Unspeaking Revolt: Silence as Resistance in the Novels of Buchi Emecheta

Journal of Research and Development Peer Reviewed International, Open Access Journal. ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-10(V)| October2025 182 Unspeaking Revolt: Silence as Resistance in the Novels of Buchi Emecheta Dr. Shivaji D. Sargar1 Sopan V. Mandal2 1Research Supervisor, Director, Centre for Distance and Online Education (CDOE), University of Mumbai, Mumbai, (M.S.), India 2Ph. D Research Scholar, Department of English, University of Mumbai, Mumbai, (M.S.), India Email: [email protected] Manuscript ID: JRD -2025-171045 ISSN: 2230-9578 Volume 17 Issue 10(V) Pp. 182-185 October 2025 Submitted: 04 Oct. 2025 Revised: 14 Oct. 2025 Accepted: 27 Oct. 2025 Published: 31 Oct. 2025 Abstract: Buchi Emecheta is a significant voice for African women. She portrays African women’s lives most sincerely and honestly in her novels. African-Nigerian culture is predominantly patriarchal in nature where women are oppressed through traditions and customs. Buchi Emecheta has depicted this real picture of the African women in almost all her novels. She has shown how the male dominated society suppressed women’s voice and oppressed them through dehumanizing circumstances. Yet her female protagonists show resilience and employ various forms of revolts against this patriarchal, economic and colonial oppressions. One such form is silence; it is simply not speaking. Actually, silence is seen as weakness or submission but Emecheta shows in her novels how silence can become a strategy of resistance for her female protagonists. It becomes a strategic form of revolt for them maintaining their dignity, autonomy and survival. Through the close textual analysis of the novels: In the Ditch, SecondClass Citizen, The Slave Girl, The Bride Price, The Joys of Motherhood, and Double Yoke, written by Buchi Emecheta, this paper examines how silence works as resistance, a strategic tool for the female protagonists to resist the patriarchal oppression across domestic, social and constrained spheres. Key-words: Silence as resistance, patriarchy, gender oppression, colonialism, African feminist literature, womanism, subaltern theory. Introduction: Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta (simply known as Buchi Emecheta) was born on 21st of July 1944 in Yaba, a suburb near Lagos Mainland area, in Colonial Nigeria, now in West Africa. She belonged to the Igbo ethnic group. The Igbo people possessed rich cultural traditions. These traditions would later inform her fiction. Her writing is shaped by her own life, born in Nigeria, seen poverty closely, lost her father when she was only a small kid, and later as an aspirant moved to London as a young wife and a mother of five children having a failed married life with an abusive husband living in foreign land. She used her experiences as a woman, as a black woman in Britain, as a single mother, and as a writer in a male-dominated world in her writing. In Head Above Water, her autobiographical work, Emecheta asserts on how her writing emerged from her real-life experiences rather than theoretical frameworks: “Being a woman, and African born, I see things through an African woman’s eyes…I chronicle the little happenings in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called a feminist. But if I am now a feminist then I am an African feminist with a small ‘f’” (Emecheta, Head Above Water 178). She calls herself as a feminist with a “small f,” because her idea of feminism comes from very African life which is shaped by society, motherhood, and the way men and women share their roles within the Igbo tradition. She refuses to be called herself as a Western feminist because they often focus on women seeking Quick Response Code: Website: https://jrdrvb.org/ DOI: 10.5281/zen464074 Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work noncommercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations ae licensed under the idential terms. Address for correspondence: Dr. Shivaji D. Sargar,Research Supervisor,Director, Centre for Distance and Online Education (CDOE),University of Mumbai, Mumbai, (M.S.), India How to cite this article Shivaji D. Sargar, Sopan V. Mandal. (2025) Unspeaking Revolt: Silence as Resistance in the Novels of Buchi Emecheta. Journal of Research & Development, 17(10(V)), 182-185. Original Article Journal of Research and Development Peer Reviewed International, Open Access Journal. ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-10(V)| October2025 183 individual freedom.Both the Western and African feminism deal with equality for both the sexes, try to criticize and reject gender inequalities and always seek a stronger status for women. But Emecheta keeps her African identity central. A scholar of African and Caribbean women’s writing, Carole Boyce Davies reflects “the black American female writers touch more of me than the white ones.” (C. Davies 106). She says how African women writers often feel a stronger resonance with Black American female writers than with white feminist writers. This is because they share a common history of racial oppression, social displacement, and gendered struggles. Emecheta clarified her stance on feminism in a lecture in 1994: “I don’t subscribe to feminist idea that all men are all brutal and repressive and we must reject them. Some of these men are my brothers and fathers and sons. Am I going to reject them too?” (qtd. in Mikell 412). She denies the idea of western feminism that all men are inherently oppressive and they must be rejected instead, she insists that African feminism cannot be about rejecting men, since men are integral part of women’s lives as fathers, brothers, and sons. In this study, silence means more than the absence of speech. In the select novels silence often shows resistance. The female protagonists remain quiet not because they are weak, but because silence can protect them and express refusal. So, silence becomes a language for their survival. Spivak argues that the “subaltern cannot speak” because their voices are silenced by colonial, patriarchal discourses. But she also suggests that silence itself can be meaningful, it can carry traces of resistance even when speech is denied. Before seeing silence as resistance, it is important to understand what silence means when it is forced upon someone. In dominant patriarchal societies, it is seen that women have been denied the right to speak about any matters. From their childhood they are taught to keep their thoughts private, to accept the decisions made by the male authorities in the family for them without asking any further questions. It is the imposed silence for them. Buchi Emecheta's protagonists in her novels are attentive to this distinction as they do not begin as rebels. They begin as girls who learn very early in their life that their voices do not matter much. The period Buchi Emecheta depicted in the novels in the Nigerian society, women can be considered as ‘muted beings’. Because the very patriarchal structures of the society depended upon this silencing. Women's concerns were seen as secondary and their needs were totally ignored. For Emecheta’s characters, silence is not empty. It is a way to resist, to endure, and to speak without words. This paper explores how Emecheta’s female protagonists in all six novels deal with oppressive systems through quiet forms of resistance such as their inner thoughts and deliberate silence. She presents silence not as weakness but as a powerful tool that prepares the ground for her female protagonist's voices. This study focuses on postcolonial feminism, Subaltern theory and African feminist framework in this research. The scholars have extensively examined gender and colonial oppression in Emecheta’s but the specific functions like silence as resistance is unexplored. Through the close textual analysis of the novels, critical engagement, and theoretical perspectives, this study shows how silence becomes the language of power for the female protagonists of Emecheta. The Traditional Mute: The Slave Girl and The Bride Price: African and Colonial literature often showed women as a silent figure. They appeared as a background in male dominance. Buchi Emecheta breaks this pattern because she has experienced both Nigerian tradition and British racism in her life. She does not always give her characters loud and expressive. Instead, she examines the many meanings of silence. Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi points out that Emecheta addresses the "palaver of patriarchy," The women resist but quietly, in their private thoughts, within silent inner spaces. Novels of Emecheta set in pre-colonial and colonial Nigeria; silence first appears as a tool of control. She does not just write about silence. She uses silence as a technique in her writing. Her novels show us what her female characters think and feel, even when they do not speak these thoughts aloud. In The Slave Girl, the protagonist Ojebeta was defined by sound. When as a child she was sold into slavery, she was made to wear bells and charms. This marks her status as a slave and announces her presence to others in the estate. Katherine Fishburn suggests that the slave girl’s silence functions as a hidden form of resistance, allowing her to protect herself by keeping rebellious thoughts unspoken (Fishburn 112). Yet in the mean circumstances silence also becomes a form of resistance for her. “Slave, obey your master. Wife, honour your husband. who is your father, your head, your heart, your soul.” (Emecheta, The Slave Girl 173). She internalizes this but dreams of the new master to set herself free. In the novel she is seen silently recalling her name and family lineage. Emecheta depicts Chiago one of the slave women's dreads at Pa Palagada’s sexual exploitation, noting how “She had learned to stop protesting, to accept his attentions and be quiet about it all.” (Emecheta, 93). Her silence is not consent but survival, and her fear of being handed over to Pa’s son, treating women as transferable property. This inner act of remembering preserves her identity. It gave her the strength that later connected her desire for freedom. In Emecheta’s captivating and tragic novel, The Bride Price, Aku-nna the protagonist is trapped by the expectations of her community. She looks pale and thin; she is always called an "ogbanje" (a living dead) and her weakness is often mistaken. When she reached her puberty, Okonkwo, her stepfather plans to marry her off for a higher Journal of Research and Development Peer Reviewed International, Open Access Journal. ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-10(V)| October2025 184 bride price. Culturally it was impossible for her to openly protest but a quiet refusal to yield her heart. Her elopement with Chike is an act of silent way of fighting back. Her resistance grows silently. At first, out of fear, she firmly refuses a bicycle ride. Later, out of embarrassment, she refuses to undress and bathe in public on arrival to their native place. These small acts become the beginnings of her resistance. When her menstruation becomes public knowledge, Okoboshi, the young, arrogant, free born boy kidnapped her to make her his potential bride, he tries force upon her, seeing this could be disastrous for her life, she outsmarts him saying that she is not a virgin anymore that he is looking for but she has lost her virginity to Chike, her teacher, lover, a slave descendant. "Yes, he has slept with me, many, many times. Do you want me to tell you when it started? I'll tell you...I have already shed it to make another very good man happy." (Emecheta, The Bride Price 138). This lie is a silent weapon for her escape from Okoboshi whom she hates and elopement with Chike. This false invented story represents the epitome of her resistance. Katherine Frank points out that Emecheta’s earlier protagonists are stuck in situations where fighting back could cost them their lives where their “resistance is suicidal" (Frank 19). This remains true for Aku-nna, who dies at the end but her death is not meaningless—it is her quiet way of resisting. By dying, she prevents the patriarchal authorities from getting the bride price they wanted. Her silence in death becomes a lasting permanent condemnation against the tradition that tried to treat her like property, as commodity. The Tragedy of Submissive Silence: The Joys of Motherhood In the novel The Joys of Motherhood, Emecheta tries to show what happens when a woman silences herself to fit society’s expectations. Nnu Ego is the model “good woman,” suffers everything silently hoping that her mute endurance will be somehow rewarded by her children in future. Like she accepts Nnaifenot a good-looking husband often having erratic behaviour and the poverty of her existence in Lagos. She tells herself, "The joy of being a mother was the joy of giving all to your children" (Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood 265). This is a dangerous silence for her as Nnu Ego’s "unspeaking" nature leads to her total erasure. “When will I be free?...Never, not even in death. I am a prisoner of my own flesh and blood… But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build." (Emecheta, 219). Nnu Ego, the speaker is questioning her freedom, overall women’s freedom, realizing that her identity and worth are defined by male-centered expectations: father, husband, and even sons. This inner dialogue shows a woman slowly waking up to her situation: although women sometimes help sustain their own oppression, naming it becomes the first step toward change (Palmer 39). Having many children but when she died no one was with her she died alone by the roadside in a deplorable condition. Her silence is not resistance but submission to a patriarchal lie. Actually, Emecheta warns African women against the trap of their traditions by exposing Nnu Ego’s wasted life. Strategic Silence: Second Class Citizen and In the Ditch The novels ‘Second Class Citizen’ and ‘In the Ditch’ both are semi autobiographical novels of Emecheta where she features Adah as the protagonist. Here in these novels, silence is no longer passive rather it becomes a weapon for Adah. In ‘Second Class Citizen', Adah resides in London with her husband Francis, whose abuse underscores the patriarchal oppression. She learns that speaking back, words often lead to beatings and violence. Therefore, she adopts a strategic silence. She hides some acts from Francis as she secretly finds a job at a library and quietly arranges birth control. The tyrannical Francis, she absorbs brutality: "To him, a woman was a second-class human, to be slept with at any time... and, if she refused, to have sense beaten into her until she gave in" (Emecheta, Second Class Citizen 181). Adah’s journey shows how she moves from silent endurance to open resistance. Married to Francis, who treats her as inferior and uses violence to enforce control, she initially absorbs his brutality without protest. But her unspoken anger, rage breaks when he destroys her manuscripts, prompting: "I hate you now, Francis, and one day I shall leave you" (Emecheta 133). She was writing her first novel ‘The Bride Price’, Francis does not bear this act and burns her manuscript the very moment she realizes the marriage is over, instead of arguing, she packs her bags and leaves him alone. Her silence here is tactical, like a general planning a battle. Her legal divorce embodies her unspeaking triumph at the end. In the novel ‘In the Ditch’, Adah confronts the harsh reality of the British welfare system. As a black single mother, she is marginalized by race and class and gender too. The women living in the ‘ditch’ (in the housing estate) share a communal silence, a quiet understanding of their shared suffering. “She always felt insecure, uncertain and afraid. It is a curse to be an orphan, a double curse to a black one in a white country, an unforgivable calamity to be a woman of five kids but without a husband.” (Emecheta, In the Ditch 78) Adah watches with an author’s eye, gathering material to transform her pain into art in future. Adah’s refusal to expose Mr. Noble’s juju (magic) to white authorities shows how silence can be a resistance. She does not want to complain about his juju act to the authorities. Actually, she protects her community from colonial control. It is her political silence. As critic Marie Umeh observes, Adah’s "creativity becomes her weapon for survival," and that creativity is born in the quiet moments when she is not fighting the system (Umeh 194). Journal of Research and Development Peer Reviewed International, Open Access Journal. ISSN : 2230-9578 | Website: https://jrdrvb.org Volume-17, Issue-10(V)| October2025 185 The Modern Mask: Double Yoke In Double Yoke, Buchi Emecheta portrays the life of the protagonist Nko in a modern Nigerian university setting. Nko faces the dual burden that is "double yoke"- tradition and modernity. When her boyfriend Ete Kamba forces himself upon her, she does not resist him, as opposing this could be against the modernity according to her, she keeps silent. "And now that you think I am not a virgin, they will not approve of me?...I wonder what they will think of a girl who allowed any man to sleep with her by the wall of a half-finished house."(Emecheta, Double Yoke 58) This exchange underscores how patriarchal judgment reduces women to their sexual status, silencing their individuality and holding men unaccountable but Nko maintains the strategic ambiguity, she does not reveal or explain her decisions to anyone around her. When the unscrupulous Professor Ikot sexually harassed her, she did not report him immediately because she knew that the system would never believe her. Instead, she chooses silence as her weapon. “She had a clear picture of what the professor would be asking. And to put it crudely it was going to be, if you don't let me sleep with you at any time I feel like it, you don't get your degree." (Emecheta 139) It was her strategic move when she agreed to a sexual relationship with Professor Ikot to secure her degree. But she does it with a cold, quiet strength to unsettle her boyfriend, Ete Kamba and his conventional views. He expects her to cry and confess, but Nko refuses. By keeping her secret, she passes her exams and protects her future. In this silence, she finds a hard, unsettling dignity though it is complex for her. Conclusion: All these novels of Buchi Emecheta show that silence carries meaning and purpose. They show that silence is not weakness. It is a powerful tool of resistance used by women who have learned to survive in patriarchal societies. Adah in Second-Class Citizen uses silence to gain independence. How Nnu Ego suffers quietly, showing how women can endure hardships in the novel The Joys of Motherhood. Ojebeta in The Slave Girl keeps silent to protect herself in slavery. Aku-nna in The Bride Price stays quiet about her love, using silence to resist tradition. In In the Ditch, Adah and other women characters share silence to support each other and in Double Yoke, the protagonist Nko’s silence is clever and strategic. Together, these stories by Buchi Emecheta show that silence can be a powerful languageused to survive, resist, and even fight back against patriarchy and colonialism. For Emecheta’s female protagonists, the "unspeaking revolt" is often seen as necessarythe first step before speaking out. It allows them to watch, to plan, and to survive by enduring quietly. These women resist not by shouting or open rebellion in these stories but silence becomes a revolutionary force and a language of resilience. Through her writing, through her women characters, Emecheta actually gives a voice to the hidden struggles of countless African women. Works Cited: Primary: 1. Emecheta, Buchi. Double Yoke. George Braziller, 1983. - - -Head Above Water. Heinemann, 1986 - - -In the Ditch. Penguin Books, 2023. - - -Second-Class Citizen. Penguin Books, 2023. - - -The Bride Price. George Braziller, 1976. - - -The Joys of Motherhood. Penguin Classics, 2022. - - -The Slave Girl. George Braziller, 1977. 2. Secondary: 3. Davies, Carole Boyce. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. - Routledge, 1989, p. 106. 4. Fishburn, Katherine. Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-Cultural Conversations. Greenwood - Press, 1995, p. 112. 5. Frank, Katherine. “The Death of the Slave Girl: African Womanhood in the Novels of Buchi - Emecheta.” World Literature Written in English, vol. 21, no. 3, 1982, pp. 476–97. 6. Mikell, Gwendolyn. “African Feminism: Towards a New Politics of Representation.” - Feminist Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1995, p. 412. 7. Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. “Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black - Female Novel in English.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 11, - no. 1, 1985, pp. 63–80. 8. Palmer, Eustace. “The Feminine Point of View: Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood.” - African Literature Today, no. 13, 1983, pp. 38–52. 9. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of - Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, University of Illinois Press, - 1988, pp. 271–313. 10. Umeh, Marie. “Reintegration and the New African Woman in Buchi Emecheta’s Fiction.” - Challenging Hierarchies: Issues and Themes in Colonial and Postcolonial African - Literature, edited by Leonard A. Podis and Yakubu Saaka, Peter Lang, 1998, pp. 193-204.