Empowerment Will Come
Sefi
Atta's novel, Everything Good Will Come, is an unabashing, raw
story that explores life in Africa after the Biafran War through the
eyes and ears of the main character, Enitan. Enitan dreams of being
viewed as equal in society. She comes across many types of women and
with each one, she tries to further her cause for female empowerment.
Atta weaves seamlessly through the relationships Enitan has
throughout her life to portray a subtle, gradual shift that results
in a whole new outlook by the end. Each relationship changes or
affects her and contributes to the enthusiastic, dancing Enitan seen
at at the end of the novel when her father is released from prison.
Everything Good Will Come, portrays men as one-sided and women
as push-overs through their roles in society but subtly, Atta shows
the degrees of independence and strength by bouncing each character's
differences off one another to reveal that everybody's role is only
what they make of it. It seems to be sending the message that the
fight at large is not about sex roles in society but rather a fight
for human empowerment.
The
relationship between Enitan and her best friend, Sheri, is an
interesting and revealing aspect to the novel. As children, Sheri and
Enitan were opposites. They came from different backgrounds and
different family structures. "Sheri was a Moslem and she didn't
know much about Christianity, except that there was a book in the
Bible and if you read it, you'd go mad" (34). Their friendship
begins early in the novel and continues until the very end, but, like
any relationship, it has its ups and downs. After Sheri gets raped,
Enitan feels less than sympathetic for her best friend. Enitan
actually feels that it's Sheri's fault. As the rape occured, it was
as if Enitan didn't understand what was happening. She felt that it
was "a silent moment; a peaceful moment. A funny moment, too,"
(62). At this part of the novel, Enitan was still too naive and
immature to understand what had happened to her friend and, possibly,
the thought of sex still embarrassed her, which is why she wasn't
sure if she should laugh and be comfortable with it or be silent and
horrified. Later, Sheri settles down with a married man, and Enitan
is less than enthused for her friend's decision. In a perhaps true,
but brutally cynical moment, Enitan reflects that, "Marriage
could immediately wipe out a sluttish past"(102). Upon further
reflection, Enitan feels: "Sheri was the Nigerian man's ideal:
pretty shapely, yellow to boot, with some regard for a woman's
station. Now she was a kitchen martyr, and may well have forgotten
how to flaunt her mind," (105). Enitan is looking down on her
friend, yet again. She feels that she is better than her because she
is living a seemingly blameless, more worthy lifestyle. She sees a
woman in the kitchen and immediately assumes they are succumbing to
their role in society. Later in the novel, she goes as far as
"likening a handful of kitchen martyrs to people confined in
Nigerian prisons," (326).
Enitan's
mother and father have very different approaches to raising her. When
they find a book in Enitan's suitcase, they have
diametrical
points of view. The mother demands that Enitan never see Sheri again
because she's a bad influence and the father feels that the mother is
over-reacting. Her father says, "You're her mother, not her
juror" (37). During Enitan's childhood, her parents were
constantly bickering, and Sheri was an escape for her. Sheri offered
something new and "led [her] to the gap between parental consent
and disapproval" (43). Mid-novel, Enitan basically turns her
back on her mother and follows entirely in her father's footsteps.
"I no long believed her; hurt one moment, hurtful the next. She
could recall what my father said ten years ago, and yet she
misconstrued my entire childhood" (93). This is a turning point
in the novel for Enitan, who was raised by her mother's strict rules
and is now deciding for herself she disagrees. In a way, Enitan is
not only turning her back on her mother's ways but, also, she's
acknowleding a denial of her female role in society. Now that Enitan
is well educated and has seen the world through her own eyes, she can
turn her back on her mother's beliefs. It shows a generational
change. Her mother is still stuck, perhaps, in the old view of women's
roles, while Enitan is trying to find her own place in society. She
doesn't want her mothers perception of men and woman to affect her
outlook. Her mother is so focused on her husband and how he treated
her that she was blind to see how it affected Enitan. All the mother
could see was her role as a wife. She couldn't see herself as a
mother, as a friend, or as a mentor, and it affected how Enitan's
childhood is conveyed. But what's interesting is that Enitan in a way
ends up very much like her mother for awhile. She marries Niyi and
argues with him. And just as the father's mother came at Enitan's
mother, "threatening that he would take another wife"
(173), Niyi's mother confronts Enitan to remind her "He is the
head of the house" (301).
Enitan's relationship with Niyi is revealing and essential to portray the societal expectations of men and women. "Niyi Franco. He was a lawyer, though he was now a manager in an insurance company. His grandfather was a lawyer. His father and four brothers were lawyers. His mother retired from nursing the year he was born" (163). Niyi and his family represent the socially ideal roles. All the men in the family are lawyers, and the women stay at home and attend to the house and family needs. When Enitan wants to get involved in the protests for her father's sake, Niyi has an attitude towards the movement that Enitan is so deeply passionate about. He's not willing to support it or speak out for it, and instead, he only looks out for himself. He doesn't realize how vulnerable he might be if he didn't have the cushion of money in his family line. Contrastingly, Mother-of-Prison is only looking out for her family's best interests. She killed a man because she was assaulted after her husband died but even in prison she speaks out against societal wrongs. She won't be quiet.
Enitan's
first boyfriend, Mike, was quite a different portrayal. Mike was an
artist and though his career wasn't enticing, Enitan still dated him.
"Mike was wrong. Most women I knew would sprint from an artist.
It meant that they might have to dabble with poverty and poverty
always cleared people's eyes in Lagos" (83). Enitan was never
seeking a career-driven, put-together kind of man. She wanted someone
to share her passions with, and after Mike cheated on her, Niyi was
just the right fit. But Enitan was never fullfilled with Niyi, she
"never once expected him to tell [her she] was beautiful,"
(214) which is why she decided to leave him by the end of the novel.
Niyi was holding Enitan back from what truly mattered to her, and she
wasn't the kind of woman he wanted. He told her, "You are not a
domesticated woman. You just don't have that...that loving quality,"
(214). Atta seems to be implying that gender roles are one thing, but
what men are to women and how that affects their individual lives is
another thing. Enitan wasn't what Niyi wanted because she didn't fit
the mold.
Yet,
Atta still shows how societal expectations affected Enitan. "In
my 29 years no man every told me to show respect. No man ever needed
to. I had seen how women respected men. . .Too many woman, I thought,
ended up treating domestic frustrations like mild cases of
indegestion: shift-shift, prod-prod and then nothing" (186).
Enitan never had to be
told. She learned
through watching other woman. It reinforces that idea that society
has been like this a long time. Men come before women, and women know
it. Woman are expected to cook, clean, and play house.Yet it doesn't
have to be said, so it's not reinforced, perse, to each generation
verbally, which contributes to why Enitan is able to question it.
Shortly after Enitan's reflections and realization that society
seeped into her head somehow, she goes through a mental battle. She
breaks women into the three categories: "strong and silent,
chatterbox but cheerful, weak and kindhearted. All the rest were
known as horrible women," (200). Enitan isn't content fitting
into these groupings. She wants to "tear every notion they had
about women," and create a new perception that she could happily
fit into.
It
took a long time for Enitan to come to the understanding that even
though some women are not fighting the sexism as she so blatantly is,
it doesn't mean they are not fighting at all. "So cynical was I
about the core of strength an African woman was meant to possess,
untouchable, impenetrable, because I didn't possess one myself."
(252). Enitan realizes that she's been wrong in her view of African
women. She once thought they were weak and easily influenced, but now
she can see the silent strength. African women take on a lot more
than they appear to. Most of the things they do go unnoticed and are
internal. Meaning, the things they contribute are expected, but the
battle and the way they fight is by sacrificing something of
themselves for the better of their families. Mother-of-Prisons is the
prime example of this. Her husband couldn't hold a job and she paid
for everything in their home and then told people "that it was
[her] husband who was providing" (277). And her husband ran with
it. She didn't marry him for love, she married him because it's what
women do. Sheri did the same thing. Enitan sees Mother-of-Prisons as
a role model because she won't stop using her voice. Even though it
won't change anything, it still means something to her. Similarly,
the reporter Grace Ameh, who was imprisoned with Enitan, acknowledges
that they are just "fighting for a chance to be heard"
(298).
The only other strong role model Atta gave of an independent, strong
women working all on her own was Sheri's grandmother, Alhaja whom the
reader barely got introduced. "Alhaja headed a market women's
union and earned enough to educate her children overseas" (158).
Sheri took after her grandmother because she started her own catering
business to give herself more freedom. But the bottom line is that
everybody's role is what they make of it. Married or single, working
or not, vocal or silent – each woman gets to make their own impact,
and it all still matters in the end.
While Grace Ameh decided to be a reporter to speak out,
Mother-of-Prisons chose to fight silently. Sheri and her grandmother
Alhaja chose to start their own businesses as their way of combating
the societal expectations that women remain in the home. Niyi's
mother and Enitan's mother remained in the societal roles. Mike used
female goddesses in his art as if to make his case against society,
but morally, his actions cancelled out his opportunity to make a
strong statement in the novel. Niyi was supportive of Enitan as a
typical husband would be but he didn't support her passions at all
because he wasn't personally affected by it. This was "a country
struggling with foreign family structures" (247). Everyone is
trying to fit the mold, but the mold might not be right for the place
and time. Enitan rejected her role and chose to take her own path
when she left her husband. Her enthusiastic dancing at the end, when
her father is released, is the cherry-on-top of Atta's point. It is a
fight for human rights as a whole. While women in particular still
have to go to great lengths to be equal with men, the overall battle
is for human empowerment and the release of her father is one small
step in the right direction.
© October 2012
Works Cited
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