Gender Relations in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart Essay -- Things

Gender dealings in Chinua Achebes Things arrive Apart In Chinua Achebes novel Things Fall Apart, the Ibo heaps remote society has a strict system of behavioral customs harmonize to gender. These customs strongly restrict the freedom of Ibo women and help to reinforce extension after generation the notion that Ibo men are superior to the women of their tribe. Among the people of this society, the condition of fadedness is strongly associated with the state of being female. The worst abuse that a man stick out receive is to be called a woman. The novels main(prenominal) character, Okonkwo, is often obsessed with proving his strength as a man because he seeks to escape the reputation of his father who was considered by his fellow clansmen to be weak like a woman. He is ashamed when he learns that agbala was not yet another name for woman, it could also mean a man who had interpreted no title when this insult is applied to his father. Okonkwo takes the insecurity of his manli ness to extremes, and level unnecessarily kills the adopted son whom he loves deeply in rules of order to prove his unwavering emotional fortitude. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machet and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak.(43) In Ibo culture, it is practically a pull down to be born a female. This attitude is apparent in considering the stress placed on women to bear sons in order to carry on the honor of the family. When a woman had borne her third son in succession, her married man slaughtered a goat for her, as was the custom.(56) A woman is honored just if she could bear... sons(82) to carry on a great familys name and honor. Okonkwo is greatly defeated by the tendencies of his offspring in their gender roles. H... ... physical power that they can exercise. Although this oppression is deplorable from a modern North American stand pose, from the point of view of the Ibo women of this period it is quite acceptable and none of them feel all necessity to change their social system. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1958. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, expand Edition, Vol. 1. Ed. Maynard Mack. London Norton, 1995. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Under Western Eyes Feminist Scholarship and compound Discourse. Feminist Review. 30 (Autumn 1988) 65-88. Nnaemeka, Obioma. Gender Relations and Critical Meditation From Things Fall Apart to Anthills of the Savannah. Challenging Hierarchies Issues and Themes In Colonial and Post colonial African Literature. Society and Politics in Africa. Vol 5. New York Peter Lang Publishing, 1998. 137-160.