Second Class Citizen

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1974

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-10

Chapters 11-13

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “The Daily Minders”

At the library, Adah works for Mrs. Konrad, an older Czech woman. She struggles to become familiar with the other assistants, who are fashionable young women. Though people rarely read fiction in Nigeria, Adah begins to read modern novels in the English fashion. Francis refuses to care for the children while Adah works, and the narrator explains that most Nigerians in England sent their children to live with white foster parents. Francis insists on getting foster parents, but Adah wants to wait and get the children into a nursery. Francis is being pressured by their neighbors to assert himself more in his marriage, even though Adah presents reasonable arguments. The housing situation deteriorates, as the family must keep quiet to avoid upsetting the landlord. Francis is gaining weight while Adah progresses further in her pregnancy. The children are not allowed outside, and everyone is kept cramped in the small apartment.

Adah becomes friends with Janet, a white woman who married a northern Nigerian man named Babalola. Babalola came to England with money, but he was not able to maintain it. He and Janet help Adah find a “daily minder” to watch the children during the day.

Francis fails his second exam, and he blames Adah even though he does not study or attend lectures.

The daily minder, Trudy, does not take good care of Adah’s children. Adah finds her with a man during the day, with Adah’s children, Titi and Vicky, playing in garbage in her backyard. Adah suspects that Trudy is a sex worker, and she reports Trudy to the police. The police ultimately do nothing, and Trudy lies to them about her care of the children. Adah is shocked to hear Trudy lie; she realizes that white people, like Black people, may be good or bad.

Titi stops speaking altogether. Adah finds out that Francis beats Titi if she speaks Yoruba, one of the native languages in Nigeria. Titi falls behind in language development in both Yoruba and English. Adah tries to get the children into a nursery, but she must continue sending them to Trudy in the meantime.

Chapter 5 Summary: “An Expensive Lesson”

One morning, Adah is tired, and Vicky, her son, is upset. Francis is irritated with them for waking him and reluctantly agrees to take the children to Trudy. Vicky does not want Adah to leave, and he holds onto her as long as possible. Adah complains about her frequent hunger, as all her money goes to the rent and Francis’s education. She avoids the library, as the women always talk about prospective happy marriages. She returns today with a premonition that Vicky is in danger.

At the library, Adah finds out that Vicky is ill. She goes to Trudy’s house to meet the doctor and take Vicky to the hospital. The doctors run tests, and Adah suspects that they might plan to steal his organs. She fears that Vicky might die, and reflects on how she would handle the situation in Nigeria. A nurse tells her she must leave Vicky’s room, and she goes to wait in the hallway. Adah notes that a male child is worth more than a female child in Nigerian culture, but she does not explain this to the nurse. Francis comes to the hospital; he cries and does not comfort Adah.

Vicky is diagnosed with meningitis, and Adah decides to confront Trudy about it. Francis is upset that Adah is not behaving like a traditional wife in Nigeria. Adah gives him an ultimatum that she will withhold her wages if Francis does not comply with her. At Trudy’s, Trudy tries to tell Adah that Vicky caught the virus at home. Adah loses control of herself, attacking Trudy and threatening to kill her. Miss Sterling, Trudy’s direct superior, listens to Adah’s story and offers to place Titi and Vicky in a nursery. Adah leaves in tears, and Trudy, no longer an approved child-minder, moves to a new home to avoid Adah’s anger.

Chapter 6 Summary: “Sorry, No Coloureds”

Adah and Francis receive notice that they are being evicted. Adah suspects that this is due to the neighbors being jealous after Vicky recovered from the meningitis. Most other landlords will not rent to Black applicants, but Adah is not willing to accept discrimination. The landlord and landlady of the apartment consistently accuse Francis and Adah of being a nuisance, and the other Nigerian tenants sing abusive songs and insult their family.

Adah calls a prospective landlady and holds her nose to sound like a white person. The landlady agrees to a visit. Both Francis and Adah are happy, with Francis calling her “darling” and offering to get the children from the nursery. Adah’s friend Janet is also excited, and tells Adah that a two-room apartment is a flat. However, once the landlady sees that Adah and Francis are Black, she claims that the rooms have been taken. The couple is shocked, and Adah recalls how Jesus was born in a manger.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

As Adah adjusts to life in England, she is hindered by Francis, her neighbors’ influence on her living situation, and the needs of her children and family. Though Adah has gotten a job at the library and her pay sustains her family, she lacks Francis’s support. The behavior of Adah’s neighbors and Francis’s attempts to assert control over Adah reflect a deviation from Nigerian culture to which Francis is clinging. Traditionally, Adah should not be the primary breadwinner for the family; Francis should be bringing in income, and raising children should fall to Adah as a wife and mother. However, Francis is supposedly studying for his accounting exams while Adah is working; this reverses traditional roles, as Francis, not Adah, is at home to take care of the children. When the neighbors tell Francis that he needs to assert control, this is, in part, because he has already lost the standard element of control that a husband in England or Nigeria would have—that of being the primary earner in the family.

Francis refuses to care for the children; he sees caretaking as part of the wife/mother role that Adah is supposed to fill, leaving Francis with only the responsibility of studying. Francis does not attend lectures and classes, yet, when he fails his next exam, he blames Adah for not doing enough for the family. Francis takes advantage of the “freedom” of being in England, which is more a freedom from the control of his parents and other family in Nigeria, while piling on both the responsibilities Adah had in Nigeria and the new responsibilities she is expected to take on in England.

White foster families and daily minders reflect The Pull Toward Modernity and the Imperial Center—the idea that Black children in England will have a brighter future if they are cared for and surrounded by white people and values. Francis asserts that all Black people are regarded as second-class citizens in England. By that logic, Titi and Vicky are not safe under the care of a white person, who is likely to view the children as less valuable than white children; this justifies Adah’s reluctance to have a white family take in her children. Trudy, who is tasked with caring for Vicky and Titi, proves this by leaving Adah’s children to play in the trash heaps behind her house, ultimately resulting in Vicky catching meningitis. Trudy lies to the police and her superiors about Adah’s children, breaking down Adah’s belief that white people are universally honest and well-meaning.

Although the ordeal gets Titi and Vicky into a nursery, the toll that the experience takes on Adah culminates in her breakdown in front of Trudy and Miss Sterling. Adah associates her angry outburst with her Nigerian upbringing; this suggests that the English are not less emotional, but less expressive of their emotions, leading Adah to believe that she, too, needs to suppress her emotions to function in English society.

The novel suggests that standards of acceptable behavior are different between white and Black people in England with white people, such as Trudy, being allowed to express more emotion than Black people, like Adah. When Trudy is indignant and upset about the accusations against her and the prospect of losing her job, she is not seen as unreasonable by the other characters. However, Adah’s reasonable reaction to injustice is framed as an inappropriate outburst; this is because of her ethnicity rather than the actual facts of the situation.

Adah has internalized the racism she has experienced in England, reflected by how she frames her own outburst as tied to her ethnic origin. She sees herself in the same way as white English people regard people of color. The landlady has this same perception, which is why she rejects Francis and Adah as applicants. Adah notes a parallel between the treatment of the biblical Mary and Joseph at the time when Jesus was born with how the landlady treats her and Francis. Like Adah and Francis, Jesus was a person of color, rejected in his own time. Francis sees Adah’s statement as one of arrogance, in which she is claiming to be the mother of a new messiah or religious savior. However, it seems more likely that Adah is noting how English people judge Nigerian immigrants with prejudice without understanding their capacity for virtue.