similarities between Klein’s clinical approach to trauma, one which is based the western Cartesian split of body and mind as separate, and the holistic practices in traditional African medicine, which treats body and mind as a single entity.
The first half of the novel, set in 1985, is told in first-person past tense, while the second half follows after a fifteen year gap, and is told in first-person present tense. The implication of this is that the first part of the novel is told chronologically with minimal retrospective comment, while the latter half is rooted in the world of the now grown-up Faith as she attempts to process her childhood memories, still haunted by the events of one particular night, a night of which she has no memory. Growing up, the young Faith witnesses the disintegration of her parent’s marriage. One morning, Faith finds that her father left during the night. Bella spirals into a state of depression, seemingly disappearing into the imaginary world of the fairies. Slowly, Faith’s once happy life on the farm begins to disintegrate. Bella’s instability as a mother has already been intimated earlier in the text when Faith comments that: “Some days a strangeness would take hold of her, and she would disappear into the orchard for hours, leaving me alone on the farm” (GST 8). Slowly, Bella becomes more and more distant from her daughter, forgetting to feed or care for herself and Faith. Bella’s depression reaches the point where Faith comments: “It was like Mother had gone to bed the night Papa left and never properly woken up” (GST 61)
Already feeling alienated from her mother, Faith is shocked when, on her seventh birthday, Bella abandons her at the Roadhouse. Fortunately, Marius, who appears to have remarried and is dining with his new wife, stumbles upon his daughter for the first time in months. Marius takes Faith home, only to find Bella wielding a gun. Marius is furious when she fires a shot into the dark, nearly killing Faith. Their fight escalates to the point where Bella hits Marius with a spanner, and he retaliate by punching her in the face, and then leaves once more. Unknown to them, Faith is observing their altercation. Naturally, Faith finds this event deeply unsettling and, for a moment, believes that her mother may be dead: “Mother’s broken face bobbed between the dots and I slid downwards. Everything went black. I struggled to breathe; it felt like there was a heavy weight on my chest” (GST 53).
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During this time, a neighbour hires Nomsa to help Bella with the housework on the farm, and Nomsa soon becomes a maternal figure to Faith. One night, Nomsa is murdered, but the details appear to be completely absent from Faith’s consciousness. This traumatic event is not only shown to be central to Faith’s loss of worldly attachment, but also mirrored, structurally, by Zadok’s text. Faith blacks out, briefly apprehends that something has happened to Nomsa, and then the gap in chronological continuity is indicated by the narrative leaping forward fifteen years, creating a gap in the epistemological continuity. When the second part of the novel picks up, Faith has been living with family friends, Molly and Mia. The reader has to piece together that Bella was incarcerated for Nomsa’s murder and has recently died.
This peculiar gap in temporality can be more fully understood with reference to Anne Whitehead’s discussion of the intersection of trauma and fiction. Whitehead suggests that “[n]ovelists have frequently found that the impact of trauma can only adequately be represented by mimicking its forms and symptoms, so that temporality and chronology collapse, and narratives are characterised by repetition and indirection” (3). This resonates with Cathy Caruth’s assertion that trauma “is a break in the mind’s experience of time” (61). What characterises trauma, she suggests, is the manner of its belatedness, how it is only truly experienced after the fact. In respect of Faith, this is evident in the inaccessibility of those traumatic memories. Faith is “plagued by violent nightmares, nightmares that left [her] feeling terrified yet unable to re-member anything about them” (GST 181). Despite Nomsa’s death being one of the defining moments of her life, Faith finds that she is unable to recall anything at all about that event.
Framing the two parts of the novel are a prologue, “The Soul Stealer”, and an epilogue, “The Baby Snatch-er”. These two extracts are written in a broken language, supposedly spoken by Dead Rex, whom Faith calls “the worst of them” (GST 10), referring to the fairies. The three pages of prologue essentially reveal the traumatic event which remains missing from Faith’s conscious memory, while the epilogue stands to inform the reader of Faith’s role in Nomsa’s death.
The prologue establishes that an evil presence is woken by “a hunger in his guts” (GST 1). The presence then actively shapes events, by calling out for Faith, whom he calls “mosetsana”, because “she be still pure, blank canvas, torment not yet painted on her soul” (GST 2), and leading her to the scene of a horrific event. Dead Rex revels in the reaction, as he “feel mosetsana panic, feel mosetsana pain, feel fear, feel confusion. Her soul scream what her body hold frozen” (ibid). The culmination of the prologue is Dead Rex, in a bid to cause further pain, telling the young girl: “He be hurting her … Hurt him back” (ibid). In the epilogue, we are told that, after leading Faith to Nomsa’s room, Dead Rex is able to “Taste the burnt sulphur of gun-powder on her hand. Taste the fear in her heart and the scream of her soul when she realize that it be not easy to shoot straight. Guns have life all of their own” (GST 328).
What the reader finally learns is that, on the night of Nomsa’s death, she was raped by Bella’s prospective suitor, Oom Piet, before being shot by Faith, who we imagine must have been aiming for Piet. Bella, realising that her daughter pulled the trigger, allows herself to be arrested for the murder.
Traumatic rupture of the self
In his clinical studies, Bessel van der Kolk explored the implication that separation anxiety can have on a young child. Psychological trauma, he suggests, originates from the subject’s fear that there is neither order nor a form of continuity in his or her life (31). Van der Kolk further elucidates this by saying that trauma oc-curs primarily when an individual feels that he or she is unable to process memories or experiences, which leaves him or her feeling that their actions are meaningless (ibid). This is seen in the manner that Faith slow-ly begins to lose her sense of continuity. One loss after another finally results in Faith losing not only her childhood, but also her ability to feel safe or secure. The adult Faith is plagued by nightmares of these re-pressed memories, and asserts that her inability to remember what happened that night is more frightening than the truth. Her inability to remember her past has deeply compromised her ability to conceive of a future. Immobilised by trauma, Faith frequently asserts that she is a spectator to her own life, making it impossible to embody her own existence or selfhood.
Mieke Bal defines selfhood as “relational, based in language and culture, and dependent on others for its constitution and sustenance” (Editor’s note xii). The self, then, is contingent on relationships with others. What begins as a biological function, attachment to a maternal or paternal figure, becomes crucial to how children navigate their experiences in the world, and establish not only a sense of self, but also a sense of how their community is structured. Faith’s sense of self is constantly reconstituted in relation to her parents or caregivers. According to Van der Kolk, losing a sense of parental security can be incredibly psychologically damaging, and should a parent become a source of danger, this will have a lasting effect on a child (32).
This understanding of the child’s selfhood as relational is fundamental to Melanie Klein’s theories of infant ego development. Explicating Klein, Julia Segal explains that the child views his or her “mother and the other people around him through ‘fantasies’ which [are] constructed from external reality modified by his own feelings and existing beliefs and knowledge” (28), and maintains that “children relate to the whole world through their unconscious fantasies. Nothing is seen simply as it is: some kind of unconscious fantasy is attached to every perception: structuring, colouring and adding significance to it” (29). The actual behaviour of the parents then reinforces or disrupts these fantasies. Van der Kolk’s argument is supported, then, by Klein’s view that a parent’s behaviour will have long-term effects on their child.
Within the novel, these long-term effects are visible in Zadok’s protagonist, who is deeply disturbed by the events of her childhood. Clearly, witnessing spousal violence, experiencing abandonment by her father, and then watching her mother’s psychological breakdown, result in Faith seeing her parents as dangerous, something which deeply fractures her ability to relate to other people as well as to herself. She says: “What I knew of bad things in life, I knew from [my mother]. All the stories she’d ever told me about the bad things … she now seemed capable of herself” (GST 98).
The fairy-sick mother and the child of the fairies
With no knowledge of her father’s whereabouts, and Bella having retreated into her bedroom, an opening is created for Faith to establish a relationship with a new caregiver. In such situations, where the primary caregiver is rendered invalid by illness or other factors, a child’s need for psychological security increases exponentially (Van der Kolk 32). For Faith, being separated from her mother leads to feelings of severe isolation and discontinuity. It is at this point that Nomsa enters the narrative. With these rapid changes and disappearances in her life, it is Nomsa who, in Faith’s eyes, becomes “the only solid thing in the world” (GST 109). Fearing her mother’s “illness”, Faith turns to Nomsa as the only person able to provide the stability and safety that childhood should include, the type of nurturing which Bella has been increasingly unable to provide.
On their first meeting, Nomsa already shakes one of the foundations upon which Faith has based her reali-ty: the fairies. Faith is shocked when Nomsa laughs at Bella’s malevolent creations. Instead, Nomsa offers a trade: “I also know of someone special who brings rain. If you tell me about your fairy I will tell you about my queen” (GST 74). Nomsa, therefore, provides Faith with an alternative belief structure and way viewing the world. Not only is she capable of providing the nurturing that Faith is lacking, but her cultural myths also appear less menacing. Moreover, the myths Nomsa is willing to impart are not based on secrecy and deception like Bella’s fairies. Rather, Nomsa offers to tell Faith stories about whomever it is that brings the rain, implying a figure who is imbued with the values of renewal, growth and nurturance. Bella, naturally, feels threatened by Nomsa’s appearance, telling Faith: “That woman doesn’t belong here … She’ll make the fairies leave … I don’t want us to be alone, Faith” (GST 75-6). As Faith grows more attached to Nomsa, Bella retreats into herself. Eventually, Faith declares: “I decided that I would no longer love Moth-er. I would never again care what happened to her” (GST 103).
At this stage in the narrative, however, Faith’s understanding of the world does not allow for anyone else’s trauma to be explained. She will only begin to comprehend what life was like for her mother when she re-turns to the farm, fifteen years later. Only as an adult, and in a bid to understand what happened to her as a child, will Faith be able to relate to her mother and what she must have gone through. Caruth’s comment on the shared nature of trauma seems apt here:
not as the story of the individual in relation to the events of his own past, but as the story of the way in which one’s trauma is tied up with the trauma of another, the way in which one’s trauma may lead, therefore, to the encounter with another, through the very possibility and surprise of listening to another’s wound. (8)
At this stage in the narrative, however, Faith’s understanding of the world does not allow for anyone else’s trauma to be explained. She will only begin to comprehend what life was like for her mother when she re-turns to the farm, fifteen years later. Only as an adult, and in a bid to understand what happened to her as a child, will Faith be able to relate to her mother and what she must have gone through. Caruth’s comment on the shared nature of trauma seems apt here:
not as the story of the individual in relation to the events of his own past, but as the story of the way in which one’s trauma is tied up with the trauma of another, the way in which one’s trauma may lead, therefore, to the encounter with another, through the very possibility and surprise of listening to another’s wound. (8)
Although the causes of Bella’s psychological breakdown are not fully explored in the first half of the novel, her belief in the fairies can be read as an initial attempt to voice her inner turmoil. In an article entitled “Young People’s Mental Health: The Spiritual Power of Fairy Stories, Myths and Legends”, Steven Walker argues that, within western mythology, fairies typically have healing abilities and act as medium of communication between humans and the natural world (83). Walker posits that “mental health practitioners can utilise such powerful narratives therapeutically and in a culturally respectful and spiritually innovative way” (81). While his article focuses on the uses of fairy tales in therapy with adolescents, it is not entirely implausible that Bella’s paintings and stories are an attempt to exorcise her own personal demons and to re-establish some sort of control over her life. One may argue, then, that Bella’s use of the fairy world is her means of establishing her own narrative of a life fraught with difficulty. Faith, however, becomes convinced that Dead Rex has stolen her mother’s soul, and she begins to refer to Bella as “the fairy-sick Mother” (GST 127). Steven Krugman argues that in such situations, a vulnerable child protects itself “by splitting the image of the abusive parent into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parts” (134).
This process of splitting is typical of Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position, during which the infant learns to distinguish between love and cruelty. Segal explains:
Splitting is an action undertaken in phantasy which can be used to separate things which belong together. A father or a mother, for example, can be seen in two distinct ways: as, on the one hand, a weak, kind loving person and, on the other, as powerful, undermining and dangerous, each view ‘cut out’ from a more whole one. The two perceptions may never be recognised as relating to the same person. (34)
Within the novel, this phenomenon is clearly evident when Faith begins to see her mother as two distinct beings, the “fairy-sick mother” and the mother with the capacity to love. There is, however, a danger when splitting occurs. Segal explains: “When one set of perceptions and fantasies is kept apart from another, the child (or adult) splits not only the object but also him or herself” (34). At times, splitting is quite visible in Faith, both in her vacillating feelings toward her mother, and later through her identification with the fairies. The fairies, however, complicate the relationship between Bella and Faith. At one point, Bella says to her daughter: “I see them, Faith, the other world, the real one. It’s perfect there, no one will bother us … I be-long there, Faith, you belong there, with me, with us” (GST 100). At the height of her psychological break-down, the fairies become entirely real to Bella, with their world seeming more real than her current existence. This is further compounded by Bella suggesting that Marius has not really abandoned his family, but is actually waiting for Bella and Faith to leave the farm, and join him in the fairy world. Faith, on the other hand, finds this idea terrifying and believes her mother is transforming:
The way her eyes sank into their sockets yet glowed a brighter blue than they’d ever been. The way she walked, the strange shuffle like she never lifted her feet suddenly erupting into what seemed like flight … Mother was becoming one of them, crossing over into the realm of the fairies. Hadn’t she said they were coming to get us? (GST 98-9)
Initially, Bella’s paintings of the fairies may have been her own lifelong attempt to cast out her own psycho-logical problems and give herself a sense of agency. However, as Walker notes, fairies “can also, when used as metaphor, frighten children and potentially cause psychological harm” (83). This can be seen in Bella’s increasing inability to function, leading Faith to believe that fairies are “closing in on the house, surrounding us until there was no escape” (GST 79). The more unstable Bella becomes, the more Faith fears her mother and, as a consequence, the fairies become even more menacing.
When Faith begins to believe that the fairies are making Bella ill, she unconsciously splits negative experiences and projects them onto the fairies, bringing her own fears to life. Commenting on Klein’s work, Segal provides insight on such projections:
Klein thought that the importance of parents’ actual behaviour lay in the way it was taken by the child as confirmation or disproof of existing fantasies. Parents added new elements to the children’s phantasy worlds but generally these tended to reduce the terrifying aspect of the child’s phantasies: however well or badly the parents behaved, reality was less monstrous than the child’s phantasies. (29)
This argument would suggest that Faith uses the fairies to establish a fantasy in which they are responsible for Bella’s illness. The reasoning for this is most likely two-fold. Firstly, the fantasy allows Faith to avoid the role that the abusive marriage has played in Bella’s depression, and secondly, Faith is able to blame a third party for the neglect she experiences at the hands of her mother.
Thirdly, the nightmarish quality of Faith’s fantasies is more monstrous than reality, allowing Faith moments of respite in which she sees Bella as her mother once more.
Bella’s descent into madness terrifies Faith for two reasons. Firstly, with her father’s physical absence and her mother’s psychical absence, Faith’s ability to discern an identity based on parental figures is entirely dismantled, and she loses what self-knowledge and ability she has to navigate the world. Secondly, Faith fears becoming like her mother. While the accidental shooting of Nomsa is the central traumatic event of the novel, the inability to recognise Bella as the woman Faith once knew as her mother is itself traumatic. Even after Bella is incarcerated, Faith still believes in the fairies and starts telling Molly the stories about the fairies, embellishing the stories that Bella once told her. It is apparent here that the fairies are not only Bella’s creation. In fact, similar to the transmission of trauma, it would appear that tales of the fairies can also be passed on. Simply put, Faith’s wholehearted beliefs become her reality.
Reading Faith’s relationship with the fairies through a Kleinian lens, one could argue that Faith has established a mode of projective identification with the fairies. Michael Feldman explains “projective identification” as a process whereby the infant projects (primarily) harmful contents onto his object (for example, into his mother) … In so far as the mother then comes to contain the bad parts of the self, she is not only felt to be bad, as a separate individual, but is identified with the bad, unwanted parts of the self. (75)
While the mother is usually the target of this process, in this case Faith has extended the projective identification to include the fairies. Having posited the fairies as evil, Faith is deeply disturbed when her mother tells her: “you’re a child of the fairies … I think the day I conceived, the fairies came and put you inside me. I used to wonder about that; your father wasn’t even there, I think” (GST 129). Confusing her daughter’s sense of belonging is enough to evoke a physical reaction, which is why Faith’s response is again somatic: “I ran outside and threw up” (ibid). Hearing this from Bella also deeply disturbs Faith’s sense of self. Removing Marius entirely as a paternal figure fragments Faith’s identity, as if effectively rewriting her history.
Not willing to believe her mother about the manner of her conception, Faith begins to examine her face in a compact mirror and to compare it to Bella’s painting of Dead Rex. She comments that “there was some-thing about the way he looked at me, something in the expression, that seemed to me to be the same eye looking out from the compact” (GST 132-3). This initial physical similarity begins to rupture Faith’s sense of self, and she searches the painting for more comparisons:
There was a knob that stuck out on my wrist – everyone had it, I knew, but mine had al-ways protruded more than other people’s … I held my hand up and looked at his hand … There, in the painting, were the same long fingers, the same knuckles, the same knobbly wristbone. Even the tiny freckle between the knuckle on my little finger and my ring finger was mimicked on his hand, on the hand of the most terrible fairy. I backed away slowly, not willing to believe what my eyes were telling me. My whole life was a lie. I wasn’t even a person like other people were. I was something else, a Halfling, a change-ling. I knew from the fairy stories Mother read to me that people hated Halflings, left them in the woods to die. That was probably why Papa had left, because he knew and he hated me. (GST 133. My emphasis)
Although Bella has created these paintings, and based a certain likeness of them on her daughter, it is Faith’s own process of splitting and projective identification that leads to the epistemological confusion. Despite having previously projected unwanted evils onto the fairies, Faith begins to struggle with separating the image she sees in the mirror from the painting of Dead Rex. Her fears of her father leaving are rein-forced by the conviction that she must be a “Halfling”, or something vile and unnatural, some kind of ruptured, half thing. It would then appear logical that Faith’s first experiences of splitting arise from feeling in her body, and that this is a result of her wish to purge the undesirable from herself.
The primary danger of splitting lies in the fact that, through the process of splitting off and then projecting the part of one’s self that the subject finds unbearable, the subject ultimately diminishes his or her own abilities and creates an object which is unbearable (Caper 139). In due course, the object becomes a receptacle for the purgation of these unbearable elements, but this is to the detriment of the individual’s future, as this ultimately leads to a severe state of repression and an inability to face the world. Slowly, it becomes apparent that the fairies could represent those parts of herself that Faith finds unbearable. The fairies begin to house the qualities that Faith most mistrust in herself, and she soon finds them an easy target of blame. When she thinks she may be accused of eavesdropping, Faith says: “I could blame one of the fairies” (GST 64), and later, after hurling a compact mirror at the painting of Dead Rex and having it ricochet and hit her on the head, she comments: “I blamed him anyway, feeling sure he had somehow been responsible for making the compact bounce” (GST 136).
The ease with which Faith places blame upon the fairies changes the manner in which we read the prologue. Only towards the end of the novel does Faith begin to remember the night of Nomsa’s death. The prologue, however, is told from Dead Rex’s perspective. Dead Rex, we are told, rouses Faith and leads her to Nomsa’s room, commanding her: “He be hurting her … Hurt him back” (GST 3). The implication of this is somewhat distressing
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Dead Rex, in a bid to cause more pain, has brought Faith to the site of Nomsa’s rape, and he is the one who wills her to fire the gun. Faith’s belief in the fairies is worrying here, because she is not the one to blame if Dead Rex tricked her into shooting Nomsa. Disassociating her actions from herself and projecting them on-to Dead Rex appears to grant her an easy form of absolution in an unconscious attempt to escape trauma and guilt.
Repression, spirit possession and a return to the farm
Faith’s repression, then, seems to shield her from memories that she cannot face. The fifteen years of her life that Faith spends in Johannesburg are mostly devoid of any form of meaningful existence, until she hears news of Bella’s death, and the memories and nightmares come flooding back. Despite her repeated vows to despise her mother, Faith is still shocked to hear of her death, re-experiencing the loss of her moth-er as she did when she was a child. Faith comments that “the dreams are like ghosts, tantalizing images that slip away before I have time to fully grasp them … Perhaps Mother’s causing them from the grave, unwilling to be forgotten and left to rot. The thoughts chill me” (GST 187).
Shortly after Bella’s death, Faith encounters Elizabeth Mabutu, a self-proclaimed herbalist and healer, who offers to pray for her. Their meeting is a chance encounter on the street, but the older woman instantly makes Faith wary by telling her: “there is bad inside you … bad things have happened and need to come out” (GST 191). Unlike when she was a child, Faith regards this mystical encounter with cynicism and apprehension. While the fairies initially offered a world of magic and possibility, Mrs Mabutu’s abilities are highly doubted by Faith. Despite what may be the scepticism of adulthood, the words that follow terrify Faith with their injunction to: “Go home” (ibid). The fact that her body responds first, signals the suggestion that Mrs Mabutu has reached something deeply repressed within Faith’s unconscious.
It is, therefore, unsurprising that, shortly after this, Faith finds her “thoughts fragmented, sliding around [her] mind, intangible, momentary, briefly incandescent”, and even believes that she hears Dead Rex call-ing out to her (GST 201). The implication is that Faith is beginning to recall some of the events surrounding Nomsa’s death, but cannot clearly place them. What appears possible is that, similar to the psychical pro-cess of splitting, Faith has managed to create a separation of physical spaces in an attempt to repress her memories. The split landscapes of farm and city stand as a metonym for the split in Faith’s psyche, which requires reintegration. In fact, the entire novel is populated by physical separations that mirror Faith’s unconscious feelings of disjuncture. As a child, there is a distance on the farm between the safety of the house and the danger of the orchard, representing the interior and exterior dangers in Faith’s world, while the separation of Marius and Bella forces Faith to split her parents into good and bad qualities, much as she later finds herself doing with Bella and Nomsa. Even on a structural level, the novel is split in half by a large temporal gap.
After their initial encounter, Mrs Mabutu arrives at the house that Faith shares with Molly and Mia with the simple explanation: “The child sought me out” (GST 229). She continues:
Her spirit is restless, she has buried it for too long in darkness. There are many restless spirits around you, child … Some are ancestors, but there are others. Some very bad. Your mother collected these spirits around her, they brought sickness to your house … Your ancestors have spoken through me to try to help you … I, though, cannot afford to ignore the ancestors, so I tell you this one final thing. Go home. It is only at your home that you will free your spirit. (GST 230)
Mrs Mabutu makes it clear to Faith that Bella courted malevolent spirits, and that these have brought sickness upon her. Her last words to Faith reiterate this: “If you don’t return home to free your spirit, you will get sick. You already are” (GST 231). In African traditions, suggests Suzanne Maiello, “[i]llness is not split into either physical or mental suffering. Body and mind are a unit … Consequently, the approach of traditional healers to illness is holistic and includes the biological, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions” (248). While a more western clinical approach concerns itself with the split world view that emanates from Cartesian thinking, an approach which treats body and mind as separate entities, traditional African healing is concerned with a holistic world view, treating body and mind as one, as well as maintaining connections with ancestral figures. Locating the human at the interface of different aspects of being, this view makes psychological reintegration possible in ways that are very different from the typical conception of clinical healing, which tends to the cognitive-behaviourist on the one hand and pharmacology on the other. In understanding the role that traditional healers play in South Africa, I draw on Gavin Ivey and Tertia Myers’s study “The Psychology of Be-witchment”. They define bewitchment as:
a culturally sanctioned supernatural belief system used defensively by individuals to protect them-selves against acknowledging and experiencing a range of painful and anxiety-provoking feelings, typically involving hostility, envy, and loss. Bewitchment arises when individuals split off and
project problematic self aspects elicited by adverse or stressful experiences. (75)
In their study, Ivey and Myers make extensive use of the Kleinian psychoanalytical model to interpret a more traditional African belief and integrate its manifestations within a western therapeutic understanding. Although the two models appear to be divergent, the integration of two different schools of thought that nevertheless reveal an epistemological congruity in treating ideas as things allows psychotherapists to man-age a broad spectrum of patients. According to Mrs Mabutu, then, Faith is experiencing an illness which, although spiritual in nature, is inseparable from her body. Maiello argues that “[b]reaking the relation with the ancestors brings about illness, just as massive splitting, projective identification and ‘attacks on linking’ lead to severe psychopathological symptoms” (255).
Despite the vast divide in cultural identification, Mrs Mabutu is clearly able to connect with Faith’s situation, and finally convinces her that the nightmares will not stop until she re-establishes connections with her ancestors. This, of course, is not something Faith is able to do until she returns to the farm. Arriving at the farm, Faith is amazed at the results: “even as my tired body groans with each uneven step, my soul sighs with relief” (GST 253). Within days, she begins to have more frequent dreams about the night of Nomsa’s death, but Faith is still unable to separate dream from reality. It takes an encounter with Oom Piet to jog enough of Faith’s memory to finally recall the events of that night. Piet is clearly concerned about Faith’s reasons for returning, and he pushes her for details, eventually trying to see if she can recall any of the de-tails surrounding the night of Nomsa’s death. “You didn’t hear something, wake up in the night?” he asks (GST 303). At first Faith only recalls witnessing him rape Nomsa, and is outraged that her mother protected him by taking the blame. But she realises the truth when Piet remarks: “She didn’t protect me, girlie, she protected you” (GST 316). Faith comments that his words “reach into the core of me and rip me apart, things I don’t want to believe but I can feel, in the soul of me, are true” (ibid).
Having recovered her memories of that night, Faith becomes even more ill than she was in Johannesburg. As the days blend into one another, Faith finds herself unable “to tell the difference between sleep and waking”, and constantly hears voices whispering “Killer” (GST 319). The fairies re-emerge to haunt Faith, although none frequents her as often as Dead Rex, who attempts to consume Faith and draw her into the fairy world – possibly allowing Faith to understand how Bella experienced her depression. When she was a child, Dead Rex terrified Faith, but now his presence threatens to destroy her entirely, as her body literally begins to waste away. Eventually a sangoma is called, and his prognosis mirrors that of Mrs Mabutu: “There is a thing inside her, a thing that has been there for many years, maybe since she was a small girl. It grows. She will not let it go; for some reason she wants to hold it inside her, even though it will destroy her. If we are to help her, we need to get it out” (GST 321-2).
Faith makes extensive use of splitting and projective identification in her relationship with the fairies, which gives Dead Rex the agency to consume her now. These psychological phenomena are responsible for diminishing an individual’s capacity to function as a fully actualised subject, suggesting that Faith’s relationship with the fairies plays a large part in what plagues her now. Ivey and Myers suggest that “frustrating interac-tions with caregivers, coloured too by the infant’s projection of aggressive instinctual impulses onto them, result in the internalisation of ‘bad’ objects” (79). These bad objects are then split off and evacuated through fantasy, such as Faith’s construction of the fairy world, in an attempt to preserve good internal objects. How-ever, as Ivey and Myers note:
In some cases, our internal world is felt to be, intermittently or constantly, a war-like space in which our good internal objects are perpetually threatened by invading bad objects and parts of self identified with these objects. In this situation, primitive defences based on the splitting off and projective evacuation of bad objects impoverish the internal world and lead to the perception of the external world as malevolent and persecutory. (ibid)
Given Faith’s experience of such a “war-like space”, it is not surprising that traditional healers view these symptoms as bewitchment or illness. Bewitchment is “characterised by a preoccupation with destructive events occurring inside one’s body … Victims frequently report feeling that they are being attacked from within” (Ivey and Myers 80). These feelings of being attacked are clearly present in Faith. The fairies, who have not bothered Faith for years, make an unwelcome return. Faith experiences this as an attack from within, but the manifestations clearly affect her whole body, and she feels like the fairies are “clawing [her], trying to rip [her] into small pieces to be devoured and regurgitated” (GST 320-1).
Over a period of three nights, the traditional healer stays in a hut with Faith, trying to draw the malevolent presence out of her body. During the first night, the healer spreads tar on Faith’s stomach, which slowly sinks into her. The second night, Faith undergoes a transformation: her mind is compared to a pupating worm – the hard shell around her falls away and she feels reborn after the sangoma appears to plunge his hands into her abdomen and extract the bad object. This transformation is possible only after the evil with-in Faith has been removed. Within the discourse of traditional African healing, these bad spirits have been contained and banished from her body. While a Kleinian perspective of splitting would seem to perpetuate the process of separating elements of the psyche, it is only when Faith allows herself to be entirely consumed that she is reborn. As she surrenders herself to the protection of the traditional healer, he is able to contain fully that which bewitches her and extracts it from her body. Finally, after the bad object is re-moved from her body, Faith awakens on the third night to find the fairies absent: “They’re gone, for the first time I can remember they are not there and I’m alone. I’m an empty shell, hollow and vacant, yet somehow I feel free” (ibid). In her own experience with traditional healers, Maiello reflects that “the san-goma’s function seemed to be to re-establish channels of communication between the internal and the external world at deep unconscious levels” (246). For Faith, then, this encounter dispossesses her of the presences that pervaded her daily existence, reintegrating balance between her “good” and “bad” objects .
Ivey and Myers conclude that “the bewitched person is … operating from the paranoid-schizoid position, which makes it difficult to acknowledge and own one’s hostile feelings, to evaluate interpersonal situations clearly, and to distinguish between reality and fantasy” (82). An individual in the paranoid-schizoid position, then, has difficulty negotiating the boundaries between the conscious and the projections of the un-conscious, as well as an inability to manage interpersonal relationships with sufficient empathy. Ultimate-ly, the help of the traditional healer suggests that Faith may be able to move away from the paranoid-schizoid position into the depressive position, wherein she would be able to concern herself with the well-being of others. This position, which concerns itself with the state of intersubjective relationships, is also fundamental to the traditional African world view, which decentres the subject, and is in stark opposition to the individualism of the western Cartesian subject.
Nevertheless, despite the potential that this encounter holds, it is not as fully realised as the earlier parts of the novel. While Faith’s childhood and time in Johannesburg are covered in some detail, her recovery is perhaps a little too quick and convenient to be really convincing. The entire encounter with the healer is barely two pages long, which hardly seems sufficient to purge the harrowing events described in detail in the other sections. It may be a little too easy and too convenient that Faith never mentions her guilt over killing Nomsa, or acknowledges what Bella sacrificed for her. Oom Piet practically delights in Faith realising that she shot Nomsa, and there is never any sense that he will ever face rape charges. This could bring into question whether the novel really offers any true message of reconciliation.
Conclusion: Community and the other
Mieke Bal argues that interaction within a community is necessary for healing to occur: “the incapacitation of the subject – whose trauma or wound precludes memory as a healing integration – can be overcome only in an interaction with others” (x). Once purged of the fairies, Faith shows a vague awareness – for the first time – that community may be necessary for the development of selfhood, and that she has spent years pushing people away.
The first person she comes into contact with is the man who has healed her, and she realises that they “have spent an eternity together in this room and [she] know[s] he has seen the things that [she has] seen. [They] have a shared past, yet [she has] never seen him properly before” (GST 323). The healer is the closest per-son she has to a witness, and Faith understands that, in having cast the spirits out, the healer has established a spiritual connection with her, even if she does not have the opportunity to acknowledge his presence.
Furthermore, the man enables her to mourn her losses. “The tears flow easily,” says Faith, “for Papa and Mother and Nomsa, for Oupa and Grandma English … for Molly, for the fairies, and finally for my small self that died with Nomsa” (GST 324). Part of what she held onto for fifteen years is the pain associated with all the people she feels that she has lost. Of course, she finally remembers that she still has Molly and Mia in her life, and she asks: “I wonder what ever possessed me to doubt them, to flee the safety of their friendship. Of my family” (GST 326). It is in reuniting with the two women that Faith is finally able to ban-ish Dead Rex. In the epilogue, Dead Rex tells the reader that he sees the three women burning his painting and banishing him. Faith ends this novel on an optimistic note as she gathers the family she still has. The dialogical resolution of these endings suggests a movement towards communality in South African fiction that encourages the establishment of a developed form of intersubjectivity that can support individuals in their experiences of loss.
– Rowan Roux
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Relationships, Polygamy and Love in Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: A Critical Analysis
Abstract
This article focuses on marital relationships in Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Set in a household where polygamy is practised, this article seeks to analyse Shoneyin’s exploration of the traditional and modern aspects of marriage. It looks closely at the individual wives, their reasons for enter-ing a plural marriage, and their relationships with their husband and co-wives. Through close analysis of the text, I attempt to show how Shoneyin invites one to consider relationships and marriage as she plays off the modern conception of marriage against a traditional one. I attempt to show that the secret in the household inevitably breaks down expectations of traditional marital roles as relationships are redefined in this post-colonial setting.
Key Words: Shoneyin, Polygamy, Marriage, Customary, Traditional, Modernity, Relationships, Women
Polygamous and modern marriages in African societies
In many African and traditional societies, marriage has undergone change as a result of the influence of post-colonial modernity. On the one hand, women and men may marry because of custom and to fulfil cultural and customary obligations while, on the other, choice and the notion of what Smith terms a “love marriage” is on the rise (158). Modernity and Christian culture promote monogamous marriages, where men and women marry for love and companionship. Traditionally, many African countries al-lowed a man to have more than one wife. He would enter into what is termed a “polygamous” marriage. The word “polygamy” is “derived from the Late Greek word polugamos, which literally means ‘often marrying’… [and] consists in the maintaining of conjugal relations by more than two persons” (Jonas 142). As Jonas explains:
From the early years, polygamy existed throughout Africa as an integral feature of family life, with culture or religion or both as its basis … it is widely believed that polygamy ensures the stability and continuity of the family and clan [and that] polygamy provides economic and social security for women … polygamy is considered to be the most efficient means of producing a large family in a given time period [and] in Africa, a large family is an economic asset. (143)
Traditional societies are often viewed as being non-progressive, and the value of polygamous marriages is not always understood in a modern setting. What research in Africa has found is that “young people across a wide range of socioeconomic statuses increasingly value choosing their own spouses, and individual choice is widely associated with the notion that marriage should be based on love” (Smith 161). With conflicting ideas about marriage in African societies, tradition and modernity are played off against each other, creating many spheres in which marriage, relationships and individuals may roam. Lola Shoneyin writes The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives in this context of changing ideas about marriage. Her novel focuses on the Alao household, a polygamous family consisting of four wives and seven children. Her novel invites one to consider relationships and marriage as it plays off the modern conception of marriage against a customary one, inviting the reader to explore the challenges and benefits of both. The four wives do not enter the household because of love. Rather, customary practices allow for them to seek comfort in a household built by a caricatured man who displays grotesque arrogance and male pride. The dynamic that exists in the household is a complex combination of customary and modern marital practices. These marital practices and ideals are constantly shifting in the household, satirising the belief that modern ideals are progressive as value is also placed on customary marriage. Shoneyin depicts a household where the stereotypical ideas and expectations of marriage are broken down, showing that the modern within a customary setting presents challenges to both ideals. This essay will seek to uncover the satire present in Shoneyin’s narrative. Through the analysis of spousal relationships, I will attempt to demonstrate how the novel uses the Alao household to comment on the stereotypes of modern and customary marital practices and how these ideals affect marriage and relationships.
Emecheta notes that “[modern] people think that polygamy is oppression” (176). The arguments in favour of this belief are that:
The practice of polygamy undermines the self-worth of women … [because] usually, wives have no legal power or capacity to prevent their husbands from taking a second wife … in addition polygamy objectifies women [and] contravenes a woman’s right to equality with men … [who can use] polygamy … as a tool … to whip women into toeing their line by threatening their wives that they will marry another wife [which can have] serious emotional and financial consequences for her and her dependants (Jonas 145-146).
Polygamous cultures have a history of male dominance, which may encourage these beliefs. The modern argument is that these traditions are out of date because they create female oppression. As noted in the introduction, there are many traditional benefits for women in these cultures. The criticism, one could argue, holds ground on the matter of freedom of choice and consent. If women are forced into polygamous marriages, they are oppressive; if women enter these plural marriages consensually, they may be considered fair and liberating. To provide an understanding of polygamy from an African woman’s perspective, Embry and Bradley present a tale of a woman who grew up in a polygamous household. She said that “it was the only thing that she knew. Her parents had lived in polygamy and Father’s parents had lived in polygamy” (100). In many instances, individuals who have been reared in a polygamous culture accept it as the norm. There-fore, it is important that criticism of polygamy takes people’s understanding and way of life into consideration.
Baba Segi, the patriarch
It would be helpful to look at the patriarch of the family, Baba Segi, named Ishola at birth and then, after the birth of his first child, Segi. This traditional … Baba Segi is respected in his home and is referred to as “my lord” by his wives. This term shows respect and male dominance. He is portrayed as a possessive, arrogant man, who boasts about having four wives and seven children. Early in the novel, we are introduced to his mannerisms, when the narrator describes a visit to Teacher, a man who lived in the community and whose wisdom Baba Segi values: “It annoyed him that Bolanle was the reason he had come, when just two years before he had boasted of his conquest: how Bolanle was tight as a bottleneck, how he pounded her until she was cross-eyed; and how she took the length of his manhood on her back – splayed out and submissive” (Shoneyin 4).
This description indicates a man filled with pride, who boasts of his physical dominance and his wife’s submission to him. He is able to provide for his family, and his role as the head of the family is further asserted by his position in front of the television, his sharing of leftovers with his children and the assertion from his eldest son: “Yes Baba. I want to be just like you!” (Shoneyin 10). Furthermore, his dominance is solidified in typical male roles. Bolanle, his fourth wife, notes that: “In the two years I have been in Baba Segi’s house, he has never apologised for his mistakes. He makes peace his own way and it in-volves tattered brown envelopes bursting with 50 – Naira notes, thrust beneath doors at dawn” (Shoneyin 90). He is portrayed as a grotesque, uncivilised man who handles serious situations with bowel movements and who spits when disgusted. He is oblivious to his wife Iya Femi’s jealousy, in particular, and does not prioritise intimate communication with his wives. Baba Segi is concerned with his reputation, thus his marriages are “as much an economic, social, reproductive, and reputational project” (Smith 171). While his mother arranged his first marriage to Iya Segi, his choice to enter into more marriages is ac-counted for as follows: “I took a second wife, a peace offering from a desperate farmer. I took the third because she offered herself with humility. What kind of human being rejects the fullness of a woman? … But I chose Bolanle, I cannot lie. I set my mind on her, the way a thirsty child sets his eyes on a cup spill-ing from a spout” (Shoneyin 201).
The women who marry because of their customary beliefs all betray Baba Segi, while the chosen wife is loyal. Choice may be tied to the modern idea of marriage, but it is also a modern practice for wives to leave their husbands, as Bolanle does.
This shows the complexity of both types of marriage. One may conclude, from these examples, that Shoneyin has constructed a view of Baba Segi that would make him unsympathetic to a critical eye. How-ever, Shoneyin satirises these extreme portrayals of manhood through his wives’ secret. Baba Segi is una-ble to father children, which shatters the construction of pride and arrogance. Subtle irony is added to the narrative, for example when Baba Segi refers to Segi as “first fruit of my loins”, or when Bolanle remarks: “Baba Segi, they are the very image of you” (Shoneyin 159, 20). These moments in the narrative are not coincidental; rather, they break down the traditional praise offered to a man. One can say that it is the women in the narrative who display dominance through taking traditional expectations into their own hands. To clarify the male role, it is important to analyse the role that women play in the Alao household and to assess to what extent they are bound by tradition.
The empowerment of women: Baba Segi’s four wives
Shoneyin explores the empowerment of women in polygamous marriages. It is assumed that: “African women do not speak but are spoken for, [they] do not choose but are chosen for” (Nnaemeka ??). It was shown in a study that, “once a woman is married, the ability to opt out – of either marriage or marital sex – is dramatically reduced” (Smith 173). Women are not seen to have agency, which subjects their marital role to Western feminist critique. However, Elizabeth Joseph, a plural wife, explains in an interview con-ducted to explore the lives of women in African, polygamist marriages: “[Y]ou would think that polygamy by definition would be oppressive to women … in fact, a plural marriage is actually empower-ing” (Nnaemeka ??). Polygamous marriage may empower women in ways that range from freedom to bond with other women to shared child care and stability. Sexually, it is argued that women are empowered as they are not objectified. Rather, they are valued as bearers of children, who are an asset and source of pride in many African cultures. In her critique of Western feminism, Emecheta points out that
[s]ex is important to us [African women]. But we do not make it the centre of our being … few of our women go after sex per se. If they are with their husbands they feel that they are giving something out of duty, love or in order to have children … but as soon as they start having chil-dren their loyalty is very much to them … African feminism is free of the shackles of Western romantic illusions and tends to be much more pragmatic. We believe that we are here for many, many things, not just to cultivate ourselves, and make ourselves pretty for men. (Emecheta 176-177)
This observation is interesting in the Alao household, as the different women embody different ideals of the African feminism and sexual empowerment described above. As one explores this in greater detail, it can be said that the wives are indeed dutiful in their sexual relations with Baba Segi. None of them expresses sexual enjoyment, yet they do not reject him. The wives who have children seek to provide and make life easy for them and display a great deal of affection towards them. Iya Femi may be the only wife who incorporates the Western notion of making herself pretty for a man, but her motives are deep-rooted and she too shows a degree of sensibleness in her duties to her husband and family. It is valuable to look closely at the women in Shoneyin’s novel to explore their African feminism against the construction of Baba Segi.
Iya Segi, first wife
Iya Segi is Baba Segi’s first wife. She does not marry him by choice, but to follow her money. In the chapter titled “Iya Segi”, she reveals her motive and explains her feelings towards her husband and the other wives as follows:
My new husband turned to me. “I am pleased you are here with me, if only to fatten me up a little,” he said. “I will follow you anywhere, my lord.” I raised my buttocks and let him fill me again. I would follow my money anywhere … When he brought home other wives, I did not com-plain. I did not say a word. I did not even show that I feared for my money. I just kept quiet and watched him. Who can tell what madness makes men go in search of things that puncture their pockets? Kruuk. But that was the path he chose and I accepted it. Women are my husband’s weakness. He cannot resist them, especially when they are low and downcast like puppies prematurely snatched from their mothers’ breasts. I do not blame the women either. They are too weakened by the prosperity he offers. Besides, apart from that Bolanle, whose nose is so high that it brushes the skies, the other wives do not offend me. (Shoneyin 103-104)
In the passage preceding this extract, Iya Segi describes her repulsion to a woman to whom she has previous-ly been attracted. One can say that Iya Segi was in love with her money. This marriage cannot be considered a love marriage, but one of cooperation. While her response may be considered one of submission, it is worth noting that “some women … make polygamy work for them” (Emecheta 176). It is important to note that “the importance of rank among co-wives is emphasised. The first wife, usually the oldest, enjoys undisputed authority over her co-wives; she is the only wife not chosen as a ‘replacement’” (Nnaemeka ??). Iya Segi echoes this sentiment when she says: “It is important that the wives know their place in this house. They must know what they can and cannot do. They must remember that I am the one who tells them when to eat, sleep or even work” (Shoneyin 72). While Iya Segi exerts her authority over the other wives, it is implied that she was not consulted in her husband’s choice of a second, third and fourth wife. Jonas explains that “[u]sually, wives have no legal power or capacity to prevent their husbands from taking a second wife” (145). Tension arises when Bolanle, the fourth wife, enters the home. The observation that she has her nose in the air may be accurate. Bolanle describes the wives as “uncouth … need[ing] lessons in etiquette” (Shoneyin 20-22). The arrival of Bolanle allows the narrative to take on an interesting dynamic between modern and traditional; Bo-lanle’s education sets her apart from the other wives, and their rejection of her is evident throughout the narrative.
While Iya Segi’s anxiety around the sharing of resources is expressed, she leaves the burden to her husband. Her acceptance, it may be said, is so that she can remain with her money (although she later gives it up, along with her businesses, to maintain the dignity of the family). Baba Segi is the primary provider for the family and may enjoy the ability to provide because his “[m]asculinity, proven by [providing], foregrounds the connections between masculinity and money and between gender and economics” (Smith 170).
Iya Segi’s mother’s view of men may have contributed to her desire for a woman and her love of money. “Only a foolish woman leans heavily on a man’s promises” (Shoneyin 97) are the words of a scorned woman. When she discovers her daughter almost naked and covered in money, she decides to arrange a marriage, a traditional practice. Her mother’s contradiction is shown when she gives the money to Ishola, Iya Segi’s future husband. Iya Segi, however, soon persuades her husband to allow her to trade and make more money, showing that she has indeed gone back to her first love. Ironically, Iya Segi’s mother, who encouraged her independence of men, fears that her daughter will not fulfil her role as a traditional woman. Ishola’s mother quite accurately states: “Why would men mean anything to her when she’s grown up hearing you rip them to shreds!” (Shoneyin 100). Iya Segi does, however, learn the value of family, dignity and loyalty once her secret is revealed.
Iya Tope, second wife
Iya Tope, the second wife, enters the Alao household as a peace offering and payment from her father to Baba Segi. After a bad harvest, an arrangement is made for Baba Segi to marry Iya Tope. Describing her discovery of the plans, she says:
Just when the sun began its journey to the tree tops my father summoned me. I was surprised to find him and Baba Segi sitting so close together, their arms touching as they drained the bottle of Schnapps that was normally only sipped at wedding and funerals. My father told me to bring the food in and I returned with a wide tray. But as I stooped at the doorframe, the men stopped talking. Baba Segi inspected me as I placed the plates on a low stool and fetched cool water from the earthen pot. He examined my face as I poured it into two plastic cups. My father watched him watching me. “She is not a great beauty,” I heard my father saying as I closed the door. His discretion had dwindled with the Schnapps. “But she is as strong as three donkeys. And thorough too. What she loses in wit, she gains in meticulousness. This is a great virtue in a woman. I have three wives so I speak from experience.” … When we arrived at Baba Segi’s house, he pushed me towards Iya Segi and warned that I should show her great respect. He said I should be grateful I was in such good hands. Iya Segi smiled but I could see her chest thumping beneath her buba. (Shoneyin 81-82, 83)
Iya Tope is the quietest of the wives and even calls herself a “coward” (Shoneyin 56). Her role, while seemingly small, displays the submissive quality of a traditional second wife. She is the mother who turns her loyalty to her children and can be said to be “married to [her] children” (Smith 175). She is described by Bolanle as cordial and kind, which is shown in her demeanour. Iya Tope, it can be argued, represents a childlike womanhood. Still meticulous, she shows great admiration for her children and takes pride in braiding their hair. While this marriage, like that of Iya Segi, was arranged, Baba Segi, once again, did not pay a price, but received his wife as payment
The relationship in the household is one of obedience to Iya Segi. She is seen to have little interaction with Baba Segi apart from their arranged nights together. Ironically, it is Iya Tope, the unattractive bride who was not chosen, who becomes Baba Segi’s favoured companion once the secret of his children’s fathering is revealed. Iya Tope, we know, grew up in a polygamous setting and can thus be said to have been trained for this arrangement. Iya Tope’s nature and her avoidance of conflict could be based on what Embry and Bradley have noted, that “[d]aughters who accepted polygamy had learned ways to in-teract as plural wives from their mothers’ examples … [as it is often] the mothers in polygamous families who set the tone for relationships between families” (101). Unfortunately, the subtle example Iya Tope sets is seen as a weakness by Iya Segi and Iya Femi, resulting in Iya Tope being dominated, ridi-culed and forced into silent submission. Her relationships in this household are seen through her interactions with the other women and children rather than her interaction with her husband. Iya Tope may thus be more traditional than the other wives in the Alao household in that she accepts her place in the home and in relation to Iya Segi.
Iya Femi, third wife
Emecheta notes that “[w]omen are very quarrelsome and jealous” (178). This can be said to be true of Iya Femi, who offers herself as a wife to Baba Segi. She values herself over the other wives and is threatened when Bolanle takes her place as the newest wife. She is hostile and expects that she and her children should be favoured over others in the household. She is particularly resentful of Bolanle, who has aquired the education that she craved and was robbed of in her childhood. She loves material pos-sessions and uses them to reignite the pampering she experienced as a child. After the slavery in Grandma’s house, she tells of her choice to marry Baba Segi:
There was a new house being built across the road and that was where I met Baba Segi. He was supplying the plumbing materials and he looked powerful yet kind in his yellow safety helmet. I offered him Grandma’s precious boiled water. He accepted it and thanked me. The next day he brought me a basket of oranges. It was Taju who delivered them. I didn’t waste time in telling Taju that I was looking for a man to marry me. I was desperate; I didn’t want Grandma to come back and find me there. “Baba Segi is the one who has enough money to marry many women,” Taju advised… “Then make him marry me. Convince him and put me in your debt for ever. I have no relatives so there is no one for him to pay homage to.” … I don’t know what he told Baba Segi but he did his job well. Less than a week later, Taju came alone in the pick up and parked across the road. It was mid-morning and the house was empty so I had time to pack everything I wanted. Before I drove away with him, I rubbed shit into every pillow in the house except for Tunde’s. (Shoneyin 128-129)
She seeks to gain her self-worth through the Alao household, which provides luxury in comparison to her stay with Grandma. Contrary to Jonas’s argument of women’s objectification, she seeks to be objectified. Yet she shows respect and appreciation towards Baba Segi, revealing: “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate Baba Segi; on the contrary, I have several reasons to be thankful to him. He gave me a place of refuge … You see, when the world owes you as much as it owes me, you need a base from which you can call in your debts. In return for kindness, I have worked tirelessly to make him happy. I cook his favourite meals” (Shoneyin 132-133). One can say, then, that she shows gratitude as opposed to love for Bab Segi. Her vengeful spirit cannot allow her to love a husband as a wife should. Furthermore, her chil-dren are not disciplined as she does not want them to suffer as she did. Iya Femi does not emulate what most wives in polygamous marriages try to achieve. She does not, as Nnaemeka describes it, “capture the essence of the following notions: harmony, responsibility, fairness, honesty, equity, order, friendship, respect, satisfaction, sharing, bonding” (Nnaemeka ??). If anything, it can be said that Iya Femi tries to break down these ideals. Yet, apart from Bolanle, Iya Femi does not express a need to get rid of the other wives, perhaps because “[i]t gives her freedom from having to worry about her husband most of the time and each time he comes to her, he [she has to be sure that he] is in a good mood” (Emecheta 178-179). Iya Femi can thus be described as selfish in this polygamous setting. Her entry to the home sets her apart from the first two wives as she is the first wife to enter the household by choice. Her marriage is one of gratitude not love. Iya Femi can be said to be married to vengeance and a spirit of discord, which be-comes prevalent when Bolanle enters the Alao household.
Bolanle, fourth wife
Upon reflection of her time in the Alao household, Bolanle states: “I couldn’t tell him that I felt as if I’d woken up from a dream of unspeakable self-flagellation. It started a few days after Segi died. I’d walk through the house and feel as if I was in the midst of strangers, people from a different time in history, a different world. I didn’t feel soiled anymore” (Shoneyin 244). Her observation is tied to the fact that Bo-lanle was indeed modern in comparison to the other wives in the household. Her entrance into the polygamous marriage was curious given her university education. One would have expected her to enter a monogamous marriage, presumably for love. Of her choice to enter into the polygamous marriage with Ba-ba Segi as his fourth wife, she says:
Somehow, it all made sense when I met Baba Segi. At last, I would be able to empty myself of sorrow. I would be with a man who accepted me, one who didn’t ask questions or find my quietness unsettling. I knew Baba Segi wouldn’t be like younger men who demanded explanations for the faraway look in my eye. Baba Segi was content when I said nothing. So, yes. I chose this home. Not for the monthly allowance, not for the lace skirt suits, and not for the coral bracelets. Those things mean nothing to me. I chose this family to regain my life, to heal in anonymity. And when you choose a family, you stay with them. You stay with your husband even though your friends call him a polygamist ogre. You stay with him when your mother says he’s an overfed orang-utan. You look at him in another light and see a large but kindly, generous soul. (Shoneyin 16-17)
After a traumatic rape and later an abortion, Bolanle describes herself as an empty shell. She chooses to marry Baba Segi in order to heal and find herself. As was the case with Iya Femi, a polygamous marriage gives women time and freedom, time which she needs away from the pressures of her mother and the modern world. Earlier it was mentioned that Baba Segi chose Bolanle; here she confesses to having cho-sen him. Their reasons may differ, but they are consensual marriage partners. Bolanle is educated and finds herself navigating “levels of oppression and … stances on glorifying/denigrating traditions [in accordance with] class, background, level of education … and commitment” (Latha 55). Her modern experience of university makes her time in a home with uneducated, traditional women challenging. Prized by her husband, she is the one who opens the door for truth in the household. She rejects the modern world because it has scarred her. Western feminists may argue that tradition has caused her to think that polyga-my is a solution when, according to them, it is a different kind of oppressive trap. Her mother cannot ac-cept her decision because she has worked hard to educate her girls in the hope of a good, modern future. Against these Western ideals, Nnaemeka argues that: “[A]frican women who are in polygamous marriages are not morons or powerless, exploited, downtrodden victims. Many of these women are intelligent, highly educated, successful, independent women who choose polygymous marriage as what is good for them” (??). Ironically, it is not Bolanle’s husband who has victimised and exploited her, but rather men whom she had met prior to her marriage. Iya Segi too is successful and independent, adding to the above sentiment. Even though Bolanle entered the marriage for personal reasons, she is serious about her role as a wife and tries to bear children to gain womanly respect in the home. In a household that has practised tolerance, Bolanle is a source of conflict, even though she hides her disdain for Iya Segi and Iya Femi, and tries to be cooperative. The wives do not emulate what Embry and Bradley describe of polygamous wives when it concerns Bolanle; they are not cooperative nor do they build a bond with her because of her inabil-ity to conceive. They keep her from the secret of conception in an attempt to drive her out and to keep their children away from her (104).
Tension exists between Bolanle and Baba Segi because she cannot conceive a child. The secret in the Alao household allows the tension to build, because at no point is it considered that he may be the cause of their struggle. Futhermore, his male ego struggles under the weight of infertility and the pressure to seek modern help. Through the course of their marriage, Bolanle remains humble and submissive to Baba Segi and his wives. When she leaves, Baba Segi is saddened and offers always to be there for her, showing the af-fection he has for her.
Redefining marriage
The Alao household is filled with partners for Baba Segi. His pride lives in his family and tradition. His wives, however, have different reasons for and ideas about marriage. The narrative is a carefully written one; it not only plays with the secret, but also allows the characters to share intimate details about their lives in their own voice. Shoneyin has created a narrative that plays off modern and traditional ideals in a complex manner. Baba Segi may behave like a strong, bold African man, but he is unable to produce children, the essence of an African man. Iya Segi, who follows her money and encourages two of the wives to be unfaithful so that they can bear children, gives up her money to maintain the dignity of the family. Iya Tope, the ugly wife who cannot speak up for herself, ultimately commands most of Baba Segi’s affection. Iya Femi’s vengeful spirit leads to a breakdown of family. She has to learn to live harmoniously with the remaining wives after Bolanle’s departure. Bolanle chooses an extreme form of hiding, a place where she can disappear to recapture her soul. None of these portrayals show the modern notion of romantic love. Rather, the narrative shows that conflict arises when the old tries to take on the new. More so, the narrative shows that tradition is not easily lost or forgotten, and that it may serve as a place of refuge. The novel shows that family is the core of one’s existence, always receptive when turned to in times of desperation, violence and extreme measures. If anything, the narrative may satirise the belief that modern ideas are progressive because it has found value in the traditional.
The change from first to third-person narration affords the reader both subjective and objective views of the narrative, allowing an interactive, thoughtful reading process. The Alao household is able to provide security for these women, a modern and traditional need. Iya Femi and Bolanle’s choice of marriage is modern, against the traditional marriages of Iya Segi and Iya Tope. Curiously, the reader may wonder why the wom-en who have chosen polygamous marriage would choose a grotesque, uncivilised man, whose ways are as outdated as the setting. One soon learns that marriage is liberating for the women, particularly Bolanle. Fur-thermore, the household holds the traditional value of children. Yet there are tensions between the modern and the traditional. Bolanle leaves her husband, a modern ideal. There is an assumption that tradition allows one to grow as an individual within the sphere of customary values, while the modern allows for discovery. Many of these ideals overlap in the novel, implying that the modern in a traditional setting, and vice versa, is not a simple obstacle to navigate. Where traditional is sometimes viewed as a weakness in their relation-ships, it is important to acknowledge that the narrative breaks down many stereotypical ideas of marriage and spousal roles. Perhaps a dynamic assertion in the narrative is the fact that the traditional, grotesque man is, in fact, a generous, caring individual, a construction of a male that is often denied Shoneyin’s narrative shows the complexities, not only of marriage and relationships, but also of the conflicts present within both tradition and modernity.
References
Embry, Jessie L., and Martha S Bradley. “Mothers and Daughters in Polygamy”. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1998. 99-107. Print.
Emecheta, Buchi. “Feminism with a Small ‘f’!”. Ed. Kirsten Holst Petersen. Criticism and Ideology. Swe-den: Bohuslaningens Boktryckeri AB, 1988. Print.
Jonas, Obonye. “The Practice of Polygamy under the Scheme of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa: A Critical Appraisal”. Academic Journals (2012): 142-148. Print.
Latha, Rizwana. “Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter and the Educational Empowerment of Muslim Wom-en”. Acta Academica (2004): 54-83. Print.
Nnaemeka, Obioma. The Politics of (M)othering. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.
Shoneyin, Lola. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. London: CPI Bookmarque, 2010. Print.
Smith, Daniel Jordan. Managing Men, Marriage, and Modern Love. Ed.
Jennifer Cole and Lynn M Thomas. Chicago: Chicago Press, 2009. Print.
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