THE FUNCTION OF IRONY IN RECONSTRUCTING ...

JELLiC : Journal of English Language, Literature and Culture Volume 4, Number 2, July 2015 - ISSN: 2304-6120 http://www.jellic-international-journal.org

Submitted: May 2015 / Accepted June 2015 / Published July2015

THE FUNCTION OF IRONY IN RECONSTRUCTING GENDER/FEMININE ETHOS IN ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART Eunice Fonyuy Fombele, PhD Department of English, University of Buea Abstract This article seeks to demonstrate a contrary perspective to the predominant opinion in critical writings which hold that Achebe’s Things Fall Apart reinforces acquiescence in gender inequalities. It argues that Achebe actually recommends with ironic subtlety a more gender equitable society. Thus, the article postulates that the functioning of irony as deconstructive tool demonstrates that the tragedy in Things Fall Apart occurs as a result of an overwhelming power of patriarchy that Achebe purposefully deconstructs, and the masculinist society’s evasion of a balancing feminine ethos. The focus is to approach Things Fall Apart from the perspective of what Adrienne Rich calls feminist “re-vision” – the act of “entering an old text from a new critical direction” (35). Using the theory of irony, a gender relations reading of the narrative will be done in order to validate the view that, through the functions of irony, the text deconstructs patriarchy and makes a case for gender flexibility while it establishes that the feminine is an interesting principle in Things Fall Apart. Keywords: Irony, Reconstruction, Gender and Feminine ethos, Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart 11


Introduction Views about gender in Africa have not only been the subject of literary discourse but have also been the source of much controversy. Issues of Gender orient the narrative processes in Achebe’s oeuvre and the genesis of this gender oriented narrative ethic can be established in Things Fall Apart. Using gender as a category of analysis, some critics of Things Fall Apart argue that Achebe’s conscious marginalization of the womenfolk results in his creation of women who are more of outsiders than insiders in the complex drama of existence (Merun Nasser, Judith Van Allen and Winters Marjorie). As a matter of fact, the existing plethora of critical analyses of gender in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, see the author’s portrayal of female characters as a cultural/sociological truth and as the author’s conscious, intentional and psychological eroding of women’s human status. Accordingly, some readings of Things Fall Apart, with gender on the agenda, give the impression that Achebe’s treatment of women validates a world of male chivalry and macho heroism. Mary Modupe Kolawole insists that unlike writers such as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Sembene Ousmane or Driss Chraibi, Achebe makes no pretensions about women playing prominent roles in his earliest works (111). She maintains that Achebe’s literary debut is largely a dramatisation of macho heroism in which women have a limited defined role. That it is a world of ostentatious male heroism, patriarchy and patrimony where Okonkwo’s individual quest coincides with the society’s collective ethos on success and achievement. Rose Ancholonu also remarks that Achebe’s conception of womanhood in his early novels is generally limited, both in scope and profundity (312). Obiama Nnaemeka maintains that Achebe’s major concerns are women, sexism, silence, power and marginality (281). She argues that the “most troubling aspect remains the depersonalization of women, especially in Things Fall Apart” (282). Also, Juliet Okonkwo explicitly states that the issue of the objectification of and disregard for women remains a constant 12


feature in Achebe’s novels. She shows how “through the pages of Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God … women come and go with mounds of foo-foo, pots of water, market baskets; fetching kola, being scolded and beaten before they disappear behind the huts of the compounds” (36). Grace Okereke, on her part, has addressed the question of speech as an index of woman’s self-concept in Chinua Achebe’s novels and has maintained that the dialect of the unlettered traditional woman in the traditional novels – Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God – is an index of her selfimage, her self-concept and her society’s views about her. In this connection, her speech portrays her subservient socio-cultural position in the society and her inferior position under man. The problem spotted out is that most criticism of gender in Things Fall Apart is based on Western transmutations of gender rather than on what and how gender was and meant in pre-colonial Igbo society, the main setting of the novel. In this regard, critics of gender identify an artistic invisibility of women and the feminine, coupled with an inferiorised and stereotyped characterisation of women as Achebe’s necessary technique for proving man’s undisputed superiority and masculinity. Also, Rose Mezu notes that, “feminists would ever after pick issues with Achebe for his female portraiture” (338). But, Bob Thompson in “Things Fall into Place” reports that: Achebe has expressed frustration at frequently being misunderstood on this point, saying that “I want to sort of scream that Things Fall Apart is on the side of women...And that Okonkwo is paying the penalty for his treatment of women; that all his problems, all the things he did wrong, can be seen as offenses against the feminine.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/) What motivates this study is Achebe’s position on the gender/feminine issues in his works and the fact that Nkiru Nzegwu, in her redefinition of a gender discourse that is backed by African bioethics, points out the danger of relying on 13


definitions from a “Western body of knowledge” (560 ). Also, writing about the invention of woman in Africa, Niara Sudarkasa and Oyeronke Oyewumi stress that although the African society was strongly hierarchical, gender, a concept foreign to the precolonial world-view, did not play any meaningful role in determining power relations and subjectivity. Niara Sudarkasa de-emphasized gender as a designation for behavior in social relations. She observes that “many other areas of traditional culture, including personal dress and adornment, religious ceremonials, and intra-gender patterns of comportment, suggest that Africans often de-emphasize gender in relation to seniority and other insignia of status” (36). Oyewumi’s work draws similar conclusions in interpreting pre-colonial African women. Her study which is anchored in a discussion of Western philosophical, conceptual and linguistic traditions argues that patterns of defining human bodies in social and cultural terms is not a feature of the African society. With these motivations, the following questions are answered in this research: How is patriarchy exposed and challenged in Things Fall Apart? What textual elements suggest an alternative to the prevailing ideology in the text? How is the feminine ethos reconstructed in Things Fall Apart? This article maintains that the functioning of irony as deconstructive feminism, as critical discursive strategies, or what V. N. Volosinov calls “evaluative accents” (81) of the gender ideology, prove that the tragedy in Things Fall Apart occurs as a result of the masculinist society’s evading of a feminine ethos and an overwhelming power of patriarchy that Achebe purposefully deconstructs and in turn reconstructs a balancing feminine ethos. The term gender as used in this paper is simply the physical and/or social conditions of being male or female, and the consideration of qualities that are usually attributed to women. The function of irony is discussed in this study as a way of talking back, there by investigating the power of the unsaid in the narration of gender relations. Irony is seen as a subversive 14


function often connected to the view that it is a “self-critical”, “self-knowing”, “self-reflexive mode” (H. White 37) that has a potential to offer a challenge to sites of discourses. Such a challenge is the ability to undermine and overturn, revealing gaps, absences and silences and it has what P. Stallybrass and A. White have termed “politically transformative power” (201). Operating almost as a “guerrilla warfare” (L. Hutcheon 13), irony is said to work to change how people interpret discourse. The operating premise is that “single vision produces worse illusions than double vision” (D. Haraway 196). In intentional terms, irony works as the undermining-from-within of the politically repressed (A. Berrendonner 239). This is the functioning of irony that has specifically been called “counter-discursive” in its ability to contest dominant habits of mind and expression (R. Terdiman 12) that the victims of the hegemonic culture under subversion take as normal. Irony is used as a particularly potent means of critique of or resistance to sexism and ideologies of essential gender difference deeply entrenched in traditional beliefs and practices and in Western mediations of gender. The ironic function used for this paper, therefore, has bearings with the unsaid, silences, omissions and gaps that are revealed through the ironic intent of the real and the implied author. Therefore, interpreters use the power of the said in the text to reveal the unsaid, that is nevertheless said, and to unsay what previous critics have said while insisting that this challenge is the defining semantic condition of irony. For critics looking at the functions of irony, any meaning is constructed as the result of an opposition, which can be read as ideologically grounded. The functions of irony describe, at once, both pair of equally valid conflicting oppositions, and helps to identify a prevailing ideology that needs to be subverted, undermined, challenged, or otherwise called into question – an ideological view that suggests, for example, that one gender is superior to another. The function of irony in gender relations is used to re-visit and re-vision textual evidence in Things Fall Apart. This textual data 15


demonstrates how Achebe both reflects and shapes attitudes that have held women back and the consequence of such attitudes. The next sub-section demonstrates how through the narrative voice, tone and mode, Achebe’s ironic communicative competence exposes and challenges the overwhelming power of patriarchy in Things Fall Apart and in turn reconstructs a balancing feminine ethos. Deconstructing Patriarchy through Irony This study interprets Things Fall Apart, as Achebe’s potent statement on the need for retrieving a balanced feminine ethos if society has to retain its stability. In line with Herbert G. Klein’s study of male identities which demonstrates that, “although it is certainly true that Achebe mainly shows us male protagonists in a male-dominated society, this does not necessarily mean that he approves of this situation” (par. 1), this article identifies narrative mode and tone that reveals Achebe’s irony and ironic intentions. In this paper, irony functions to reveal how the power of the unsaid can help us negotiate the gender relations and identity in Things Fall Apart. It reveals a heavy handed patriarchy that Achebe exposes and challenges through the functions of the technique of irony. The first instance is Achebe’s use of yam, “king of the crops” (24), to contrast the empty male ego and show of ownership of yam with the important role women play in the survival of the life of the yam. The narrator notes that, “Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another was a great man indeed” (23). Achebe demonstrates how this all-important crop stands for manliness, but goes ahead in the next page to give his ironic contrast, “Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. ... The women weeded the yam three times at definite periods in the life of the yams, neither early nor late” (emphasis mine 24). Achebe’s ironic juxtaposition insists on women’s important and timely interventions in the life of the yam. This ironic contrast demonstrates the indispensable role women 16


play for yam production to be successful. Okonkwo’s obsession with greatness, measured against yam production, which women are not culturally aloud to grow, is then revealed through ironic function as a sexist attitude that neither recognises women’s compelling role in the life of the yam nor shares with women the ownership of the important crop that determines greatness in Omoufia. Of course, without the nurturing role of women who toil to sustain the life of the yam, as they would do with the life of a child in their mothering roles, the likes of Okonkwo would probably not achieve their greatness. Achebe ironically demonstrates through narrative indicators that women’s productive role is minimised by patriarchy, the same way their reproductive roles are taken for granted by this same structure. Denise Thompson in Radical Feminism Today argues that the first purpose of feminism is to expose male domination in order to challenge it (1). Achebe uses the yam to expose an androcentric society where the man wants to define himself as everything and the woman nothing. Through his ironic intention, Achebe is seen to continually deconstruct patriarchy in the narrative by etching the indispensability of woman as man’s partner. Achebe further achieves a self-deprecating and selfpositioning function of irony by signalling his modesty to speak for the marginalised and self-marginalising in order to help correct their self doubts and weaknesses. The exposition of patriarchy is demonstrated through Achebe’s revelation of the sexist manner of arrogating local authority, especially in the domain of justice. Local authority is exerted only by the likes of Okonkwo, a crude chauvinists and one of “the nine masked spirits who administered justice in the clan” (121). The Uzowulu and Mgbafo trial portrays an example of the overbearing role accorded the male folk in the justice system of the clan. The nine masked spirit judges are made of men only. With ironic intent through narrative explanation, Achebe succinctly points out the androcentric nature of that system. The narrator explains that, “It 17


was clear from the way the crowd stood or sat that the ceremony was for men. There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe like outsiders. The titled men and elders sat on their stools waiting for the trials to begin” (62). Achebe’s ironic judgment in the preceding statements is clear. The unsaid indicated by the voice of the omniscient narrator points to the fact that something is wrong with a system of justice that has nine members as men only, while women just look on from the periphery of power. The narrator’s resentment towards such a system can be observed in the simile “like outsiders”. The narrative pitch decries the absence of a moderating female principle from the main decision making body of the system. Achebe has buttressed this ironic intention in an interview with Mezu when she expressed her view about women in Things Fall Apart: Both he [Okonkwo] and his society had weaknesses, which included suppression of the female species and the adoration of power. They paid terrible prices for these. Okonkwo paid a terrible price by being banished forever in the evil forest, and so did the Igbo society by suffering defeat at the hands of an alien civilization (342). From another perspective, Achebe’s ironic competence functions to indicate contradictions seen in women’s traditional roles and gender role attribution as defined by the West. When Okonkwo shuts up his wife, after she tries to enquire after the fate of Ikemefuna, in these words, “do as you are told woman ... when did you become the Ndichie of Umuofia?” (10-11), she takes Ekemefuna in and asks no more questions. Critics and writers like Ifi Amadiume and Nkiru Nzegwu have argued that in some African societies, especially the Igbo, gender transcends the boundaries of sexuality. These critics do not only proffer the fact that Igbo women have more than one gender identity but that the idea of woman for them defines a category of self-assured, determined, empowered and assertive female whose identity is 18


not defined in relation to men. For this reason the studies both contest that gender was a significant social category and affirm women’s spiritual and secular authorities, that hardly provoked rivaling debates until colonial rule instituted the feminization of gender. This feminization of gender as Nzegwu explains is mediated on a Western gender and feminist cultural background that does not reflect the African woman’s pre-colonial cultural space: Western feminist analyses of the condition of women under patriarchy reveal, regardless of the social class or status of women, that the category “woman” defines women as the negative image of men. The ideology of masculinity underlying this patriarchal vision casts women as not just physiologically different, but as opposites. Men are strong and taciturn, women are weak and emotional; men are masters, women are subordinates. (562) The quotation indicates how western gender defines the positioning and conditioning of the category woman in postcolonial Africa using binaries. These gender dichotomies demonstrate that feminine traits are ideologically conceived as negative and weak and masculine traits are valorized in the dominant ideology. Most critics of gender in Things Fall Apart have used this binary parameter to measure Achebe’s women (Merun Nasser and Donald G. Ackley,). The result is that they define women exercising their empowering and assertive roles as subservient and Achebe is accused as a chauvinist who validates such conditions. It is this sexist and gender differential attitude to women in Africa that has caused other critics to de-emphasize gender in defining social relations. Some critics have interpreted Nyoye’s mother’s reaction of silence as subservience and submissiveness (Mezu, Merun and Ackley). Given that Sudarkasa de-emphasizes gender as a designation for behavior in social relations, seniority and other 19


insignia of status, it can be argued that by the standards of African bioethics, Nwoye’s mother remains silent out of respect for her husband (age) and elder (Social position) and not necessarily because she is subservient. After all, I find neither weakness nor inferiority in an African woman submitting to her husband. Nevertheless, Nwoye’s mother does have a voice, albeit muted by the heavy hand of patriarchy that Achebe is constantly exposing and challenging. The narrator’s further comment on Okonkwo’s attitude, “Okonkwo thundered, and stammered” (1011) indicates the negative mode Okonkwo exhibits as he retorts to his wife’s simple question. The analysis of this paper identifies the ludic function of irony here and when inferred, the positive charges like “the affectionate irony of benevolent teasing” (Hutcheon 49) associated with humour and wit could emerge. This function emerges as an estimable characteristic of playfulness in language, akin to punning or even metaphor. Achebe ironically contrasts the speaking silence of the wife with the violent reactions of Okonkwo to her simple question. This ironic comparison demonstrates that the best answer to a fool could but be silence, a silence that however speaks in ways that impose the wife’s opinions through other structures that define the essence of life. Achebe ironically reveals Nwoye’s mother’s view point in her role as sharper and nurturer of humankind as she regales her son, Nwoye, with tales of peace and love. Unlike Ikechuku Aloysius Orjinta who sees the narration of stories by women as oppose to epics of war and bloodshed by men as “segregation between masculine stories and feminine stories” (81), the ironic intent reveals how Nwoye’s mother displays a woman’s decisive role and voice, that of preserving culture and shaping Nwoye into a gentle; peace-loving boy, building a balancing feminine principle in his consciousness. The narrator confirms Nwoye’s feelings about this balancing ethos, “Nwoye new that it was right to be masculine and to be violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that his mother used to tell” 20


(37). This is a counter to the manner Okonkwo treats him. The narrator explains: Okonkwo’s first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth. (10) Witness the narrator’s interjection, “At any rate, that was how it looked to his father”. This narrative interpolation reveals Achebe’s ironic intension which is meant to cause the reader to understand that Okonkwo simply reads laziness into the boy’s being because he happens to have a gentle soul. Okonkwo’s resentment for what to him is feminine and negative affects his son’s personality negatively. The rage is contained and it explodes and finds outlet in Nwoye’s embracing of the Western religion, a rebellious act that causes Okonkwo to disown him and consequently the feminine traits that he believes are in control of Nwoye. The ludic function of irony in Things Fall Apart can then be said to be subversive and transgressive in newer, positive senses. Moving along the continuum of the self-protecting function of irony is the provisional function that offers a sense of proviso, contained in a kind of built-in conditional stipulation that undermines any firm and fixed stand. The case of Ojiugo’s encounter with her husband Okonkwo is a glaring example. What is always only interpreted from this encounter is domestic violence (Okonkwo and Nasser) and this means that the interpretation of the text is done with the lens focused only on Okonkwo. This validates the importance critics attach to male characters at the detriment of their female counterparts in the very narrative. But when irony is inferred, one begins to see a subtle rebellious manifestation on the part of the woman. Ojiugo deliberately neglects to prepare Okonkwo’s mid-day meal, 21


choosing instead to go do her hair. The narrator uses this incident to ironically show the importance of the woman’s role in society, even as Okonkwo resents all that is ‘womanish’. Okonkwo is driven to anger because he waits in vain for the evening dish that Ojiugo deliberately refuses to prepare. Her wit is seen in the fact that she exploits the in-built shielding and restraining principle of the sacred week to prove a point. Achebe uses this incident to ironically demonstrate that as an autonomous being, she also needs and has the right to employ her leisure time for her selfbenefit. This incident also conveys a sense of solidarity that exists amongst women. They protect one another under the heavy hand of crude chauvinist husbands like Okonkwo. This spirit of solidarity can be deciphered when Nwoye’s mother tells a lie to protect her co-wife, “‘Did she ask you to feed them before she went?’ ‘Yes’, lied Nwoye’s mother, trying to minimise Ojiugo’s thoughtlessness” (21). Achebe hands women the power to curb men’s irrational behaviour and insensitivity, when exploit the lore of the Week of Peace to their benefit. Also, when the ironic intent is inferred the functioning of irony as distancing is interpreted as a means to a new perspective from which things can be shown and seen differently. H. M. Chevalier has noted that, “[f]rom whatever angle irony is approached, the habit of making or perceiving incongruities has an impressive tendency to broaden the view, leading to the perception of incongruities on a wider and wider scale” (44). The distancing function of the new perspective induced when the ironic intent is inferred reveals that Achebe refuses the tyranny of explicit, inappropriate and undesirable judgments. Rose Chambers has argued, rightly so that, the distancing functioning of irony is the “refusal to be pinned down” (emphasis in the original 55). This is one reason why Achebe laments in an interview, “You see, many people do not read fiction the way it should be read” (Mezu 341). The refusal to be pinned down is a strategic way to be oppositional by exploiting the discourse of power to different ends. Achebe poses Okonkwo as a powerful 22


protagonist but ironically exploits the narrative to register women’s strength as guardians of tradition and communal wealth. As guardians of tradition the women act as priestesses and as guardians of communal wealth the women chase away animals that destroy agricultural products. Also, by coming together as cooks and functionaries during festivities and burial celebration moments, the women demonstrate a remarkable feature of female bonding that is peculiar only to African women. Witness the narrator’s description of the activities of Okonkwo’s wives at such moments: The festival was now only three days away. Okonkwo’s wives had scrubbed the walls and the huts with red earth until they reflected light. They had then drawn patterns on them in white, yellow and dark green. They then set about painting themselves with camwood, and drawing beautiful black patterns on their stomachs and on their backs. The children were also decorated, especially their hair, which was shaved in beautiful patterns. (27) Orjinta refers to these women as “women [who] excel in fashion and house beautification. They are readily available during festivities and religious celebrations to play their artistic, theatrical fashion and artefact roles” (80). Also, Achebe seizes the narrative moment to ironically and vigorously record woman’s powerful rebellion against traditional ethos that sits on her. These rebellious attitudes of women set precedence to women’s rebellions in Modern African literature by both men and women. It is Achebe’s ironic intention that drives Nneka (mother is supreme), the wife of Amadi, to join the Christians after four instances of her twin babies thrown away. She is acting out her condemnation and defiance of that cruel aspect of her traditional religion that denies her, her mothering role. It is Achebe’s ironic intention that causes Ekwefi 23


to mature and run from Anene, her given husband, to Okonkwo her lover, contrary to traditional ethos. She nonetheless demonstrates a “voice” and a choice, even if muted and timid. When the outcasts – osu – join the new religion, they have found windows of accommodation that tradition refuses them. All of these rebellious characters are ironically described by Okonkwo as “womanly” (113) and weak minded – efulefus. He warns his five boys against Nwoye’s attitude, “If any one of you prefers to be a woman, let him follow Nwoye now while I am still alive so that I can curse him” (122). Meanwhile, it is ironical that the narrator describes the ‘womanly’ crew, Nwoye and all the other new converts, as “a small community of men, women and children, self-assured and confident” (113). These are positive attributes that have at no narrative moment been attributed to the likes of Okonkwo. Interpreting Things Fall Apart by inferring of meaning in addition to and different from what is stated, together with an attitude toward both the said and the unsaid, the novel reveals a set of values that Achebe is correcting towards. By presenting a traditional culture that shuts women out of the wider sociopolitical, religious and economic issues affecting the welfare of the society, Achebe ironically depicts an overwhelming patriarchal power that needs to be subverted and, in fact women are ironically conspicuous by their very absence. Achebe triggers the move and then directs it by conflictual contextual evidence and by a tonal range possible within this corrective function, from the playfully teasing to the scornful and disdain. Although Okonkwo looks rather impressive as a protagonist and even somewhat dangerous, he feels insecure. A “slight stammer” betrays this insecurity which often finds expression for itself in bodily aggression (3), a kind of activism that negates true praxis and makes dialogue impossible. The reason for this insecurity lies in the difficult relationship with his father Unoka who was the exact opposite of Okonkwo and whom the ironic intent reveals that was quite a success in social terms. He was a musician who 24


abhorred violence. Ironically, it is in reaction to Unoka’s effeminate life style that Okonkwo becomes a great warrior and eminent among his people. Ironically also, the only thing he is afraid of is to be thought weak like his father: But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father (9-10). The narrator ironically identifies a link between Okonkwo’s macho and sexist attitude with a state of denial about his feminine side. All the mistakes he commits; the beating of his wives, the killing of Ikemefuna who considers him father, the killing of the white man’s chief messenger that leads to his tragic end, is just so he should not be called a “woman” – weak, an “agbala”(10). What to most commentators of the concept of irony would be its most straightforward and basic functions are the reinforcing, the complicating and the ludic roles. The reinforcing role is the familiar intentional use or interpretation of irony as being used to underline a point. When irony is inferred the reinforcing reveals the ironist’s adept use of emphasis for greater precision of communication of attitude, what irony theorists call the “communicative competence” (Hutcheon 48). Achebe lays emphasis on the issue of fear within Okonkwo throughout the novel. It is not only the fear of being thought weak as a man that disturbs him. It is even more the fear of being thought womanish. As a child, Okonkwo had learned that the term agbala did not only mean “woman”, but also designated a man like his father who had taken no title. He is not only on the constant lookout for effeminacy in himself, but also in others. Okonkwo rejects Nwoye, because he believes that 25


“there is too much of his mother in him” (46). In fact, he fears that he is too much like his grandfather Unoka. Okonkwo’s fear of betraying any “womanish” weakness shows itself most strongly when in spite of the warning from Obierika, his friend; he takes part in the killing of Ikemefuna. The narrator comments, “dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his matchet and cut him [Ikemefuna] down. He was afraid of being thought weak” (43). Significantly, when he develops ill feelings because of the violent act he commits, this is again seen by him as a sign of effeminacy, and he says to himself, “ ‘When did you become a shivering old woman,’ … ‘Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed’” (45). The ironic intent is reveal through the narrative voice that undoubtedly criticizes these instances of violence, perceptible through the elaborate way in which the reader is made to have pity for Ikemefuna and to loathe Okonkwo’s action. Retribution can be seen in his accidentally killing of Obierika’s son, the man who had warned him not to have a hand in Ikemefuna’s death. The murder which is considered a “female” crime, earns him only seven years of banishment. Ironically, this female crime leads him closer to the feminine side that he is rejecting – he seeks refuge in his motherland, the village that his mother came from. Achebe’s complicating ironic intent is revealed here. The fear of being thought weak drives Okonkwo not only to his motherland, the feminine side where ironically, his mighty self can seek refuge in time of adversity, but his evading of the feminine gradually takes him to his tragic end. Okonkwo disowns Nwoye because his conversion to the new religion betrays his womanliness. When he returns to Umuofia from his motherland, he is overwhelmed with grief as the narrator explains, “He mourned for the clan, which he saw it breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women” (129). Irony functions here as a reflexive modality, that issues a “call to interpretation” and its delight (J. Culler 211) that 26


functions as typical of the complexity or richness of all art, a form of controlled and positively valued ambiguity, that “reservoir of irony” (emphasis in the original, R. Barthes 147) at the base of all aesthetic discourse. To demonstrate his masculinist ego, Okonkwo develops hatred and rage against men he considers womanish. The fear of the feminine causes him to describe Egonwanne as, “‘The greatest obstacle in Umuofia ... is that coward, Egonwanne. His sweet tongue can change fire into cold ash. ... If they had ignored his womanish wisdom five years ago, we would not have come to this’” (141). In fact, any person who talks against violence to Okonkwo is a woman, an Agbala. It is in the urge to demonstrate his manliness as oppose to womanliness that he kills the head messenger of the Whiteman. In this act of violence, Achebe’s ironinc intent causes Umuofia as a whole to refuse to see reason with him and he kills himself. The men he considers womanish, the feminine and women triumph at the end, an indication that the heroine of the narrative in Things Fall Apart is the feminine side. The narrative voice directs the reader to the final ironic judgment which establishes that it is not the whole of Umoufia that is responsible for the tragedy in the narrative. Ironically, the tragedy is traced in a specific crude chauvinistic attitude of the likes of Okonkwo. Achebe’s ironic intent demonstrates that women would eventually prove that restive and independent minds reside in the “muted” voice. The ironic intention directs the narrative to portray how mothers and daughters of Osu – outcasts – and mothers of twins demonstrate their repressed bitterness and resentment against traditional injustice by going off and joining the new Western religion that allows them room to exercise their feelings as human beings. Okonkwo’s rejection of everything female thus endangers the whole village whose “cultural foundation is the balancing of the male and female principle” (Ojinmah 16). Okonkwo’s misfortunes, is pitched on his not being able to see that his success as a man is based on female fertility and that the whole social fabric of his society is 27


referred to this deity. To paraphrase Achebe, Okonkwo and his society pay a terrible price for allowing the masculinist ego to suppress the feminine ethos. The ironic intent banishes Okonkwo into the evil forest, because of the “offence against the earth (147) while his society suffers defeat at the hands of the strangers. Conclusion This paper has argued that deconstructing patriarchy and revalorising the feminine is exactly what Achebe has done in Things Fall Apart, a point of view that can be reached, if and only if, the interpreter adopts and approves of irony as an inquiring mode. In this respect, irony is seen as a sign of the subtlety and flexibility of aesthetic expression. Achebe’s artistic communicative competence becomes the functioning of irony – which needs the stated, and the unstated – a form of polysemia – the unsaid that is nevertheless said. Iirony has been used here as the attributed or inferred operative motivation to interpret gender and the representation of the feminine in Things Fall Apart. This function of irony to reveal the importance of the feminine ethos exposes patriarchy that Achebe’s narrative seeks to deconstruct and not to validate. It establishes that the feminine is an interesting principle in Things Fall Apart. It is clear that the balancing power of the feminine and its fertilising potentials threaten chauvinists like Okonkwo who tend to forget that masculinity needs this balancing feminine consciousness for the stability of the society. I have argued that it is this fear of the feminine that propels the protagonist’s tragic end which earns him banishment in the evil forest. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann, 1976. Ackley, G. Donald. “The Male-Female Motif in Things Fall Apart. Studies in Black Literature, Vol. 4, No. 4, Winter 1974: 1-6. 28


Amadiume, Ifi. Reinventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion and Culture. New York: Zed. 1997 Ancholonu, Rose. “Outsiders or Insiders?: women in Anthills of the Savannah.” Eagle On Iroko: Selected Papers fron the Chinua Achebe International Symposium. 1990. 311-21. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. R. Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Berrendonner, A. Elements de pragmatique. Paris: Minuit, 1981. Chambers, Rose. Room for Maneuver: Reading (the) Oppositional (in) Narrative. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991. Chevalier, H. M. The Ironic Temper: Anatole France and his Time. London: Routledge, 1932. Chinweinzu. The Anatomy of Female Power. Lagos: Pero Press, 1990. Culler, J. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge, 1982. Green, Sandra. Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A history of the Enlo-Ewe. London: James Currey. 1996. Haraway, D. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in 1980s.” Feminism/Postmodernism. Ed. L. J. Nicholson. London: Routledge, 1990. 187-101. Huttcheon, Linda. Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London: Routledge, 1995. Klein, G. Herbert. “A Question of Honour: De/constructing Male Identities in Chinua Achebe's Tetralogy”. Web. 6 Feb. 2014. Kolawole, M. Modupe. Womanism and African Consciousness. Trenton: African World Press. 1997. Mezu, M. Rose. “Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and other Works: The Case for Revisionism and Black Cultural Nationalism.” Anyadike, Seiyifa Koroye and Noel C. 29


Women in the Academy: Festscrift for Professor Helen Chukwuma. Port Harcourt: Pearl Publishers, 2004. 33148. Nasser, Merun. “Achebe and his Women: A Social Science Perspective.” African Literature Today, Vol. 27, No. 3, 1980: 21-28. Nnaemeka, Obiama. “Chinua Achebe: Women, Language and Border (Lines) Lands.” Eagle On Iroko: Selected Papers from the Chinua Achebe International Symposium. 1990. 280-98. Nzegwu, Nkiru. “Feminism in Africa: Impact and Limits of the Metaphysics of Gender.” in Kwasi Wiredu (ed) Acompanion to African Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004: 1-14. Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. African Wo/man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Ojinmah, Umelo. Chinua Achebe: New Perspectives. Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 1991. Okereke, Grace. “Speech as an Index of Woman's Self-Concept in Chinua Achebe’s Novels.” Eagle On Iroko: Selected Papers from the Chinua Achebe International Symposium. 1990. 299-310. Okonkwo, Juliet. “Adam and Eve: Igbo Marriage in the Nigerian Novel.” The Conch Spring 1971: 137-51. Orjinta, Aloysius Okechuku. “Women’s Voices and Action in Achebe’s Literary works.” Nsukka Journal of the Humanities. 22, 2014: 77-95. Oyewumi, Oyeronke. The Invention of Women: Making African Sense of Gender Discourse. New York: University of Minnnesota Press. 1997. Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Revision.” On Lies Secrets and Sillences: Selected Prose, 1996-1978. New York: Norton, 1978: 32-47

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Stallybrass, P. and White A. The Politics and Poetis of Transgression. London: Methuen, 1986. Sudarkasa, Niara. “The Status of Women in Indigenous African Societies.” Feminist Reviews 12, 1986: 91-103. Terdiman, R. Discourse/Counter Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteen Century France. London: Cornell University Press, 1985. Thompson, Bob. “Washinton Post Staff Writer.” Web. 7 March 2014 Thompson, Denise. Radical Feminism Today. London: Sage Plublications, 2001. Van Allen, Judith. “Sitting on a Man: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 6, 1972: 165-81. Volosinov, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of language. Trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik. New York: Seminar Press, 1973. White, H. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: John Hopskin University Press, 1973. Winters, Marjorie. “Morning Yet on Judgment Day: The Critics of Chinua Achebe.” When the Drum Beat Changes. Ed. Carolyn A. Parker et al. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1981: 169-85. Wright, Marcia. Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life stories from East/Central Africa. London: James Currey. 1993.

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