Efuru

“I am sure you will like this gin. Nwabuzo had it buried in the ground last year when there was rumour that policemen were sent to search her house. When the policemen left, finding nothing, Nwabuzo was still afraid and left it in the ground. A week later, she fell ill and was rushed to the hospital where she remained for six months. She came back only a week ago. So the gin is a very good one.”

This passage is an example of how Nwapa weaves information about Nigeria’s political and social situation into dialogue. Efuru tells the story of the gin straightforwardly, as if none of the events—like Nwabuzo being raided by the police or falling ill and remaining in the hospital for six months—were out of the ordinary. Bringing the dialogue back around to the gin creates humor; the point of the anecdote is that the gin is well-aged, but the events that led to its aging reveal much about the Igbo people’s struggles at that time.

“They did not see the reason why Adizua should not marry another woman since according to them two men do not live together. To them Efuru was a man, since she could not reproduce.”

After a year of marriage, Efuru’s lack of fertility becomes a concern. This passage is the first that discusses the perception that she is less than a woman because of her inability to conceive—a theme that the rest of the novel develops. “They,” in this case, are the neighbors. The short passage foreshadows the townspeople’s willingness to gossip and spread false rumors about Efuru.

“My dear husband, don’t sell me,

My dear husband, don’t kill me.

Listen to me first before

You pass your judgement.

My dear husband, forgive me.

My dear husband, don’t kill me.

Let me tell you how we danced,

Let me tell you how we danced.

My dear husband, my love is true.

My dear husband, I am constant.

My dear husband, don’t be angry.

I went to dance with my mates.”

Efuru goes out to dance with the women in her age group one night, and Adizua becomes angry because she is not at home when he returns. She sings this song to cajole him into not being angry with her for neglecting her wifely duties. The lengths to which Efuru goes to explain her short absence and the level of anger it provokes in Adizua are bitterly ironic given that later, he disappears frequently and then abandons her altogether. The passage shows the imbalance between the care Efuru takes to appease her husbands and the lack of consideration they show for her.

“What is money? Can a bag of money go for an errand for you? Can a bag of money look after you in your old age? Can a bag of money mourn you when you are dead? A child is more valuable than money.”

This passage expresses the widely held belief that having children is more important than having money. The belief reveals the importance of relationships in Igbo culture—particularly the importance of the younger generation caring for their elders. Children represent social wealth because a family with many children will have a strong support system that carries into future generations.

“My advice is this my dear child: be patient and wait. It is only the patient man that drinks good water. Some men are not fit to be called men. They have no sense. They are like dogs that do not know who feeds them. Leave Adizua with this woman. He will soon be tired of her and you will resume your position again.”

Ajanupu counsels Efuru to wait for Adizua. The idea that a woman should wait for an errant husband to tire of his “new” woman and return is unappealing to Efuru, yet that is what most of the women in her life have done. Efuru needs a husband, even a bad one, to maintain her “position” as a respectable married woman. This idea is one the novel critiques.

“Perhaps self-imposed suffering appeals to her. It does not appeal to me. I know I am capable of suffering for greater things. But to suffer for a truant husband, an irresponsible husband like Adizua is to debase suffering.”

This passage is Efuru’s response to Ossai’s advice, which, like Ajanupu’s, is to wait for Adizua like Ossai waited for her own husband. Efuru’s distinction between self-imposed suffering for a man and real suffering raises an important point about the other forms of suffering that people in Efuru’s culture undergo. Nwapa invites the reader to explore the types of suffering that come from outside sources such as hunger, political oppression, and the patriarchal system. Efuru understands that her life is worthwhile outside of her marriage, even though she strives to remain amenable to her feckless husbands.

“When policemen came to search for home-made gin, it was hidden away in the mud wardrobe for the policemen did not know there were such things as mud wardrobes.”

This passage is one of many references to the police raids that plague the town. A mud wardrobe is a “room in a room”: a secret hiding place for valuables. It looks like a shelf from the outside, so policemen do not realize it opens into another room. Nwapa never states that the policemen are white, but the fact that they do not know about the mud wardrobes means that they are at the very least from outside the community. This harkens to the colonial practice of European officials hiring Africans as police officers to enforce their rule locally. In both cases, the intent of police raids is to crush local autonomy so that people must rely economically on the colonial power.

“She has beauty, wealth and good breeding. Why should any man treat her like this?”

In this passage, women are speaking about Efuru after Adizua has abandoned her. This question remains throughout the novel, as Gilbert acts just as inconsiderately to Efuru before she leaves him. The question asks the reader to consider whether the fault lies with the men, the culture, Efuru, or a combination of factors.

“We say that a woman has left her husband, but never say that a husband has left his wife. Wives leave husbands not the other way round.”

Efuru laughs when a woman makes this statement because in her mind, men and women are of equal status. The statement implies that men are free and autonomous whether or not they are married, while women are bound to their husbands and must choose between marriage and freedom.

“What do you mean by ‘hawu moch’? For months I toiled in the farm, morning and afternoon and now you come and say ‘hawu moch’; ‘hawu moch’ your own too.’”

When a British woman comes to Nwosu and Nwabata’s stall to buy yams, they cannot understand her question, “How much?”. Nwosu takes it as an insult, as if the woman is pointing out something bad about his product. The interaction is humorous, but it also underscores the disconnect between the locals and their English colonizers. Since the novel is written in English, readers may forget that Nwapa’s characters are speaking Igbo. Very few have gone to school and even fewer “know book,” i.e., know how to read English. The woman’s assumption that the locals speak her language reveals the mindset that British culture is (or should be) dominant, even in a place with its own customs and language.

“I went to Onicha to buy provisions for my stall in the market. Whilst there, I learnt that the yam trade was good so I plunged into it and made a good profit. […] The natives don’t know what to do with yams. Some yams are so big that two men cannot lift one.”

Gilbert is speaking about a remote place four days away by boat that does not have the same farming scarcity as Efuru’s town. They seem to be a self-contained community that has little contact with outsiders. With the contrast between the communities, Nwapa makes a subtle point about the difference between living in peace versus being hounded by the colonial police. Gilbert is also echoing the rhetoric of colonialism, extracting a profit from “natives” who “don’t know what to do” with their resources.

“‘Immediately I returned, I told my mother and she sacrificed to our ancestors.’

‘How is that, you go to Church?’

‘What about that? I shall give the pastor some money to thank God for it.’”

In the same conversation as the one about the yams, Gilbert tells Efuru that someone nearly robbed him in the Onicha market. Knowing that Gilbert is Christian, Efuru asks how he could engage in traditional practices that the Church considers pagan. Gilbert’s response shows that the practices of the two religions parallel one another, even as colonialism has sought to position Christianity as correct.

“Nwashike, the white men are little gods.”

Nnona is telling Nwashike about her successful operation. Throughout the novel, the tension between the benefits of Western medicine and the brutality of the colonial state compels the reader to wonder whether colonialism was good for Nigeria and countries like it, and whether Nigeria could have gained the benefits without the costs exacted on the population’s lives and resources.

“What I have noticed so far each time I dreamt about the woman of the lake was that in the mornings when I went to the market I sold all the things I took to the market. Debtors came of their own accord to pay their debts.”

In the eyes of society, Efuru’s business sense can never compensate for her lack of a child. Her dreams about Uhamiri bring her good fortune, but no amount of wealth can replace the ability to have a child. Uhamiri is the goddess of fertility, and without that, her gifts of beauty and wealth seem hollow.

“‘How many women in this town who worship Uhamiri have children? Answer me Amede, how many? All right let’s count them: Ogini Azogu,’ she counted off one finger, ‘she had a son before she became a worshipper of Uhamiri. Since then she has not got another child. Two, Nwanyafor Ojimba, she has no child at all. Three, Uzoechi Negenege, no child.’”

Omirima is making a causal connection between women becoming worshippers of Uhamiri and their lack of children. She is poisoning Amede against Efuru to the point that she tells Amede that Efuru has used medicine on her and Gilbert to keep them from finding him a second wife. The groundless claim foreshadows the more serious accusation she will make later in the novel.

“This was the fifteenth year of her married life and, when she looked back on those years, she saw that they made up one long suffering. She could not attribute their poverty to laziness. Her husband was not lazy. It was their chi that was responsible. Her husband had worked very hard in his farm and she too had contributed in her small way. But they were always in want. The sense of insecurity had aged her a great deal.”

Nwabata is looking back on her difficult life with Nwosu after realizing that they will have to ask Efuru for another loan. The persistence of misfortune despite the couple’s best efforts leads Nwabata to blame their chi, or fate, which is intertwined with the Igbo emphasis on karma across generations. Nwapa comments that the insecurity has taken its toll on Nwabata—more than Nwabata realizes—but like most of the women other than Efuru, she has reconciled herself to suffering through her married life.

“Have you not heard that thieves broke into Nwosu’s house last night and carried away everything? They carried everything, swept the house and left the dust on the front door.”

Chapter 12 opens with yet another misfortune befalling Nwosu and Nwabata. Nwapa uses their subplot to question whether having children is more important than having money. The community always helps Nwosu and Nwabata, and somehow, they manage to stay afloat. However, they were forced to pawn Ogea, their eldest daughter, to Efuru as a slave. Nwabata has vowed not to pawn any of their other children. In extreme poverty, children function as collateral.

“You see it is one of those things we men cannot avoid. I went to Ndoni, met this girl, and the result is a bouncing baby boy. I have not told my mother either, though I know she will be very glad.”

For Gilbert, a man having extramarital sex is a fact of life. He does not consider that his infidelity might upset Efuru; to the extent that he worries about her reaction, his concern centers on her response as a childless woman, not as a wife. However, he pleads with Efuru to confess her unfaithfulness after Omirima’s false accusation. The double standard reflects a cultural mindset in which men are free, but women are subservient to their husbands.

“The world is changing. It is now the world of the white people. We and our grandfathers don’t seem to count these days.”

Omirima is telling Amede about her daughter-in-law, who has studied abroad and adopted Western ways. She did not want her children to play with Omirima’s daughter because Omirima’s daughter had yaws, a contagious bacterial disease. While Omirima and Amede agree that for generations, children have suffered from yaws so as not to become ill with it when they are older, the daughter-in-law says that it is not inevitable that children should suffer from yaws at all. Omirima cannot understand this way of thinking. She condemns her daughter-in-law for adopting “white” ways. In this passage, Nwapa shows the transition happening in postcolonial Igbo society.

“The white slave dealers gave the people the cannons in exchange for slaves. The white slave dealers were the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English or the French. The people regarded them as white men, their nationality did not make any difference.”

The description of the origins of the cannon is one of the longest narrative passages in the novel. Nwapa usually allows the characters to speak for themselves about their history, but in this case, she gives the reader a precise picture of historical events. The passage is not out of character for the novel, however, because the author couches the discussion in a description of Nwashike’s family.

“She was angry because her husband, with whom she had lived for nearly six years, could, at that stage of their married life, hide something from her. Angry because she had again loved in vain. She had deceived herself all these years, as she deceived herself when she was Adizua’s wife. She was filled with hate and resentment, qualities that were foreign to her nature.”

Throughout the novel, Efuru has done everything in her power to show her husbands how much she loves them, while they have treated her progressively worse as the relationships continued. When Gilbert returns from his time in jail, she has an epiphany that she was wrong to believe he loved her in the same way she loved him.

“Few women wouldn’t be satisfied with this. But Efuru, good natured as she was, did not even find out what the foolish act was. Since her husband did not steal, she was at peace.”

Nwapa’s commentary that Efuru is unusually accepting of Gilbert’s vague explanation sheds light on the nature of Efuru’s self-deception. By not questioning Gilbert, she can maintain the fantasy that he is a good husband. Earlier in the conversation, Gilbert said that he did not want to tell Efuru about his imprisonment for fear that she would leave him. This would suggest that Gilbert does care about Efuru, but it could also be an excuse. He has already been deceptive about his son, so the reader cannot trust that his word is reliable.

“Utuosu did not kill me. I am still alive. That means that I am not an adulterous woman. So here I am. I have ended where I began - in my father’s house. The difference is that now my father is dead.”

The narrative comes full circle with Efuru’s return to her father’s house. The significance of his being dead is that things are not the same as they were when she left to marry Adizua. The world is changing; his death severed the community’s last direct link to the slave trade, and Efuru has had two marriages end and experienced the death of her only child.