Motherhood and Art Theme Analysis

Many novels represent motherhood and art as antithetical: mothers, bound to their children, lack the time and freedom required by the artistic life. By contrast, Second Class Citizen represents mothering and making art as analogous, complementary activities. Adah, a young Nigerian woman who immigrates to the UK in the early 1960s, marries Francis when they are both teenagers and immediately begins having his children. By age 20, while working full-time almost continuously, Adah has had three children, the last of whom, a son named Bubu, requires an emergency Caesarian section that nearly kills her. After a contraceptive cap and abortifacient pills fail Adah during her fourth pregnancy, she gives birth to her daughter Dada and decides she must take a real break from paid work. During this break, Adah recalls her old aspiration to write—so, for five months, all she does is breastfeed Dada, care for her other young children, and work on a novel manuscript, The Bride Price. Completing this first novel manuscript feels to Adah like giving birth: writing and maternity are, for her, the two most fulfilling activities of her life. When she mentions this to a supportive former coworker, Bill, he calls the novel her “brainchild.” This analogy gives Adah the strength to leave her abusive husband Francis when he burns her novel manuscript: she feels that he has essentially killed her child and so she must leave him—not only to pursue art but, implicitly, to protect her human children, who witness Francis violently abuse her. Adah’s maternity leave allows her to fulfill her aspiration of becoming a writer, while Francis’s hostility to her writing motivates her to divorce him, thus freeing her children from an abusive household. In this way, counter to a common cultural narrative, Second Class Citizen represents maternity and art as allied practices.