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Chapter 11: Population Control
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Second Class Citizen, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Class, Gender, and Race
Culture vs. Individual Freedom
Motherhood and Art
Family and Love
Economics vs. Aspiration in Education
Summary
Analysis
Adah goes to her family’s regular doctor, an Indian man married to another doctor, and asks him to end her pregnancy. He tells her that she should have asked him for a cap, as the clinic’s caps are cheap. Adah wonders how she was supposed to know that he provided contraceptive services. Then he gives her some pills and tells her to take them. She supposes that the pills will induce abortion and decides not to tell Francis about the situation, as she suspects he’ll either misunderstand her or tell everyone about it.
Abortion was not legalized in the UK until 1967. As the novel takes place in the early 1960s, both Adah and the doctor are breaking the law—but neither character references the law or is deterred by it, which implies that abortion-seeking was somewhat culturally normalized in the UK before its legalization.
Themes
Adah reflects on her life. Her childhood difficulties revolved around surviving and getting an education while all alone. She hoped marriage would give her a partner, but her marriage has left her without a partner and solely responsible for children. Yet she intends to survive. She begins feeling the Presence from her childhood again. She prays to Him as she works, and He keeps her company, though she has stopped attending church. She grows closer to this “personal God”—and further from Francis.
Adah’s reflections imply that getting a good education was a survival strategy for her before anything else, even as she has clearly found her education personally meaningful above and beyond its economic benefits. Her reliance on a “personal God”—as opposed to a church—shows both her independent streak and her genuine religiosity, despite the fact that she occasionally manipulates religion to further her personal goals.
Themes
Adah has several coworkers at her new job at the Chalk Hill Farm library. There’s an Irish girl named Peggy, whose heart was broken by an Italian boy; the boss Mr. Barking, a grump who hates his son-in-law, whom he believes is cruel to his daughter; and Eileen, the children’s librarian. Finally, there’s Eileen’s Canadian husband Bill, who starts recommending Adah books by Black authors when she mentions that the only Black authors she knows are Nigerian, like Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa. Because of Bill, Adah reads James Baldwin, who convinces her that “black is beautiful.”
Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) is a Nigerian writer most famous for his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, which represents the negative effects of white colonialism on Nigeria. Flora Nwapa (1931–1993) is a Nigerian writer whose 1966 debut novel Efuru was the first by any African woman to receive international publication. James Baldwin (1924–1987) is a famous African American essayist and novelist who wrote extensively about racial justice. Adah learns that “black is beautiful” from reading Baldwin, not in any class, which shows that one’s informal education through reading can be as formative as formal education. Adah not believing that “black is beautiful” before reading Baldwin shows the negative impact that racism has had on her psyche.
Themes
Adah and Bill become friends. Adah trusts men more easily because her Pa was so reliable. She already reads a lot, and Bill always wants to talk about books. In the end, Adah makes all her coworkers like her. She enjoys hearing their problems, which help her ignore her own. When they ask about Adah’s problems, Bill says she has none: her husband is an intelligent future accountant and she is going to speed through her librarian exams. Adah lets her coworkers believe him, not wanting to tell them her “woes.”
Adah finds it easier to make male friends because she has good memories of her father. Earlier in the novel, the narrator mentions that Adah has trouble making female friends because of her difficult relationship to her mother. These pieces of characterization emphasize that Adah’s childhood experiences with her family have strongly influenced how she relates to other people as an adult. Interestingly, Adah conceals her “woes” from her friendly coworkers—perhaps because she had to rely on herself rather than her family from a very young age.
Themes
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After three months, Adah realizes that the pills the doctor gave her did not terminate her pregnancy. Meanwhile, Francis torments her like “a wicked child who enjoys tormenting a live animal given to him as a pet.” Mr. Noble requests that they move out because he’s sick of their fighting. When Adah goes to the doctor and tells him that the pills didn’t work, he flushes furiously and denies having given her an abortifacient. Adah, furious too, tells him that they both know he gave her pills to induce an abortion—and that he’s to blame if the baby she’s now having “is imperfect in any way.”
The comparison of Francis to a “wicked child who enjoys tormenting” his “pet” disturbingly evokes his immaturity (he’s childish), his abusiveness (he likes tormenting other living things), and his misogynistic failure to see Adah as a full human being (he thinks of her as a living possession, a “pet,” not a person). By implication, the doctor denies giving Adah abortifacient pills because doing so was illegal. Adah’s worry that the baby will be “imperfect” springs from the danger and uncertainty that surrounds illegal abortion medication, which might harm a surviving fetus somehow.
Themes
Adah walks from the clinic to a park to think. She worries that her baby might be born like “those unfortunate thalidomide babies” and that her in-laws will believe she had an affair because she got pregnant after trying to get contraception. After hearing about the letter Francis sent his parents, Boy sent her money and asked her to return to Nigeria, and she wonders whether she should have. Yet she asks herself whether she could have found a “nursery school” for her children in Nigeria as she’s done in the UK.
Thalidomide is a medication that can cause severe birth defects; thalidomide caused thousands of severe birth defects in the 1950s and early 1960s before its dangers were well understood. Boy’s generous concern toward Adah shows that despite their long separation, he still loves and wants to support his sister. Adah’s questioning whether she could have found a “nursery school” in Nigeria shows that she is still unsure whether she made the right choice in pursuing her goals through marriage to Francis.
Themes
A Black man taps Adah’s shoulder and speaks to her, and she realizes that he’s Ibo. The man asks whether Adah has fought with her husband and introduces himself as Okpara. He suggests that they go together to ask Adah’s husband for forgiveness. Though she’s annoyed at his characteristically Ibo presumption that the wife is the one who did something wrong, Adah leads him to her apartment because he said “the magic pass word, ‘Ibo.’” As they walk, Okpara tells her that he has a wife and baby and that he has been studying law. He explains that he and his wife fight sometimes, though he has “outgrown” hitting her.
Adah believes that Okpara’s assumption that she, the wife, is in the wrong is characteristic of Ibo/Igbo culture. Yet she still experiences Ibo as a “magic pass word,” hinting that she feels love and nostalgia for her culture of origin even as she resents the sexism she perceives in it. Okpara’s admission that he has “outgrown” hitting his wife implies that domestic violence is normalized in Ibo culture but also considered a mark of a young, immature husband.
Themes
Okpara reminds Adah of an Ibo proverb, common among elders, that married couples build houses to “quarrel in.” Adah wonders whether the elders have ever had to live in one room where the husband keeps impregnating the wife. She thinks that Ibo men back home are mentally healthier than Francis because they have cultural events to attend with peers. They also believe having sex with a woman while she’s breastfeeding could kill the baby, so they leave their wives alone postpartum and space out pregnancies.
The Ibo/Igbo proverb that Okpara quotes suggests that “quarrel[ing]” is a normal domestic activity. Internally, Adah questions whether Ibo/Igbo cultural wisdom applies in her case, because she and Francis are living under fundamentally different conditions than their Ibo elders and because Francis is not adhering to Ibo/Igbo cultural norms of spacing out pregnancies.
Themes
Adah wishes that she had convinced Francis to get a job. That way, he might have met men like Okpara and imitated them. She hopes she can salvage her marriage by getting Francis to do that now. When Adah and Okpara enter the apartment, an unshaven Francis is singing a Jehovah’s witness hymn to Bubu while Vicky swings his dirty diaper around and Titi watches. Adah, marking the contrast between well-dressed, dignified Okpara and slobby Francis, thinks it will be hard to convince Francis to imitate Okpara.
Though in the past Adah has blamed Ibo/Igbo culture for Francis’s abusive treatment of her, now she thinks that Francis would have acclimated better to England if he had met and socialized with successful Ibo men like Okpara through work. This thought implies that social isolation and a lack of any cultural norms are contributing to Francis’s increasing abusiveness.
Themes
Francis tells Okpara that he never hit Adah. She left, that’s all; as she doesn’t like being apart from her children, Francis anticipated she’d return. Okpara tells Francis that Adah is miserable, which is risky in the UK, where there’s no one to talk to. He predicts that, like “most lonely African students,” Adah could have a mental health crisis, and he asks whether Francis wants to pay the bills for that. Both Adah and Francis are shocked by Okpara’s assumption that Francis pays the bills. Francis, bridling, attacks Okpara verbally. What Adah has never realized is that Francis believes he’ll never pass his accountancy exams and now wants “to make Adah a failure like himself.”
Previously, Adah has suggested that domestic violence is normalized in Ibo/Igbo culture, yet Francis lies to Okpara about having hit Adah. This lie suggests that Francis knows he’s abusing Adah more than another Ibo man would approve of. Okpara’s description of “lonely African students” in the UK implies that losing contact with one’s culture of origin can be traumatic—but he doesn’t realize that it is Francis more than Adah who is reacting negatively to their cultural isolation. Okpara’s assumption that Francis pays the bills makes it clear that Francis is once again violating Ibo cultural norms: as the man and the husband, it would be more culturally normal for him to financially support his wife and children rather than insisting that his wife work to support the family. According to the narrator, Francis’s true motive for abusing Adah is not misogyny per se but his own sense of failure, suggesting that Francis’s cruel actions are symptomatic of his troubled individual psychology, not natural outgrowths of Ibo culture.
Themes
Adah thinks that Okpara, though outwardly Anglicized, is Ibo at his core. Rather than storming out at Francis’s rudeness, Okpara insists on helping this “Ibo family in trouble”—he gets them to promise that they’ll visit him and his wife and see their lifestyle. He also asks Adah whether she has relatives in London who could help. Adah says no, because she fears that the distant relatives she does have in London would only mock her predicament.
Throughout the novel, Adah and to some degree the narrator have represented Ibo/Igbo culture negatively, as oppressive to and exploitative of girls and women. Here, however, Okpara represents positive values in Ibo culture: helping another “Ibo family” even though they are strangers, and trying to reconnect them with their extended family members who provide them with social support.
Themes
Finally, Okpara tells Francis that unless he gets a job and starts supporting the family, his sons won’t respect him. This worries Francis, as having disrespectful children is “a great humiliation to an African.” Yet while for months after their first meeting Okpara tries to help Francis, Francis is ultimately too used to exploiting Adah, whom he thinks of as his possession, to work for himself. Francis believes that Adah will never leave him because of Titi, Vicky, and Bubu.
Though Okpara is generous and helpful, he still thinks that Francis’s sons’ opinions of him should matter more than the opinions of Francis’s wife or daughter. Since Adah has described Okpara as characteristically Ibo/Igbo, the novel seems to be emphasizing the negative qualities of Ibo culture after just acknowledging its positive qualities. Meanwhile, Francis recognizes Adah’s deep maternal investment in her children and plans to use it to manipulate her, keeping her bound to him and supporting him financially.
Themes
When Adah is five months pregnant, she tells Francis about the baby. He laughs at her cruelly. She meets a West Indian girl named Irene who tells her that unsupported mothers can live on government “Assistance” and thinks that, if she had known before that she was eligible, she would already have left Francis. Adah pays Irene to send her cards, signed by “Francis,” when she’s in the hospital having the baby—or to send a wreath if she dies. She spends all her pay on her children and tells Francis to support himself. Francis insists that she put her refusal to give him money in writing. She does, deciding not to let him shame her for not supporting “her able-bodied husband.” Though he attempts to report her to the government, no one comes to arrest her.
The UK’s welfare system, which developed in the early 20th century, provides economic “Assistance” to mothers and children, among others. When Adah thinks that she would already have left Francis if she had known about the UK’s welfare programs before, it indicates that there’s a steep learning curve for Adah as she learns to understand English culture and attempts to mobilize all the cultural resources she can. Though Francis attempts to intimidate Adah by putting her refusal to give him money in writing, she is in fact legally entitled to own her salary per the UK’s Married Women’s Property Act of 1870—showing that despite some sexism in English culture, it does offer real legal protections and rights to women.
Themes
Adah gives birth to Dada, a small but healthy girl, without complications. Grateful for Dada’s health and beauty, Adah nicknames her “Sunshine.” She tips all the nurses, writes the thank you notes, and—when Francis refuses to pick her up from the hospital—gets a taxi home. Francis eventually gets a job at the post office. He pays the rent and gives Adah two pounds a week to buy groceries for the entire family, but otherwise keeps all his money. Adah tells him she’ll do the same: pay for all the children’s expenses but otherwise keep her money. When he says that he won’t allow her to work, she retorts that in the UK she doesn’t need her husband’s signature to get a job.
Though Adah earlier tried to terminate her pregnancy, she is pleased to have another healthy child. This indicates that she sought an abortion primarily to avoid severe health complications like she suffered during her last pregnancy, not out of any ambivalence about becoming a mother again. Adah’s triumphant retort that she doesn’t need Francis’s signature to take a job in the UK implies that she would have needed his signature in Nigeria, another detail illustrating why Adah chose to immigrate.
Themes
Despite everything, Adah hopes Francis will retain his new self-respect and continue improving himself. He buys new clothes and a radio that he loves. Meanwhile, since he’s paying the family’s rent, Adah keeps doing his laundry and having sex with him. While breastfeeding Dada, Adah works out a daily schedule for herself and realizes she has exactly three free hours a day. She remembers her old aspiration to write and, while breastfeeding Dada, she uses those three hours each day to complete a novel draft that she calls The Bride Price.
Adah has repeatedly resolved to leave Francis, yet she keeps giving him second chances and hoping that he changes. This behavior indicates that she wants very badly for her marriage to work and her family to stay together, perhaps due to the traumatic way her own family broke up after her Pa’s death. Adah has not previously mentioned her aspiration to write, which suggests that her need to survive and to find paid work subsumed her artistic dreams until maternity leave gave her the time to pursue them. This unexpected twist suggests that motherhood and women’s artistic fulfillment are more compatible than they are sometimes represented as being. The Bride Price (1976) is the title of Buchi Emecheta’s third novel, a strong signal to the reader that Adah is a semi-autobiographical character.
Themes
