The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta centers around a Nigerian girl named Aku-nna and her experiences of growing up in a tradition-centered village. Aku-nna used to live in the town of Lagos, but following the death of her father, the family, including her, her mother and her brother relocated to Ibuza, where her mother Ma Blackie became her uncle’s wife and Aku-nna cousin Ogugua became Aku-nna’s sister. Aku-nna learns about her village’s traditions, including the unfair rules on sexuality. While living in Ibuza, Aku-nna catches the eye of two boys, and what ensues brings a horrible conflict among three prominent families in the town and certain doom on Aku-nna and her lover Chike. Throughout the story of Aku-nna, the Emecheta incorporates many themes such as gender inequality, conflicts of culture and questions on self-worth.
Fortune can be a powerful thing, whether it is deciding the fate of someone based on luck or the money of a deceased one. Fortune can be taken in two ways: The luck of someone, or the money of someone. Taking money first, in The Bride Price, the rules of a man’s fortune were really unfair. As soon as a man died, their assets, including their house, money, children, and wife were to be given to their brother. The wife had no say in this, as they were just shipped off like a piece of cargo. It was really unfair at how instead of giving the wife choice in whether to stay independent or remarry, they were forced into a marriage between their husband’s brother. Ma Blackie had to uproot herself and move all the way to Ibuza. The other meaning is luck. Sometimes, a person’s fate is just decided by fortune, and we just can’t change it. It may have just been Aku-nna’s fortune that she met Chike, or that her father died in the first place. Things can happen without our control, and we just have to adhere to them. Some things have dual meanings, and fortune is one of them. In money, fortune is not something to just be passed around like livestock. In luck, fortune can decide many things in our life, and we just have to do our best to make sure we manipulate it to our favor.
Names can be powerful, each with its unique and wholesome meaning. The names of the children in the story also played a really important role. They illustrated what the father thought of each child. Aku-nna’s name in the book meant “father’s wealth.” She was expected to bring a high bride price to her family and provide her family with riches after she married. Nn-nando’s name, on the other hand, meant father’s shelter, and he was meant to provide for his family. Names were very important in the book. At their father’s passing, Aku-nna immediately knew that everything was collapsing by reading the meaning of her brother’s name. “We have nothing. Our father named you Nna-nndo, “ Father is the shelter” . We have not only lost our father. We have lost our shelter too.’” When Aunt Uzo was discussing Aku-nna’s future with the other members of the family, she referred to Aku-nna’s name and said that she shall live up to it, with her superb housekeeping skills, beauty, and brains. Names can reveal more about a person. Though they may seem like the most known thing, underneath, they can have different layers.
Today, we often look at girls and boys as both equally important. But in Nigeria in the Bride Price, boys were valued at a much higher level than girls. In the local culture, sons were looked at as the heirs of the family, and the ones that would keep the legacy going and provide things needed for their father. Without sons, a family was considered beneath others and not as worthy. “‘I paid double the normal bride price for you,’ he told her. ‘And we were married in church. But what have you given me - just one son!’” Even Ezekiel, Aku-nna’s birth dad looked down on her and blamed Ma Blackie for not being able to give birth to enough sons. Ma Blackie even goes to the water goddess to ask for another child to contribute to the family. Another depiction of the gender hierarchy was when Ogugua was telling Aku-nna about the widowed woman. When Ogugua said that the woman had been widowed with no sons, Aku-nna thought about how sad that was. But when Ogugua said that after the woman’s remarriage, she gave birth to a son, Aku-nna clapped her hands in delight. The unfairness towards girls in this book went back to the local traditions, and though Christian culture was being adopted, boys were still on a pedestal. Not just Nigerian, but in many other cultures, too, girls were thought to be inferior to boys.
Getting married is a big stepping stone in life. It symbolizes a new beginning that the two newlyweds should control themselves, not someone else. It is not a way to determine someone's worth. The unfairness of the treatment of girls in Nigeria in The Bride Price doesn’t just stop there, either. They also get no say in who they marry. Once a girl becomes a woman, suitors are allowed to come asking for her hand in marriage. This may sound like there is nothing wrong to it, but the catch is that girls do not get to choose which suitor ends up actually marrying them. The decision is made by the father. A woman’s husband is determined by how much money the man can pay to the woman in exchange for her hand in marriage. The woman also had little say in the decision. If her father accepted the offer, she would have to go to him no matter whether she liked him or loved him or not. “If a man cuts a girl's hair, she will belong to him forever” This was also a rule that even further limited how much freedom a girl had in such a crucial decision of her life. A girl’s worth was also determined by how much money she brought to her family at marriage. "Aku-nna knew that she was too insignificant to be regarded as a blessing." Girls only got evaluated by how much money they fetched, which was really unfair compared to boys, who were valued by their education and success in life. Marriage is an important part of a person’s life, not to be taken lightly. It should be decided by the undertaker and the undertaker only, without any further shenanigans on how a person was based on their marriage.
Women are just as good as men. They can do what men can do, if not better. It is just unfair to say that women are inferior to men, when women might have been even better. In fortune, a girl is just passed along and treated to whatever her uncle wants to treat her like. Meanwhile, a boy still gets all the opportunities. Girls might be taken out of school and forced to do housekeeping chores, but boys still enjoy their freedom. How come girls just have to suffer inequality? In marriage, a girl is not allowed to choose her suitor, only her father is. Boys are allowed to have “fun” before they meet their partner, but girls are required to stay a virgin and only break it when they marry. Many unfair rules are being put on girls that limits them from many different activities that they should have a say in. However, boys are liberated and free to do whatever as they please. Why should one gender be restricted and the other be released? Education is another great example of the unfair treatment towards women. They are taken out of school at age 14 to prepare for becoming a wife and prepare for later life. Boys, however, get to stay and maybe even go to university if they wish. Education is key as it instructs children, boys and girls alike on many different concepts that they will end up utilizing later in life. It’s just not the same, though, when one sex is exposed to more educational windows and the other has a set time limit for how long they can be in the classroom. Why should one gender be worse than the other? They are all born equally, and given the same opportunities, a daughter can shine even more than a son. It just matters what you provide them with.
The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta is a really well-written novel with an astounding plot and well thought out characters. The themes that are expressed in this book are also really in-depth, each holding different lessons that both young and old readers can learn from. In the theme of fortune, readers can learn about how not everything should be and can be incorporated into a person’s fortune, and in the theme of names, readers can learn about the power and meaning of names a certain person holds. Readers explore gender inequality in the theme of sons in the family and about how girls are inferior to boys, and in the theme of marriage, we can learn about how marriage is an important part in one’s life and should be decided by the undertaker, not an outsider. Overall, The Bride Price is a really good book that I would definitely recommend to any person looking for a good read.
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