The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta

First published: 1976

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social criticism

Time of plot: c. 1950-c. 1953

Locale: Lagos and Ibuza, Nigeria

Principal characters

• Aku-nna, a teenage girl
• Nna-nndo, her brother
• Ma Blackie, their mother
• Chike, a schoolmaster who becomes Aku-nna’s husband
• Okonkwo, Aku-nna’s stepfather and Ma Blackie’s second husband
• Okoboshi, a young man who kidnaps Aku-nna for marriage

The Story:

Thirteen-year-old Aku-nna and her brother, Nna-nndo, two years younger, arrive home from school to find Aku-nna’s father, Ezekiel Odia, unexpectedly standing in the middle of the family’s one-room apartment. Obviously ill at ease, he tells his children that he is going to the hospital to have his foot examined. He had earlier injured his foot during service in World War II. He says that he will be back for the evening meal, adding that Aku-nna and Nna-nndo should remember always that they are his children.

Despite a patriarchal social structure in which daughters are devalued, Aku-nna feels a special bond with her father and knows that he, in turn, loves her. Her name means “father’s wealth,” and Aku-nna has resolved to make a good marriage so that her bride price—the money paid to the family of the bride by that of the groom—will please him.

It is now evening, and Ezekiel has not returned from the hospital. More than three weeks later, the children realize that their father had died in the hospital. His funeral is a mixture of African and European traditions. Brother and sister are now in a serious plight: A family without a father is deemed one without a head or shelter, a family that does not exist. Aku-nna hears an aunt say that she will be married quickly so that her bride price may pay for her brother’s schooling.

Before Ezekiel’s death, Ma Blackie, his wife, had returned to her home town of Ibuza in the hope that indigenous practices could help restore her fertility and enable her to give him another son. Alarmed by rumors of her husband’s ill health, she now decides to return to Lagos, where she learns of his death. Some weeks later, she, Aku-nna, and Nna-nndo take the only course of action open to them: They return to the mother’s home town, the lack of a breadwinner making life in expensive Lagos impossible. The three arrive in Ibuza and happen to meet two young men on bicycles, one of whom is Chike, the handsome young headmaster of the local school. The ambition of Aku-nna—delicate, sensitive, and intelligent—is now to acquire enough education to become a teacher herself and thus help her mother. Chike, however, is not allowed to associate with the daughters of good families, so Aku-nna hopes Chike will at least be able to help her get the necessary certificate.

During the journey from Lagos to Ibuza, Aku-nna had noticed how the modern city had gradually given way to a more simple rural life. She comes to learn that Ibuza, in midwestern Nigeria, is much more traditional than Lagos. Okonkwo, Ezekiel’s brother, marries Ma Blackie as his fourth wife, according to custom. She soon becomes pregnant and, therefore, happy. Okonkwo wishes to take the higher title of Eze, which will require an expensive sacrifice to the gods, and thinks that Aku-nna’s bride price will help him attain this social ambition. Okonkwo is prepared to accept his stepdaughter’s education for some time, as educated girls command a higher bride price, and he is determined that the money will come to him. Meanwhile, Ngbeke, his senior wife, jealously suggests to her sons that Ma Blackie will insist on keeping at least some of the money. She also suggests that Aku-nna, fourteen years old, physically undeveloped, and not yet menstruating, is an ogbanje, a living-dead person who is bound to die young, perhaps at the birth of her first child. To Ngbeke’s sons’ indignation, their mother also claims there is a special closeness between Aku-nna and Chike, who is not merely a foreigner to Ibuza but also the descendant of slaves.

Aku-nna and Chike are indeed falling in love. When Aku-nna is unable to concentrate in class due to her sense of isolation and consequent depression, Chike, disturbed by a growing attraction, loses his temper with her. He permits the weeping girl to leave the classroom and later follows her to a secluded part of the school grounds. He attempts to find out what is troubling her. Suddenly, Chike sees that she is menstruating. He asks her to keep her condition quiet until after her school examination. Later the same day, the two declare their love and, despite the barrier of custom, Aku-nna asks Chike to request her hand in marriage from her family.

It soon becomes clear that Aku-nna is marriageable. She had menstruated during a firewood-collecting expedition and could no longer hide the fact. Now, she is obliged to endure the crude attempts at love-play of Okoboshi, a spoiled youth lame from a snake bite. As part of a culturally sanctioned courtship tradition he grabs her breasts. The enraged Chike, who is present, knocks Okoboshi down. Soon, however, in another culturally accepted practice, Okoboshi’s family has Aku-nna kidnapped with the intention of marrying her to him.

Confused and now a prisoner, Aku-nna knows that should she resist, custom permits Okoboshi to get help to have her held down while he consummates the marriage. Heartened by hearing Chike’s distinctive whistle nearby, she resolves, at this defining moment in her life, to resist. Okoboshi approaches Aku-nna, who falsely tells him that she is not a virgin and that the descendant of a slave had repeatedly possessed her. Even if Okoboshi were to take her by force, rape her, and get her pregnant, he cannot be sure that he would be the father. Okoboshi punches Aku-nna in the face and, in the morning, arranges for her to be put to work carrying water.

Later in the day, when alone, she again hears Chike’s whistling. He appears, and the two escape to a nearby village. Chike takes her to Ughelli, another town in the midwestern area, where he hopes to find a job. Chike and Aku-nna make love, and Chike realizes that Aku-nna is indeed a virgin. He says that the rumors to the contrary must be publicly denied. All Aku-nna asks is that her bride price be paid, for customary belief holds that a woman whose price is not paid will die in childbirth.

Aku-nna and Chike are married, and Aku-nna becomes pregnant. She is now sixteen years old but looks two years younger. She finds the pregnancy difficult. Meanwhile, her stepfather, Okonkwo, refuses the bride price offered by Chike’s father, saying he will not marry his stepdaughter to a slave. Aku-nna dies giving birth to a girl. Her story is told to young girls in Ibuza to reinforce the cultural beliefs that a girl must accept the man chosen as her husband and that her bride price must be paid so that she will not die during childbirth.

Bibliography

Boostrom, Rebecca. “Nigerian Legal Concepts in Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price.” In Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta, edited by Marie Umeh. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1996. A careful examination of customary Ibo law and British law and the social changes that had been already underway in 1950’s Nigeria, the decade in which The Bride Price is set.

Cox, C. Brian, ed. African Writers. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997. This compilation on African writers includes a biographical and critical overview of Emecheta and her writings. Also includes a brief bibliography.

Emenyonu, Ernest N. “Technique and Language in Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price, The Slave Girl, and The Joys of Motherhood.” In Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta, edited by Marie Umeh. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1996. A stylistic study of three of Emecheta’s works, part of a larger collection exploring her career.

Fishburn, Katherine. Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-Cultural Conversations. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. A more demanding postmodernist approach to Emecheta’s work. For advanced readers with some knowledge of literary and cultural theories.

Katrak, Ketu H. “Womanhood/Motherhood: Variations on a Theme in Selected Novels of Buchi Emecheta.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 22, no. 1 (1987): 159-170. A thematic study of the biological and economic control of women displayed in Emecheta’s fiction, including The Bride Price.

Taiwo, Oladele. Female Novelists of Modern Africa. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. This general study of African women novelists contains a short but good introduction to The Bride Price that also sketches out the novel’s major themes.

Uraizee, Joya. “’They Who Are Beneath’: Subaltern Voices in The Conservationist, The Day in Shadow, and The Bride Price.” In This Is No Place for a Woman: Nadine Gordimer, Na Yantara Sahgal, Buchi Emecheta, and the Politics of Gender. Trenton N.J.: Africa World Press, 2000. An ambitious use of the concept of subaltern consciousness of literary critic Gayatri C. Spivak, a concept applied here to an examination of power relations in The Bride Price.

Uwakweh, Pauline Ada. “Carving a Niche: Visions of Gendered Childhood in Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions.” African Literature Today 21 (1998): 9-21. A comparative essay arguing, in part, that gender identity, as evidenced in The Bride Price, is created by socialization.