AFRICAN PROSE
BUCHI EMECHETA: The Joys of Motherhood.
Examine Obi Umunna’s influence on Ona.
Explanation
Obi Umunna is an important chief. He is wealthy and very traditional. He has no male child and so lacks natural heir. This is a harsh reality that he must tackle. Luckily the system of inheritance provides an outlet for him – daughter, Ona. He applies the rules rigidly.
Ona is Obi Umunna’s daughter. She is of rare beauty and also of unparalleled strong will, brought up to love ar adore her father. She is in love with Agbadi but cannot marry him. She can only remain his lover (mistress) by a decree of her father. Ona, despite her strength of character and firm ego is ruled by her father’s decisions in the one crucial pa of her life – marriage. She cannot marry the man of her desire. As the permitted mistress of her lover, she may bee children by him, but any male child should belong to her father.
This arrangement is exasperating for Agbadi. He does complain bitterly and rebukes Obi Umunna, saying the his inability to produce an heir himself is not the making of his daughter, Ona. In a sense, one may say that Agbadi confrontation with Obi Umunna over the issue is an indictment of a system that deprives people of their offspring mere! because others are unable to have their own children.
When Ona becomes pregnant, she reduces the pressure from Agbadi over the decree and settles the matter b resolving that if she has a daughter it will belong to Agbadi.