Investigating Women’s Roles in Tribal Society with Specific Illustrations from Chinua Achebe’s Novels: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah


Keywords: Women's Roles, Tribal Society, Contradictions, Orthodoxy, Igbo Culture, Women Empowerment, Nigerian Integrated Development, Tribal Integration and Development, Feminism, Political Marginalization, New Women, Gender Equality, Eco criticism, Eco feminism

  All of the Chinua Achebe’s novels Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987) exemplify good socio-historical fictions. Achebe’s talent as a storyteller lies in his ability to recreate the period of African history and give it life and color. His hundreds of carefully chosen details express perfectly the atmosphere and flavor of precolonial to present Nigeria particularly the Igbo world. Although his attention to authenticity is evident, he smoothly incorporates his research into the stories.

Details of every setting make the events of Achebe’s novels more plausible. Achebe stimulates not only the reader's visual sense but all four other senses as well with his evocations of the smell of kolanuts and old muddy houses, the sounds of street, the taste of a fattened yam and spiced wine, and the feelings of tribal war. Achebe’s pidgins also incorporate language that appeals to the reader's social perceptions. The novels’ historical setting when relating his characters' emotions makes us spellbound.

The episodic plot structure features a series of minor conflicts and ultimately leads a single climactic resolution. Many surprises occur. With major surprises or conflicts, Achebe’s skillful development of characters and setting holds the readers’ as well as critics’ interest. The tapestry of Nigeria through which Achebe journeys captures the imagination and lingers long after the last page of the novels is turned. Again, Achebe simply presents the situation without passing explicit judgment. In this beautiful fictional world women of Nigeria hold a key cultural, societal and political agent.

Among the best known critics who have devotedly investigated the role of the tribal society and feminine identity in Achebe’s novels are Emmanuel Obiechina, Bernth Lindfors, Abiola Irele, David Carrol, G.D. Killam, G-C. M. Mutiso, Peter Nazareth, Emmanuel Ngara, Benedict Chiaka Njoku, Eustace Palmer, James Booth, Kwadwo Osei-Nyame and Shatto Arthur Gakwandi. But no where I find a timeline survey of women’s roles and Achebe’s goal of fictionalization of the journey of Igbo women into much desired New Women. In that perspective, topic for research “Investigating Women’s Roles in Tribal Society with Specific Illustrations from Chinua Achebe’s Novels: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah” is unique as the research on the said field is very restricted. Here is few listed research or publications on the related topics :

 Ref:

Njoku, Benedict Chiaka. The Four Novels of Chinua Achebe: A Critical Study. Peter Lang. New York. 1984.

Lindfors, Bernth. Black African literature in English: a guide to information sources. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1979-1981.

Boehmer, Elleke. “Of Goddesses and Stories: Gender and a New Politics in Anthills of the Savannah”. Ed., Petersen and Rutherford, Chinua Achebe: A Celebration. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990:130-138.

Carroll, David. Black African literature in English: a guide to information sources Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1979-1981.

Innes, C. l. and Bernth.  “Achebe’s Things Fall Apart” in critical perspectives on Chinua Achebe. Washington D C, Three Continents Press, 1978.

 Obiechina, Emmanuel. Nigeria: Imo State Government Publications. Cambridge University Press,  1975.

 Palmer, Eustace.  An introduction to the African novel. Heinemann, 1977.

Irele ,   F. Abiola. The African Experience in Literature and Ideology, Indiana University Press , 1990.

Mutiso, G. C. M., Women in African Literature. East Africa journal Vol. 8 no. 3 March 1997.

Killam, G.D., The writing of east and central Africa. Heinemann International Literature & Textbooks, 1985.

Arthur, Gakwandi, Shatto. Novel and Contemporary Experience in Africa. Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc, 1981.

E. Modupe Kolawole, Mary. “Mutiple Inscriptions and the Location of Women in China Achebe’s Novel”. Chinua Achebe An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Ed. Mala Pandurang, Pencraft International, Delhi, 2010.

Sircar, Rupali. “Masculinity, Femininity and Androgyny: Igbo Culture in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart”. Chinua Achebe An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Ed. Mala Pandurang, Pencraft International, Delhi, 2010.

Pandurang,   Mala. “Chinua Achebe and the ‘African Experience’: A Socio-Literary Perspective”. Chinua Achebe An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Ed. Mala Pandurang, Pencraft International, Delhi, 2010.

Booth,   James. Writers and Politics in Nigeria. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1981.



Critical Study of Tagore’s "Gitanjali" in Evaluating Indo-Anglian Literature


“Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away, in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)
Indian poet, writer, and philosopher.
Gitanjali


Indian poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali as translated by himself into English made Tagore internationally famous.
Gitanjali is a collection of one hundred and three deeply religious and mystical poems which delight, thrill, and uplift us by their noble thoughts and feelings, and which stir and move us by their lyrical qualities. These poems were the fruit of Tagore’s meditations on God, on man, and on Nature against the beautiful natural background of Shantiniketan where Tagore founded his World University (Vishva Bharati). What is most surprising about these “songs-offerings” is the fact that philosophical thoughts and mystical longings have been expressed, and expressed most successfully, through the use of the simplest conceivable language. The simplicity of language, and the intensity, Hinduism found humanist expression and sincerity of the feelings expressed, are some of the reasons for the wide appeal of Gitanjali.

This critical study of Gitanjali is very important in evaluating Indo-Anglian literature. The important aspect of Gitanjali has   the very spirit and essence of Tagore’s philosophy of life. Here is Tagore’s unique blend of romantic longing, devotion to God, and a simple love of created things. The book is a collection of impressions of personal religious moods, and it is free from all kinds of dogmatism. All the poetry of this book is in the feeling and the tone, and in the prose-poetry which is simple, fluid, and with just enough formal organization to hold the book together. In Williams’s opinion, Tagore was wise in avoiding metre and rhyme. The imagery, pervasive but not startling, is taken from Nature and from Indian classical mythology, especially from the Radha-Krishna legends. The one hundred and three poems of this book are unified by the poet’s search for God and for happiness in his love for the spirit which lies within Nature and man; and the search is expressed with wistful melancholy in a sustained minor key. 

Rabindranath Tagore
As H.M. Williams points out, Gitanjali certainly contains the most obviously religious of Tagore’s poems, though the religion is lyrical and vague, a type of pantheism, with echoes of Hindu Vaishnavite poetry (the love of Radha for Lord Krishna) and even of Christian religious feeling for God as Father and Redeemer. The image of God as bridegroom and lover is common to the New Testament and Vaishnavism. But H.M. William does not agree that Gitanjali shows any mysticism; and in this connection he writes: “Unfortunately the exotic flavour of the poems and the vagueness of European knowledge of Indian religions led to their being labelled as mysticism, with exasperating results for the poet who was embarrassedly his new-found reputation as an Oriental Guru.”

Williams regards Tagore as a lyric poet of shifting moods and a poet of Nature, and certainly no mystic in the technical sense in which the word is applied to Sri Aurobindo Ghosh. According to Williams, Tagore had wrongly been regarded as a mystic, and some of the blame in this connection rested upon W.B. Yeats who praised Tagore for many of the wrong reasons. A more perceptive evaluation of Tagore as an English poet, says Williams, came from Ezra Pound who accurately pin-pointed the chief literary interest of Gitanjali. This literary feature of Gitanjali, according to Ezra Pound, was the use of prose-poetry as a new medium. Williams further says that, although Tagore was never completely at home in the English language, his mastery of it as a literary medium was an amazing achievement for a middle-aged foreign poet. Some of the finest hymns are those in which the poet’s longing for the divine to refresh his “arid heart” is clothed in the metaphor of the Indian seasons, as in the following verses:

 “The rain has held back for days and days, my God, in my arid heart.
The horizon is fiercely naked—not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.
Send thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lightning startle the sky from end to end.
But call back, my lord, call back this pervading silent heat, still and keen and cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.” (Poem No. 40)


References:
1. "The Impact of Radical Right-Wing Parties in West European Democracies and The Multicultural Dilemma" by Michelle Hale Williams 
2. “Gitanjali.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 

"The Owl" by Edward Thomas and etc.: Has the Owl Performed Consistent Symbolism?


THE OWL
—Edward Thomas

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

The Owl’s Cry 

Almost in every country the Owl’s cry bears some special significance. Just as a cuckoo’s note creates a sense of pleasure in our mind as a cuckoo visits us during spring time; so an owl’s cry creates in our mind a sense of impending calamity and suffering. The Owl is a nocturnal bird of prey struggling hard for its existence. This suffering gives its cry a special melancholy tone. Nightingale, Cuckoo, Blackbird and Robin are all merry-birds, but the Owl is a gloomy bird.

First take a note on the Owls: The three extant families in the group:  Strigidae (typical owls), Tytonidae (barn owls and grass owls) and Phodilidae (bay owls). Although owls hear some likeness to hawks and eagles once placed with them in the same order, they are not closely related. Unlike other birds of prey, owls have virtually noiseless flight, the butterfly-like flapping of wings being mulled by a velvet-like surface on the night feathers. Owls are protectively coloured, generally brownish. Many Species show two phases of coloration, one in which the brown tends toward red, the other in which it tends toward grey. The females usually are larger than the males.   Owls rest in buildings, holes in trees, or nests abandoned by other birds. Some nest on the aground or in holes in the ground.”-Encyclopedia Britannica, VII, P. 645

The Medieval Logical Owl

While discussing about the Owl, we can well remember The Owl and the Nightingale, a late 12th or early 13th century English poem, is some 2000 lines long. The poem is written as a debate , a popular device in both Latin and French poetry, between the two birds, and the poet ranges over a number of topics including witchcraft, the church, and marriage, giving expression to a wisdom based on experience rather than on schooling, it is difficult to say whether the birds have any consistent symbolism. The gravity of the owl contrasts with the gaiety of the nightingale and suggestions as to the meaning of their respective notes have included theology and art, monasticism and life in the World, winter and summer, and Anglo-Saxon poetry and French poetry. The poem is attributed to Nicholas de Guildford.

The Representative Poem

Now the poem in focus, The Owl is Edward Thomas’s one of the representative poems and of course, one of his best. All the traits of Thomas as a poet can be found in this poem. The synthetic beauty of the poem is simply unique. The Owl is a poem consisting of sixteen lines, divided into four stanzas of four lines each. In the whole poem the word ‘Owl’ occurs only once in the eighth line. But from the ‘very first line it is felt that something is going to happen, the soldier is going to tell something very important. And when the readers reach the eighth line they realize that it was ‘the owl’s ‘most melancholic cry’ to which their attention ‘was being drawn by the poet. Through the third and fourth stanzas the poet gradually paints the complete picture, i.e., the reactions of the owl’s cry on him and no less on his readers. Therefore, although the word ‘Owl’ occurs only once in the whole poem, yet that one word is the key-word. It is like the Shakespearean heaviness:
"BOLINGBROKE Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night, 
The time of night when Troy was set on fire, 
The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl, 
And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves; 
That time best fits the work we have in hand."

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
English poet and playwright.
Henry VI, Part 2, Act 1, Scene 4

Roaming through the Hill for Hours 

The poet was roaming through the hill for hours together. Here is a sharp focus on the undeniable necessity of three fundamental things – food, fire and rest for a healthy and comfortable life. The poem gives two contrasting pictures: fulfillment and deprivation.   The poet came downhill hungry and cold. He was tired too, yet his spirit was high. The speaker   was hungry but not starved when he was coming down the hill.  Though he was trembling by dint of cold, he was warm enough inside to protect him against the chilling north wind. Nothing other than rest under a roof was the ‘sweetest thing’ to him in such hard times. 
"Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof."

Immediate Comfort

He took shelter at the inn. He got immediate comfort- food, fire and rest- in a room with fireplace to warm up him, food to satisfy his hunger and a bed to lie down.  There he had food, warmth of fireplace and rest which he was then in badly need of. He was too tired to indulge in all the merry-making of the night like singing, dancing, feasting and drinking. He wanted only rest, and that he got.  He wanted to have complete rest, so he abstained from all night-time enjoyments:
"Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I."

Owls Melancholy Cry

But he was very much disturbed by an Owls melancholy cry. Calm and quiet night is contrasted to the screaming voice of an owl penetrated the silence of the night and disturbed the speaker’s mental state:
"All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry"
The plaintive cry of the owl reminded him of the inexplicable suffering which he himself had undergone when he was on the hills reveals the speaker’s conscience and humanity. 

The Realization

The poet realized that he was fortunate enough for getting a shelter on such a wintry night:
"Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went."
The poet got his shelter, food and rest, on such a night, but there were many, soldiers and poor included, who had to court exposure and uncertainty on such a night:
"And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice."

A Critique & Conclusion

Whether in prose-writing or verse-making main subjects of interest for Thomas is word-picture of countryside of England and Wales. In this poem the very first word ‘downhill’ takes the reader to the countryside almost instantly. Then the way he starts to narrate his tale makes it a personal poem. The way men suffer in this world, through the machinations of fellow men as well as through the process of nature are the other noteworthy phenomenon.

  As soon as the word Owl is mentioned, we get three characteristics of Thomas in a single stroke-uncertainty—melancholy and love of birds.  The owl’s cry is symbolic of the voice of his conscience. The moment he was going to feed himself in the inn, his conscience woke up and he fell in mind of the suffering soldiers at the front and the starved poor lying under the open sky. The structure of the poem is old —fashioned as the poet’s most poems are in matters of form.   His sympathy for suffering humanity in general, which extends even up to the foe.  This is no case of petty right or wrong. His simple straight style of drawing word-pictures and tenthly. We must not fail to note brevity of the poet — he has used minimum words to convey maximum information and feeling.


References

1. Encyclopedia Britannica. (1998, December 1).

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