Previous
Chapter 3: A Cold Welcome
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 starts her job at the library on a beautiful day, June 1, three months after arriving in the UK. The head librarian is a kind, funny, dowdy Czech woman named Mrs. Konrad. The other library assistants, girls Adah’s age who talk about boys and clothes, intimidate Adah because her married life is so different from their unmarried ones. At the American Consulate where Adah used to work, no one read novels, but at this library, so many people check out novels that Adah starts reading them too. Adah enjoys the work and is pleased to have a “first-class” job.
Adah partially absorbs the culture around her, reading novels because the library-goers read novels, but she can’t acclimate to the library assistants’ carefree gossip about boys given her difficult marriage to Francis. Adah’s enjoyment at having a “first-class” job suggests that she wants to challenge and subvert the English racism that would deny her such employment—but also that she doesn’t question class stratification per se.
Themes
During the summer, Francis watches Titi and Vicky while Adah works. One day, though, he asks Adah who will mind “your children” when he’s no longer free. Adah knows that in Nigeria, men say children belong to the mother when the children are misbehaving. She senses that Francis’s annoyance is because their childless landlord and landlady resent Adah and Francis’s decision to keep their children with them rather than fostering them with a white woman. Many Nigerian mothers in the UK foster their children partly because childrearing is a “full-time job” in English culture, whereas in Nigerian culture mothers just take care of children’s basic needs. All the neighbors were surprised when they realized Adah did not intend to find a foster mother for her children.
Adah is willing to take on the “full-time job” of rearing children in England, which shows both her adaptability and how much she enjoys being a mother. By contrast, Francis is not adaptable. When he refers to Titi and Vicky as “your [Adah’s] children,” he implies that it is only Adah’s job to look after the children, not his job as well—a reflection of Francis’s sexist cultural attitudes, which he does not seem inclined to alter. Similarly, Adah’s neighbors—who are implied to be other Nigerian immigrants—seem to resent her for adapting so quickly to English culture rather than acting like other Nigerian mothers in the UK.
Themes
Other people have always made decisions for Francis. In Nigeria, his parents made the decisions; now, Adah suspects, he is allowing their neighbors to fill the decision-making gap his parents left. Adah, trying to be gentle, reminds Francis that he was going to mind Titi and Vicky until they got a nursery spot. Francis accuses Adah of making that decision solo. Later, the landlord tells Adah that the children have to go. All the neighbors gossip about Adah, implying that Adah is too proud: “Only first-class citizens got to live with their children, not the blacks.” And indeed, the room is so uncomfortable that Francis, Adah, and their children rarely spend time together as a family: when Adah comes home, Francis leaves to get air.
Implicitly, Adah’s neighbors resent Adah’s decision to raise her children rather than sending them to a foster mother because “first-class citizens g[e]t to” raise their own children. In other words, they believe that Adah thinks she, unlike other Black people in England, is a “first-class citizen”—and thus that Adah thinks she’s better than her Black neighbors who have sent their children to foster mothers. The passage makes clear why raising one’s own children is so difficult for Black immigrants to England: due to housing discrimination, they have access only to extremely cramped rentals.
Themes
Meanwhile, Adah makes friends with Janet, a Cockney girl married to Mr. Babalola, a Nigerian man who came to the UK to study but ran out of money. One day, he found Janet asleep inside a telephone booth. Janet, age 16, was pregnant by a West Indian man; her stepfather kicked her out of the house because she wanted to keep the baby rather than putting it up for adoption. Mr. Babalola, pitying Janet, took her home and used her to “entertain” friends and acquaintances curious about sex with white women. Later, realizing that the “dole” Janet and her baby would receive from the government could pay his rent, Mr. Babalola became exclusive with Janet and got her pregnant again.
“Cockney” is an English dialect spoken by working-class people in and around London, especially London’s East End. “Dole” is a slang term for government assistance programs. In other words, Janet is a poor, socially marginalized white girl whom Mr. Babalola exploits sexually and then, when he realizes she qualifies for government assistance, economically. Janet’s story is similar to Adah’s—both girls have been sexually and economically exploited as minors. The parallels between Janet and Adah makes clear that while the novel harshly criticizes sexism in Nigerian culture, it is aware that harmful sexist exploitation occurs in England as well.
Themes
Get the entire Second Class Citizen LitChart as a printable PDF.
Janet has recently become pregnant with Mr. Babalola’s baby when Adah moves in and befriends Janet, recognizing that Janet is a smart girl who just wanted a home where she could raise her 18-month-old son Tony. When Adah explains her childcare difficulties to Janet, Janet suggests she find a “daily-minder.” At first, Adah can’t find anyone—and Francis, having failed his most recent set of exams, blames Adah and the children, rather than the fact that he skips classes and sleeps late. Then Mr. Babalola suggests Trudy, a mother of two who agrees to mind Titi and Vicky. Francis begins dropping the children off at Trudy’s after breakfast and picking them up at 6 p.m.; he regularly tells Adah how wonderful Trudy is.
Though Mr. Babalola has exploited Janet both sexually and economically, Janet is getting something she wants from Mr. Babalola: a stable living situation for herself and her son. Adah sympathizes with Janet because Adah too has negotiated and at times accepted gendered exploitation in order to achieve her own goals (e.g. education and travel). A “daily-minder” refers to a daytime babysitter. When Francis blames his family for his failure—despite his lackluster attempts to study—it shows his immaturity and tendency to scapegoat others, which may foreshadow further trouble for his marriage to Adah.
Themes
Titi stops speaking after a couple weeks of childcare at Trudy’s. Adah, alarmed, starts taking Titi and Vicky to Trudy’s herself. Trudy has been taking Titi and Vicky’s milk coupons and telling Adah that she gets five pints of milk a day, but Adah notices that the milkman only delivers two pints to Trudy. One day, Adah drops by Trudy’s on a half-day at work. She sees a toilet located in Trudy’s filthy backyard near the garbage can and Trudy’s two daughters playing with her own children’s toys in the clear front garden.
Francis has been praising Trudy as a babysitter. Yet Adah, who pays much closer attention to the children, notices Titi’s silence and investigates—showing her commitment to being an engaged mother even as she supports the family economically. Trudy’s daughters are playing with Titi and Vicky’s toys without Titi and Vicky, an alarming detail that suggests the daughters may have bullied Adah’s children and stolen their toys without Trudy intervening.
Themes
Entering Trudy’s house, Adah sees Trudy, a chubby woman who wears a lot of makeup, laughing with a man who’s holding onto her. Adah demands to know where Titi and Vicky are; she almost calls Trudy a sex worker but stays quiet, as she isn’t sure who the man (whose fly is down) actually is. Trudy gestures toward the backyard. Adah, rushing out, sees Vicky playing with garbage from the garbage can and Titi washing herself with water from the outdoor toilet. When the children run to their mother, Adah realizes Vicky is missing his diaper. Trudy, having followed Adah into the yard, babbles that Titi never speaks and Vicky constantly wets himself.
Trudy, whose excessive makeup codes her as lower-class, works as a babysitter and possibly also a sex worker. The former is poorly paid while the latter is socially marginalized, but neither requires educational credentials—which suggests that Trudy’s low social class and lack of educational opportunities dictated her work choices. Clearly, Trudy is a neglectful babysitter—Titi and Vicky have been left unattended in a dirty outdoor space—which suggests that she works as a babysitter solely for the money, not because she cares about children. It may also suggest that Trudy thinks she can get away with neglecting Black children in a way she couldn’t with white children.
Themes
Adah, ignoring Trudy, immediately takes Titi and Vicky to the nearest “children’s officer,” Miss Stirling. While Miss Stirling pooh-poohs Adah’s concerns, Trudy arrives and babbles excuses, claiming she would never have allowed Titi and Vicky into the backyard if an unwanted visitor hadn’t distracted her and that she is a “registered daily-minder” with high standards. Adah is shocked to learn, despite what she heard as a child, that white people lie. She has only known white missionaries, consulate workers, library workers, and Janet—never anyone like Trudy.
A “children’s officer” is a government worker who helps families with issues related to children. Trudy’s reference to being “registered,” meanwhile, suggests that she has completed certain training courses and is listed as a babysitter with the government. Trudy presumably lies about what happened with Titi and Vicky because she is afraid of losing her registration and thus her income from babysitting. Adah’s surprise that white people lie too shows her youthful naivete. It also suggests that missionaries and the American consulate workers in Nigeria exposed her to white-supremacist myths.
Themes
After Trudy, who needs the six pounds a week she gets from Adah, promises to improve the quality of her work, she tells Adah her life story the whole way home. Adah isn’t listening—she’s wondering why white people pretend to be “superior” as a race when “bad whites and good whites” exist in the same way that “bad blacks and good blacks” do. She never fully believes anything Trudy says again, though Francis downplays her worries.
Trudy has revealed to Adah that white supremacy is a lie: white people are indeed people, “good and bad,” just like Black people. They’re not a homogenous and “superior” group.
Themes
Adah, still worried about Titi’s silence, prays about it. One day, a Yoruba friend of Adah’s visits and asks Titi in Yoruba why she won’t speak. Titi, in Yoruba, demands that the friend not speak to her: Francis will cane her for speaking Yoruba, but she can’t speak much English. Adah realizes that Titi stopped speaking because Francis demanded that she speak only English (due to a Nigerian class preference for English caused by British colonization). As a result, Titi is only able to hold a conversation after age six. Realizing Titi’s difficulties, Adah presses Miss Stirling to find nursery spots for her children, but there are none—so Adah keeps sending them to Trudy’s. Then, something awful happens to Vicky.
The Yoruba are one of the three largest ethnic and linguistic groups in Nigeria (the other two being Ibo/Igbo and Hausa). According to the narrator, Francis wants Titi to speak only English because he associates English with being upper-class—a holdover from when Nigeria was an English colony and English-speaking white people had the most political power there. Thus, the novel illustrates how class signifiers—including what language you speak—can be the result of racist and colonial histories.
Themes
