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Chapter 2: Escape into Elitism
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 is excited when the boat arrives in the UK—she internally announces to her Pa that she has made it—but when they dock in Liverpool, the weather is cold and the city looks ugly. Francis, coming to meet her, declares that he can “die in peace” having seen his son Vicky. When Adah expresses shock at this wording, Francis claims that in England, people joke about everything, including death. To Adah, the white people rushing by don’t look funny. When she questions whether Francis is telling the truth, he snaps that their time apart has made her overconfident. Adah senses that he thinks men can adopt English cultural freedoms, but women shouldn’t. She hopes that eventually, he’ll be able to “accept civilisation into their relationship.”
Adah silently speaks to her Pa when she arrives in England, though he has been dead now for many years. Her reaction shows the ongoing positive influence of his love on her. The bad weather in Liverpool may foreshadow that the UK will not be the wonderful land of her dreams. Meanwhile, Francis jokes about death but snaps at Adah for questioning him, revealing that he thinks Adah should remain subordinate even as he adopts English freedoms. When Adah hopes that Francis will “accept civilization into their relationship,” it reveals that she thinks greater gender equality is a mark of civilization (which she uses to mean western, white society)—but also that she believes the Eurocentric myth that the UK will automatically be better and more progressive than Nigeria.
Themes
On the train to London, Adah sees snow for the first time, which she thinks is lovely. Yet when she sees the room Francis has rented for the family in London, she is appalled: it’s barely big enough to fit one bed, one settee, and a table. Francis explains that a lot of Black people are coming to the UK; African people, who are lumped in with West Indian, Pakistani, and Indian immigrants, can’t get good rooms. When their neighbors return from work, Adah realizes that her family are living with Nigerians who would have been their domestic servants back home.
In this passage, both Francis and Adah notice and resent that as Black people, they are being discriminated against in England. Yet their resentment of the discrimination they suffer does not cause them to rethink their own prejudices: Francis seems to look down on West Indian and Southeast Asian immigrants, while Adah seems horrified to live with Nigerian immigrants of a lower social class than herself.
Themes
Adah complains bitterly, accusing Francis of not trying hard enough to find good rooms. Francis moves to hit her—though he stops. Adah, frightened, realizes that while Francis’s parents would have prevented him from hitting the family’s breadwinner in Nigeria, in the UK he feels liberated to hit her if he wants. Francis tells her that no matter how rich she is in Nigeria, she becomes a “second-class citizen” as soon as she steps foot in the UK, so there’s no point in nursing class prejudices against other Nigerians here. Pleased at her horror, Francis reiterates the point: in the UK, Black people are lucky to get jobs they’d never dream of taking back in Nigeria.
While Adah resented her in-laws’ interference back in Nigeria, here she realizes that their power over Francis and economic dependence on her protected her from Francis’s violence—a protection that she has lost in England. Francis’s claim that Adah is a “second-class citizen”—the quotation from which the novel takes its title—because she’s Black emphasizes that whereas in Nigeria Adah suffered discrimination primarily for her sex/gender, in England she will suffer economic and social discrimination for her race as well.
Themes
Adah, struck by Francis’s emotional cruelty to her, wonders whether she was wrong to marry him—but given that the UK only allows Nigerian girls in if they are joining their husbands, Adah decides that she should feel grateful to Francis for the opportunity to come to the UK and for her children. That night, Francis initiates sex and then, complaining about Adah’s “frigidity,” says he’s going to send her to a doctor.
Francis not only moved to hit Adah earlier but also—Adah believes—enjoyed cruelly informing her of the racial discrimination she will suffer. Despite his alarming behavior, Adah decides to feel grateful to him because he has helped her fulfill her dream and given her children, a decision that reveals Adah’s youthful naivete about the danger she’s in as well as how much she loves being a mother. “Frigidity” is a pejorative description for a medically concerning lack of sexual desire. The description is almost invariably applied to women, not men. Francis deploys the sexist trope of the “frigid wife” to complain about Adah’s lack of enthusiasm for him—after he almost hit her and spoke nastily to her, which shows both his misogyny and his entitlement.
Themes
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It seems to Adah that Francis has perversely embraced the “second-class” label. He urges Adah to get a working-class factory job like the Black wives among their Yoruba neighbors. Adah, who has education, part of an English librarian’s certification, and white-collar work experience, says no. One day, she gets a letter accepting her as a library assistant. Her joy is short-lived as sudden nausea reveals to her that he’s pregnant again. She worries that Francis will claim that she made up her pregnancy to keep from working, so she hides it. Francis begins cheating on her, which is a relief: it provides her with “peaceful nights.”
In the past, Adah has manipulated cultural mores around women, marriage, and sex to further her own goals. Yet she does not accept the sexist content of these cultural mores. Here, she similarly refuses to accept the racism according to which she is a “second-class” citizen who should apply to less skilled jobs than the ones she’s qualified for. By contrast, Francis seems not only to accept but to embrace English racism as a way of dragging Adah down. Her worry that he’ll accuse her of inventing her pregnancy suggests that he is consistently cruel and unreasonable toward her, while her pleasure at “peaceful nights” without Francis implies that he has been bothering her for sex that she does not find enjoyable.
Themes
Adah’s new job requires a medical examination. When Francis finds out that Adah is pregnant, he’s angry at her and predicts she’ll lose the job. Adah buys some nice clothes that hide her stomach, wears them to the medical examination, and acts so friendly and engaging with the elderly male doctor who examines her that he doesn’t look at her stomach. Adah receives the job. Though she feels bad for tricking the doctor, she feels that securing a job has saved her marriage: economic dependence keeps Francis with her. And despite everything, Adah cares about Francis and hopes that he succeeds.
Adah hoped that England would be a place of greater freedom for women than Nigeria. Yet shortly after arriving in England, she encounters cultural sexism: it’s likely that her job offer will be revoked if her prospective employers realize she’ll need maternity leave. Much as she did in Nigeria, Adah manipulates gender norms to get around sexism rather than confronting it outright: the passage implies that she flirts a little with the elderly doctor to distract him from her pregnancy. Adah is desperate to keep the job in part so that she can keep Francis, showing that despite his poor treatment of her, she is still eager to love her husband and have a family.
Themes
