Mother is Supreme

I like this paper so much not because I remember it to be particularly good; I think I got a B on it. I like it because it marked a turning point in college. I truly became interested to learn. And in this paper took some - small, feeble - steps to start thinking for myself. (April, 2018)

Position Paper #1 based on Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Soham Sen, Charlottesville, VA TCC 401-3 (Townsend)

Chinua Achebe, in his novel Things Fall Apart, paints a perplexing picture of women in the early 1900s society of the indigenous people of Nigeria in Africa, the people of Umofia. Women are clearly valuable to the society, yet they derive no social rights or status that is proportional to that value. Achebe does not depict all the men of Umofia to be ignorant followers of the ideology of male machismo; some are cognizant of the actual value of the female gender. His criticism of the unjust status of women is reflected through the character Uchendu, an man wise with old age, points out that "Mother is Supreme."

It's true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you… That is why we say that mother is supreme. (p. 134)

The Umofia society is outdated, dominated by tradition, superstitions, and fear rather than reason. I contend that our conventional wisdom today, in our age of reason, continues to be dominated by the same ideological viewpoint that Achebe criticizes. Men today continue to characterize the sensitivity of a woman as a weakness. Many hold to the idea that women, despite the existence of facts otherwise, are not capable of all the tasks that men are. Intrinsically they are aware that women are indispensable, but when it comes to expressing equality in discussions, actions, or among other things, payroll, the expressed value is not commensurate with the indispensability.

Achebe was right to remind Okonwo, representative of the dominant male figure present in some amount in all men today, that the women are indeed supreme. I argue that failing to heed this message is not only unbefitting of our age of reason, but incredibly harmful to our society as a whole.

Women in the Umofia culture were treated as second class citizens. It was an insult for a man to be called a woman. When describing how Okonwo could kill a man's spirit, Achebe has Okonwo say to a title less man "This meeting is for men." (p. 28) Today, we are more politically correct, so a politician would not dare make such a sexist comment, but the mentality exists and it can be observed among children. Children have yet to learn how to be politically correct so their words honestly reflect their inner thoughts. So, you can go to any middle school play ground and hear little Nathan insult the new boy at school by saying that he throws or runs "like a girl." However, it is not an insult if Jenny can throw or run like Johnny.

Okonwo comments many times that he thought that his daughter, Ezinma, who he felt had the right sprit, one his manliness connected with, "should have been a boy." (p. 64) In many cultures today, particularly amongst the world's uneducated poor, a boy is preferred to a girl. In rural India, even now, a girl is seen as a burden, because she will have to be married off someday. Unlike Umofia culture, in Indian society there is a "groom price" or dowry to pay. For many fathers the happiest day of their lives are when they have successfully been able to marry off all of their daughters. In China, the one child policy has been criticized primarily because mothers abort their pregnancy if they find out that they are pregnant with a girl. Everyone there wants their one child to be a boy.

Sensitivity in women is also seen as a weakness. Okonwo tells violent, "manly" stories, while Nowye's mother tells stories of "the tortoise and his wily ways" or of the time there was a "quarrel between Earth and Sky." (p. 53) This stigma, that sensitivity is weakness, exists in our own society. Men in their prime are taught not to cry, or be otherwise "too" sensitive. I don't know how I know that, but from personal experience I know that I would feel extremely uncomfortable if I were to cry in public. It is ok for children, old men, or women to do cry however, because, as the perception has developed, they are weak. Anger and violence were great manly qualities. I can only surmise that in our society if men were all a lot less manly we would all undoubtedly be better off.

The men of Umofia dominated their households, rather they ruled as a despot rules his kingdom; with an iron fist and without any challenges to his authority. Women were to be submissive, faithful, and carry out their chores, or else risk being beaten physically. Might literally made right and was the source of power. Men were not punished for beating their wives. In one instance a man had so badly abused his wife, and for so long that she fled to her father's home under the protection of her brothers. The man went to the tribal court and the court ordered the woman to return if the man promised to bring her family some palm wine. After the trial the elders, or judges of the court commented to each other, " I don't know why such a trifle should come before the [court]." (p. 94)

Women were asked how many men she had "lain with" prior to her wedding, and the expected answer was none, where as men were allowed to marry as many women as they could support, and of course they could "lay" as many times has he wants before marrying another. Luckily in our society this aspect of gender inequality has been eliminated, if the occasional occurrences in the Mormon community in Utah are discounted.

Women of our society are certainly better off than women of the Umofia society, but they generally continue to hold a lower social status than men. The most obvious indicators are women's salaries, occupation of leadership positions in government, enterprise, and in fields involving science and technology. Women's salaries trail the men's by about twenty five percent in similar jobs. Despite having successful head of state predecessors such as Margaret Thatcher in England, Indira Gandhi in India, Catherine of Russia among others, a woman has yet to be elected to the presidency in our own country. Indeed, even at our own university, women were not permitted to attend until the early seventies. Finally a quick calculation of the number of women to men in the engineering school in our own time will tell you that the male gender continues to outnumber women in the technical subject areas, but of the women that are present here, it is clear that they perform just as well as their male counterparts.

Umofia females were capable and so were responsible for the execution of many important functions. Foremost was the task of bearing and then raising children. They cooked food, told stories, and orchestrated numerous other household responsibilities; they even chased down stray cows. A rare few had special positions, such as the priestess who prophesized. They performed laborious agricultural tasks as well. Women today are similarly capable and prove it daily. They simultaneously are mothers, professionals, and leaders. They are now more frequently seen in the arenas of professional sport and military combat.

Nonetheless, despite proving themselves equal to the task in every opportunity, conventional wisdom still holds that women are not as capable as men in physically and mentally intensive tasks, that they are just too weak. I suggest to subscribers of this viewpoint to watch a woman giving birth. I doubt that any man who has been present in the delivery room during birth would ever call another woman weak.

A woman's title of Nneka, or mother supreme as Achebe terms it is well deserved. Further, this theme of women being more accepting than men is archetypal. We call our country, the motherland, not the fatherland. A ship, a place of refuge during an ocean voyage, is referred to as female. The Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore often described India as "jananni" or accepting mother, when urging her sons to defend India in his poetry and songs during her quest for independence from Britain. This is very similar to Lady Liberty welcoming the world immigrants from Ellis Island with

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (excerpt from"The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus)

Lady liberty is yet another example of the archetypal character of woman accepting those who have been rejected elsewhere. If we were truly a society of uncompromising reason we would automatically give women an equal status in society; they have clearly earned it.

Finally, I would like to give two examples of how our society as a whole is suffering as a result of the gender inequality evident in Achebe's novel as well as in our own society. While President Bush visited Africa over the summer, two prominent African presidents (men) wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post contending that the agricultural education provided by American farmers had been ineffective in raising agricultural efficiency in their continent and also that the AIDS virus has been spreading rapidly there as a result of the African woman's lack of power, status, and social rights.

It seems that American and European farmers had been going to African villages to teach the locals how to farm more efficiently. The classes were attended (of course) by the village men. Despite their efforts, the American's were perplexed as to why the methods they had taught were not being put to use. It turns out that women actually do the majority of the labor and planning involved in farming, and they had not been allowed by the village men to attend any of the classes, nor was the information properly conveyed to them from the men.

In the case of the spread of AIDS, it was found that women did not have the social authority to deny a man, usually her (often unfaithful) husband from sexual contact, nor require that he make use of contraceptives. So if the woman has AIDS to begin with, she spread it to her husband, who might spread it to some one else, and of course her child is then born with AIDS as well. The multiplier effect is tremendous, and very much a factor in Africa's, and so the world's AIDS epidemic. I feel it is important to note that as Achebes' story is about African people, I feel that examples from that region of the world are best though there are of course similar examples elsewhere. Women in America are much more prone to being raped than men.

Achebe depiction of the inequality of women in a society that is ruled by tradition and fear rather than reason is similar in many ways to our society. We continue to deny women social status and worth commensurate with their actual value, and it is not befitting our age of reason. Furthermore, as the AIDS example demonstrates, there are significant consequences for men as well as women resulting from such unequal treatment. We would do well to heed Achebes' reminder that "Mother is Supreme."

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