Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta is about the struggle of Adah (the main character) and her survival, not only of herself but also her dreams, while growing into a woman, moving from a high class position in her native Nigeria to a very poor class in a predominantly white European society. She struggles with motherhood and with being a wife and supporting her entire family along with being her own independent person. Part of her struggle also deals with the issues of race and being black in the face of English racism.
Buchi Emechata was born of Ibuza heritage in Nigeria near Lagos. With her two children and her husband she later moved to England. Emechata was aware of the prejudices against women receiving an education while she was growing up but this did not stop her from graduating from the London University with a degree in Sociology. She is the author of numerous books including. Emecheta's struggle getting her education in London played a large part in her life. Second Class Citizen is a book that depicts the struggle for women in receiving their education and surviving in a European white society while adapting to different religious beliefs and still following the beliefs of her own people. Dialogues This theme relates to many works of literature.
For instance the Mexican novel Balun Canan ( Nine Guardians) by Rosario Castellanos. Castellanos in Nine Guardians writes about the Mayan civilization as it is related to the European Spanish hacienda owners.
The Indians struggle for rights to land that was originally theirs. The Indians struggle to receive an education to better their position in society and to aid in defending themselves-one of the promises of the Mexican revolution. The Cardenas administration required the Spanish landowners to educate the Indians' children. Castellanos also addresses the roles that women play in both the land owning society as well as in the Indian society. There is much contrast between these women and how they survive and fight the male domination in order for their voices to be heard.
Adah does this at many times in Second Class Citizen. She stands up to her husband and when he puts her down she uses her intelligence to find ways around her husband's behavior. He is very stubborn and at times mentally abusive and this is Adah's only defense in fulfilling herself as a person and her dreams. In the same ways that Indian cultures in Nine Guardians use education against the European landowners, women use education to improve their circumstances. These attempts are not always successful but they are a start in a revolution that is bound to strike every country. Notes The main character of Second Class Citizen is a woman named Adah who was born in Nigeria and belonged to the Ibo tribe. Adah is a young girl who begins to have this dream when she is about eight to get to the United Kingdom.
The novel takes place seven to eight years after World War II and, as part of the colonial educational system, outstanding students can travel to Europe to study. Because Nigeria was a British colony, the United Kingdom becomes the land that Adah often hears about as a child and also the place from which people in her town have come from. She hears her father speak of the United Kingdom one day, 'The Ibuza women who lived in Lagos were preparing for the arrival of the town's first lawyer from the United Kingdom. The title 'United Kingdom' when pronounced by Adah's father sounded so heavy, like the type of noise one associated with bombs. It was so deep, so mysterious, that Adah’s father always voiced it as if he were speaking of God's Holiest of Holies. Going to the United Kingdom must surely be like paying God a visit.
The United Kingdom, then, must be like heaven.' The story starts out with Adah as a young girl who is stuck at home with her mother who does not pay much attention to her. Adah's brother is away at school all day while her father is away working.
Adah decides that she wants to go to school too and she sneaks away from her mother one day and runs all the way to school. She has met the teacher a few times before and she goes hoping that he will let her sit in on his class. When she arrives she disrupts the entire class by bursting into the room. The children all stare at her but the teacher just looks at her and smiles and lets her sit in on the rest of the class. Adah's dream is to go to the United Kingdom to study and to see the greatness that she is sure is there. Her troubles begin from the first moment she realizes what her dream is.
First she is not allowed to go to school because she is a girl and the family does not want to spend the money for her to go. She is a girl of her own mind though and she goes to school anyway which ends up getting her mother in trouble. Her next set of problems occurs when her father dies and she is sent to live with her mother's brother.
Any money that her family had went to her brother's education, and the only reason she was kept in school (though not very good ones) was because it was thought that her uncle would be able to get more money for her when they finally married her off. 'Children, especially girls, were taught to be very useful very early in life, and this had its advantages. For instance, Adah learned very early to be responsible for herself.
Nobody was interested in her for her own sake, only in the money she would fetch, and the housework she could do and Adah, happy at being given this opportunity of survival, did not waste time thinking about its rights or wrongs. She had to survive.' This desire to persevere and survive in her society is what leads Adah on her journey through life.
It is also the driving force behind her desire to never give up on her dreams. She avoids marriage over and over until she realizes that marriage might be her only way to continue on with her dreams. She then uses her marriage in the sense that she gets a good job and takes care of her husband and her children and she saves money with the intent for her family to go over to United Kingdom. The plan is that she will go along with her husband and both of them will continue their educations and become prominent figures in society. Adah is alone hoping for her dream to come true, 'So she found herself alone once more, forced into a situation dictated by society in which, as an individual, she had little choice.
She would rather that she and her husband, who she was beginning to love, moved to new surroundings, a new country and among new people. So she said special prayers to God, asking Him to make Pa (her husban'd's father), agree to their going to the land of her dreams, the United Kingdom! Just like her Pa, she still said the name United Kingdom in a whisper, even when talking to God about it, but now she felt it was coming nearer to her. She was beginning to believe she would go to England' (27). The news Adah receives from her husband is not that she will go to England, but that her husband will go to England to study to better himself while Adah will stay at home and continue to support the family.
Her husband's father does not approve of women going to England and so he will not allow both of them to move there. At first Adah is filled with rage, but she controls her anger and she comes up with a plan. 'Be as cunning as a serpent but as harmless as a dove,' she quoted to herself.' Once again she uses her smarts to get what she wants. She sends Francis (her husband) off to England to study and in the meantime she works and sends him money.
Adah does not give up here, she keeps her hopes up and when her husband writes to her a few months later that he is going to be in England for at least four or five more years she decides it is time to make her move and she convinces her in-laws that it is necessary for her to be in England with her husband and that Francis wants her there, which he did say to her in his letter. She soon books herself and her two children first class tickets on a ship to England and as the real struggle begins for Adah she is arriving in England, welcomed by cold, rainy and cloudy skies. A foreshadowing of all that is to come for her. She is shocked by the grayness but she will not give up on her dream. Adah has arrived in the United Kingdom and this is where she goes from a first class citizen in her native Nigeria to a Second Class Citizen in England. Some of the main points of struggle for Adah are being a black woman in a predominantly white society, learning of the women's rights movement during the seventies and the fact that there is birth control available to her, and her struggle to pursue her goal in becoming a writer and ultimately between four children and a lazy abusive husband the time to write. This book deals with many different issues and movements and how they all interconnect and relate to one another and also one woman.
Just as the reader starts to find hope for Adah another circumstance arises and as the book progresses one wonders how one woman can put up with so much and yet be so strong not only for herself but also for her children. She never gives up on them or on her dreams, not even when her first piece of work is burned by her husband. Links Buchi Emecheta: The Joys of Motherhood (1979):. This page contains a study guide for The Joys of Motherhood. It gives a brief biography on Emecheta and then lists thoughtful questions pertaining to the novel.
Buchi Emecheta:. This is a great page that discusses themes in Emecheta's writing as well as providing links to other African related websites. It has visual art links and it is a Post-colonial web page with much useful information. Buchi Emecheta:. This is another site with a brief biography and it also includes themes and descriptions of many of her books including Second Class Citizen. African Women in Literature:. Part of the Post-colonial/ Colonial web pages and Western Michigan University, this is a theme page on African women in Literature, both the women that write the literature and also the women characters of the literature.
There is critical analysis as well as discussions of themes and theories of the cultures addressed in the different works. Teaching Teaching the Traven novels should be done with great care in Ideas for short-essay writing: Write an essay discussing the differences between Adah's roles as a woman in her native country of Nigeria, with the roles she has as a black woman in England. Show how Adah grows into or away from the roles that she is expected to play.
Write an essay that traces Adah's persistence to pursue her dream in life. Explain where her inspirations come from and how it is that she does not give up even when faced with road-block after road-block. Discuss what brings her down and what pulls her through.
Second Class Knot Requirements
Touch the quotes that she uses to keep herself going like the following quote, 'Be as cunning as a serpent but as harmless as a dove.' Discuss how these quotes reflect the person that Adah is and the woman that she becomes.
SECOND CLASS CITIZEN Buchi Emecheta COLONIAL CONTEST The contest is still London because we're going to talk about the London experience of the author. We have to focus on Nigeria, Africa. The colonization of Africa starts with the exploitation and slavery, with the Spanish and the Portuguese colonizers.
During the 19 th century all the Europe was called “scramble for Africa” that is an expression used to define the colonialism in Africa. The territories of Africa were contended by the different powers of Europe.
It became a power game in order to conquer territories rich of row material and resources. During the 19th century the occupation of African territories was regulated by a principal of effectiveness which was based in the fact that the possession of the territory could be claimed only by occupying this territory.
There was a system of high competition among the different European nations. Congress of Berlin was signed in 1884: it was a congress that brought together various European countries that had manifested interested for the African territories (France, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Germany,.); it regulated the “scramble for Africa”.
So, Africa was divided into different colonies, the map of Africa was re-drown and new borders was drown, that are artificial on man-made borders. The borders were made according to the interests of the European nations. In Africa there were different ethnic groups that speaking different languages, having different religions and cultures. These mixes caused chaos and situations of internal conflicts. Nigeria has known as Nigeria only in 1914, it was an example of artificial place made up of different groups.
This point of Africa was much contended between Britain and France, they had economic interests. These different communities were called protectorates: this term underlines the kind of colonial. The English were not physically present at the beginning so they used some local people to administer the government. In 1901 all these small communities were gated in two different protectorates: the northern and the southern protectorate. They were put together in 1914 and they became “Nigeria”. They were united under a single colonial administration.
In 1960 Nigeria became independent. Africa suffered a cultural, political, and economic shock. BUCHI EMECHETA Buchi Emecheta is a woman writer born in Lagos (Nigeria) in 1944 (→ generation after Selvon). She migrated to London in 1960 (10 years after Selvon), but the experiences are very similar.
She had an English education is she can find a good job in London, like a librarian, which was one of the first class job. She has also the opportunity to study at the London university and graduated in sociology. She works as a community worker (social assistant) and she had a carrier because she became a university professor and then a writer. She published her first novel in 1972 and “Second class citizen” is her second novel which was published in 1974. She presents in her novels the black British female identity; so, we have a change of prospective from a male to a female settlement. All her novels deal with the role of women, how they are perceived in a social background that are both Nigerian and Londoner.
The novels deal with the problem of racism and prejudice, are autobiographical. “Second class citizen” remains a novel, but still based on a biographical experience of the author. She gathers different experiences and different identities, she deal with the experience of diaspora → Nigerian women migrated in London. Her studies help her a lot to have a critical and sociological perspective, and the cultural background came from her African traditions.
The feminist perspective and interest for the subaltern status of black women that was studied both in England and Nigerian contest. They were much different. SECOND CLASS CITIZEN The emphasis is put on the second-class conditions and the discrimination of women. Adah is the protagonist and she’s a reflection of the author, but also of many black migrant women. She is a second class citizen so she is less important and less accepted. The first two chapters are set in Nigeria in 1960s. In Nigeria patriarchal system women had no education because is a privilege, so Adah had to struggle to have an education.
Women are property of men. But in England women had to face the same racial discrimination that there are in Selvon but also gender discrimination. Double colonization → typical situation of colonized women: they are a colonial subject but also a female subject. The gender discrimination is particularly underlined in London by Nigerian husbands.
They replicate the patriarchal traditions so women are twice colonized, as migrants and as women (double condition of subordination and colonization). She never depicts the women as strong women fighting to get freedom they should have.
The instrument is the education: education plays a fundamental role in this struggle of emancipation. Adah want to be a first-class citizen trough education (education means have an active role). The bride is something to be bought, because women are object and children-makers. Maternity is fundamental to determine a value of a woman, fertility is very important; but they are considered only for their reproductive capacity (→ Emecheta tries to fight against these categories imposed on women); so the depiction of men is always negative. Adah ’s husband is depicted as lazy and violent. The contrast between place and displacement → being in a place but feeling displaced, feeling of no-belonging. We can consider Emecheta a feminist writer because feminism was born during the 1960s, it was a western movement and represented the needs of middle class white women (in fact it was born in London), but Emecheta wasn’t white.
In 1969 a new feminist group was formed, composed by African and Asian women (important example of the difference between the two feminist movements; different movements with different needs). The double marginalization of black women is not perceived by white people: Adah is a victim both of African men (patriarchal society) and English men (her husband). Concept of blackness change → the compactness is disrupted because they need to present different ways of being black the feminist movement broke this homogenized category: there are different ways to be black (this is the first split: black man and black women. In this case being black is different). This is a documentary fiction, it records the everyday life and difficulties. The idea to be able to speak out (find a voice). The novel begin in Nigeria and Adah was little but she’s a strong child: she doesn’t accept restriction of any kind.
She persuades her parents to give her an education, but her father dies and her situation gets worse. Women can’t live alone in patriarchal society so her mother remarried and Adah was adopted by an uncle.
She starts working as a servant but she wants to study (she manages to get an education). She realizes growing up that she can do nothing in Nigeria as a single woman so she had to accept to get married. Marriage for her is only a weapon in order to obtain what she wants (she can get independency only if she gets married). She finds a good job in Nigeria, as a librarian and in the America embassy; but her big dream is going to England, because she has the ideologization of Britain as the imperial center, where everything is possible, so she hopes in a better future for her and her children. Another reason is to escape from this patriarchal society.
She was studied much more than her husband, so she's one who brings her money home to maintain the family. The Francis 's family decides that he will go to England thanks to the money of Adah. This was a tragedy for her: she manages to persuade her family to let her go to England and also Francis 's family, with the two children she has had in the meanwhile. When she finally arrives in England it was a dream that became true, but it will be the opposite, a nightmare. She believed that she would have been escaped from the patriarchal society but once in England she remains a victim of this.
She's a victim of sexism, despotism that in England is made even stronger. Here her husband is free to be violent to her, she understands that in Nigeria she was much more protected by the family, instead in London she's a victim of her husband who is victim of the society because he feels marginalized. Social class → the fact of being part of a first or a second class is very important for Adah, because she has struggled in order to belong to a great class. She wants to get more but one in London she has to share the same marginalized condition. Adah has worked very hard to build her social position but one in London everything was destroyed. She never accepts being a second-class citizen and a low-social condition.
She marginalizes herself from the other black women that she considers as being not on her same level. Bildungsroman: getting step by step a personal independence. The story of a woman who grows up in terms as experience, not only in terms of age.
Adah never accepts her condition and she always struggle for her independence and freedom. She knows that those like her can get out from the condition of oppression by fighting. She (Adah, but Emecheta behind her) is very critical of many customs and traditions of Nigeria → she never idealizes her African traditions. NB: Adah is representative of a group of women but this is a novel of on individual person → The novel of Selvon reflects the community, whole community. With Emecheta we have the idea of a novel focused on an individual protagonist.
Another difference between Selvon and Emecheta is the language. Emecheta uses a standard English but also the tone which is not comic at all. Adah is never a passive victim, instead in Selvon we have the idea of a victim society of black people.
CHAPTER 1: CHILDHOOD PAG. → She has a dream of something that is not specified yet, originated from nowhere. The female nature of Adah is subjected by discrimination. Her age is just a supposition because she wasn't recorded at the birth register; she was born as a disappointment because she's a girl (the fact of being a woman is a form of disappointment for everybody). Her life begin in a very difficult condition.
→ The narrator describes the people that at the time live in London with their mentality (how the colonial center is perceived, as a paradise, by these people). Also, the narrator described how the people of the village where Adah was born, were preparing for the arrival of a men who had left for the UK to study law. He has considered as a God only for the fact of being in England (→ Sacred image of UK). In Adah village the UK is perceived as a heaven and this is the reason of the dream of the girl. → How difficult is for Adah to go to school (→ gender discrimination).
School is saw as the weapon to allow a better life, without poverty and disease, but boys were preferred. Adah 's education was discussed in her family, because her brother goes to school without problems, so she's not allowed to school. One day she runs to school, escaping from home (not her brother 's school) because she has nothing to do at home.
Physically going to school gives the idea of the afford and how difficult it is for her. → Physical description: she looks like escaping from a prison and she runs as faster she can (she's doing something wrong) but she's tired so she begin to walk (an afford), and when she arrives to school, the teacher was surprised but she was kind to her. At the end of the day she realized that she has done something wrong: when she arrived at home she found the police who were interrogating her mother, because she was accused and abused by the policemen. → Physical abuse and violence on Adah 's mother because Adah escaped and went to school. The policemen forced the mother to drink a big bowl of “gari” with water (physical violence); they are laughing, joking and they're happy to see this woman suffering: it is because she's a woman that she's punished. The father has to show that is agree with the policemen in order to save her wife.
The policemen humiliated her both physically and psychologically and at the end she promised that this will never happen anymore because otherwise she will be sent to prison. The choice of Adah had enormous consequences on her family, especially on her mother who was accused of not to be able to take care of her child. Her school experience starts with a lot of difficulties but after this episode she's allowed to go to school, so she has obtained what she wanted. → How this colonized-figure (Nigerian lawyer who studied in London) is perceived by Nigerian people after this arrival and how his education predominate on the colonized, he's considered superior. The women welcomed him at the port dancing (ritualistic tradition).
He represents the English government. We are still in the colonial period, the women were proud to be photographed by English people while they're dancing. The figure of the lawyer is sacralized, the English experience changed him and he has abandoned all his native traditions. This person has changed, he forgotten his African traditions and he's no more able to eat traditional food. This episode reinforced in Adah her desire to go to England, she wanted to be treated in the same way. CHAPTER 2: ESCAPE INTO ELITISM The consequences for Adah 's life after her father 's death → the family can't live without a man, according to the tradition, so Adah 's mother was adopted by the older brother of her husband while Adah was adopted by the older brother of her mother (importance of the patriarchal family: the men are predominant).
Adah started working in this new family as a servant, she had to do the hardest works in order to pay back this sort of favor of having adopted her. She's very determined and she insists to going to school, so she persuades her new family to send her these; but a member of the family realizes that if she has an education her bride price will be come higher (the bride price is the price which the family have to pay for her bride). There are only the utilitarian reasons for her. Adah disgusted of all the men, she doesn't want to get married and becomes a servant of a man, but she became more educated so her bride price became higher and higher, because of this only old man could pay her bride price.
She's disgusted by this old man. → She realized that in order to obtain what she wants she needs someone 's help (Someone presence → spiritual presence of grandmother who protected her).
She was at school thinking about her grandmother and the teacher realized that she's absent minded, so she punished Adah beating her but she reacted very violently (incapacity to accept the idea of a wrong punishment). → Discrimination against girls.
Adah was physically punished by the teacher with the help of other boys, but she didn't accept to be a victim so she reacted by using herself violence, hurting a boy. She was accused of cannibalism. This process of education is very difficult for Adah, but she never surrendered.
After this school she wanted to go to university but she realized that she couldn't go to the city alone because she's a woman. So the only way to go to university is get married (instrumental mean: the only way to get education). She found a quite young man, Francis, but she's not in love with him; he had a poor family which couldn't pay the bride price and for this reason her marriage wasn't happy. → All the elements of a marriage day weren't, so it was the saddest day of her life. She got pregnant very soon and she found a great job in the America embassy as a librarian. She became the one who supports the family, she paid for the all family.
Francis started wondering if it is correct that his wife was earning so much money (→ problem of conscience: he asked his father what he has to do). In Francis 's father 's view she's a economic advantage: she's protected only because she earns a lot of money because the money are more important than her.
She decided to talk to Francis about her old dream: going to the UK. Francis reacts well but they have to ask the family permission.
They response that was very negative for Adah because she only had to work and sending the money to Francis who is allowed to go to London, but she continually to persuade Francis 's family to go to England. So Francis goes to England and at the end Adah manages Francis 's family to go to England (important moment → she's changing as a person but she doesn't know hoe to expect).
In Selvon there are migrants that have nothing at home and wanted to find something better in general; the migration of this novel, common for Nigerian people, is motivated by education reasons. PAG. → She saw Boy at the port, who represents her Nigerian family. She's feels she has living from Nigeria as a first-class citizen: she has built her class position with difficulties, but she has disillusionment when she arrived there. CHAPTER 3: A COLD WELCOME Emotional coldness that England is self-serving to her in spite of her expectation: Adah persuades her family to let her go to England and she expected to find something more in England than Nigeria. She has her firt impact with England: the climate and the Englishes are coldness (she feels this cold climate invade her face and she sees the city of Liverpool).
Second Class Cities Law
→ She had a sad impression of Liverpool: she mentioned that in Africa people had a different welcome. Liverpool is grey and unwelcomed caused also by the fog: it's not colorful (metaphorical meaning) → idea of dehumanization (something unhuman), because the climate gives the idea of an inhabited place. All is different from her mother-country. Francis is different because he kissed he kissed her in public, but it's an illusion because he will not be sensitives, he's rude. Everything appears to be different, also her husband. The place where Francis brings her is the place where they'll live. → The same description of Tolroy 's house in Selvon: small compartments put together She feels displaced because houses are different from Nigerian houses → sense of oppression.
She comments the horrors she's seeing: everything seems to be smaller and smaller in that house, but this is just a house where she has to divide the room with other people (it's an half-room). From the outside the house is very different and inside there was only a room with a sofa and a small table. She doesn't want to go to live there. First definition of the concept of blackness → Francis makes the distinction of the migrants and he says that it doesn't matter where you come from, migrants can get only these horror houses: they have to live in houses like this because the can afford only them.
First-class Notes
She can't accept this situation because she has struggle for a better life and for the education. → She's horrified because she has to share her room with other migrants. She realizes her class consciousness and her class expectation → her social position in Nigeria is different from the one in England: here she has lost everything what she has struggle for and comprehended that in England she's social equal with all the other people.
All the while, Francis is annoyed seeing the reaction of his wife. A lot of things are changed for Adah and this situation contributes to create problems in their relationship.
He became violent with her, she realizes that at home in Nigeria the family protected her (Francis 's family don't allow this violence but she saw this as a restriction), but one in England this protection doesn't exist and she realizes that she needs family 's protection. Here Francis do what he wants, he perceived his freedom so he can be violent with her without restriction. → He underlines that they're second-class citizen: in Nigeria his wife was economically superior than him but in England are all equal, they're all part of the second-class (it's a sort of revenge). She starts wondering of her marriage is wrong but she needs to be married because in that political contest she needs Francis in order to can migrated to England (migration was possible for women only if they have an husband in England). Adah is a fist-class citizen in Nigeria but in England she's a second-class who needs a husband. She's used as a sexual object by her husband, so she feels raped by Francis and she's completely subjugated.
(What means sexuality for Francis?) This is an humiliation for Adah who considered her husband as an animal, she's not enjoyed the sexual act and she needs to see a doctor. She doesn't want to accept her second-class position because she has studied so she doesn't want to work in a factory, so she tries hard and at the end she find job in a library.
She has to face a lot of problem: who takes care of her children while she was at work. It is different from Nigeria, over there doesn't exit this problem, but in England she was alone. She discovered that in England children could be adopted by white families but Adah doesn't accept this (→ this practice means the superiority of white people and underline her inferiority). When Francis discussed for this with Adah he referred to the children as ”your children”: it means that in his view the children are Adah's duty and considered them as an obstacle, so he wants to give the children to a white family but Adah doesn't accept this. Concept of whiteness → this practice was very common, migrant children grow up with a white education but this is a sort of mask. → Adah realizes this cultural clash: all the problems she has having in London don't exist in Nigeria (different ways to be parents in Nigeria and in England). She has to face this problem because in England nobody help her, here there's not her family to help her.
It is also difficult to be a mother in England. She has to renounce a lot of things in England but she wasn't want to renounce to the role of mother. CHAPTER 4: THE DAILY MINDERS PAG.
→ She founds a daily-minder, she founds Trudy that accepts to take care of her children (a sort of baby-sitter), but she don't convince Adah because she seems violent and vulgar but Adah doesn't find something better. So she decided to spy the situation and she discovers terrible situations: she's probably a prostitute and the children are playing in the rubbish. Adah goes to the children officer and she ask for Trudy a punishment. Trudy also says her position, but she lied; Adah was shocked by seeing Trudy telling lies and she couldn't understand that an English woman can be fake like this. → She expects that white people are better (→ this is the colonists education), but she discovers that the withers are morally fallible, so the myth was destroyed (the collapse of the ideology of colonialism). She realizes that there are good whites and bad whites like there are good black and bad black, but she understand this only after this fact. PAG → The older child stops speaking after the time spent with Trudy and one day Titi explains her reasons: schizophrenic condition of migrants.
She was told by Francis not to speaking in her local languages but only in English; in this way she can't able to speak English, so she can't able to express herself (she's not allowed to speak “yaruba”, but at the same time she's not able to speak English). So she has a double identity. CHAPTER 5: AN EXPRESSIVE LESSON Expensive in terms of emotion, not in terms of money. The children are still under the care of Trudy but one day Vickys was ill.
The doctor believed that the situation was problematic: the child has the meningitis. Adah wants to discover because Vickys is ill and she realizes that the child could drink dirty water (this could happen only a Trudy house). Vicky risks dying because of Trudy (→ demythologize the myth of white people). Disillusion of the idea of Englishness → she discovers that white people can be lie just anybody else, because of this misbehaviour on the part of Trudy. When Adah told Trudy about Vicky she was superficial and she said that meningitis was taken in Nigeria because of the dirty water, so she accused unjustly the place where Adah lived.
→ She can't accept the accuse from an inferior person, from the background where she lives in rubbish, but she's considered inferior by the other English, it's very difficult for her. Vicky has been cured. CHAPTER 6: SORRY, NO COLOUREDS When Adah comes home, the land-lord asked them to move on and leave the house; there's no sharing and non-solidarity by those like her. → They're different from the other because Adah has struggle for being different. Because of this difference they are segregated and marginalized → so she's marginalized 3 times: black, woman and because she's different from the other migrants. Vicky has managed to survive and this provoked envy.
There's a continue sense of confrontation, conflictual situation of competition where all are enemies. Adah and Francis are perceived as they're living a different life from the other blacks, so they were excluded from those like them. Adah is the main character, the others remain on the background (→ individual novel). There's not the idea of a community, there's a strong sense of fragmentariness, while in Selvon there was a compact community. The neighbour started to be oppressive with them, Adah wanted to escape from there because she was becoming mad (psychological state of mind that's getting worse). So she started looking for a new house but all the houses didn't accept colonized people and she had to face another difficult situation. She really wanted to be white only because she wanted a house.
→ One land-lady discovered that the voice of Adah was not English while she was asking for the house on the phone, because she tried to have a white voice, in order to be allowed this room: she managed to use this newly achieved and she got an appointment for the house. So she thought a way to paint her face with a white color (she totally refused her black skin), but when the land-lady saw Adah, told her that the room was no more available. Then she found a house managed by Nigerian, but for her means to having touch the bottom, however she had no choice. CHAPTER 7: THE GHETTO PAG. → Adah met Mr. Noble, who has marginalized to England for studying and he married a white woman in order to survive. The function of white woman that represent someone goal, thanks to them also black men could be part of the society (compensation of not to be able to have an education).
He built a new life marring a white woman: this implies renouncing a par of their identity and culture, because when these people return in their mother-country they're different. Noble 's wife is his salvation. He found a job as a lift-man, very humble job. People started to joke him but he understands that the only way to be accepted, is accept he jokes; so, he accepts to be joked and he renounces a part of his identity.
He was playing the role of the clown also with his wife talking about his childhood trough stereotypes. But his wife was very English and she was treated as a sort of queen by the inferior husband. → Stereotypes imposed on him while he was talking about his childhood. He starts living only when he moved to England and due represents his life; he's playing the role he has dreamed on.
But Adah was angry, she replied with an ironical tone (shaping of identity, he had an identity only playing the stereotypes he had on him). Adah and Francis approached with this new place. Distinction between center and periphery: the good are with beautiful houses where live white people and the ghetto with black people → race and ethnic division. Adah continues to be pushed in the worst side, it's unmovable (condition of marginality). The distinction still exists, it was born during the colonization. CHAPTER 8: ROLE ACCEPTANCE At the end, they find a terrible place full of dirty things and mices, moreover the situation for Adah is getting worse as Francis became intolerant with her because she became a “Jehovah's witness”. Adah is pregnant again but the child almost dies because of a bad position, and it gives problems to her.
England was perceived as a paradise but it became a hell → ironical reverse perspective: everything is a nightmare for her even she had always tough about England as a perfect place. CHAPTER 9: LEARNING THE RULES The role of maternity like something to be chosen, not imposed, represents a feminist perspective.
She's unknown by the other white-nicknames (label-names), and her identity became a role decided by the others. Danger of being in maternity. She confronts with the other maternity women and she noticed that they received a lot of gifts: she has nothing so she feels without identity, also because of poverty; so, she feels as a nonindividual (the white-dress /vestaglia/ only represents her role of mother). She asked Francis to buy her a new dress but the nurse imposed her not to wear another dress. Everything contributes to diminish her role and her identity.
CHAPTER 10: APPLYING THE RULES Vicky had some problems during her life: she has grown up but a doctor discovered that the meningitis was caused by a bed bug (bad and dirty conditions). CHAPTER 11: POPULATION CONTROL Adah asked the clinique if she could take contraceptive, but she had to have the acceptance of Francis who will never accept this (she’s only a sexual object); so, she faked the signature in order to obtain the spiral. At the end Francis discovered everything. The reaction was terrible: he accused her to be a prostitute and he wanted to humiliate her so he started s.