Buchi Emecheta's The Family

The purpose of this research is to examine Buchi Emecheta's The Family with a view toward explaining what the author is trying to achieve. The plan of the research will be to set forth the pattern of ideas in the work and how these ideas emerge, and then to discuss what aim lies behind them.

To describe The Family as a coming-of-age story is to limit the scope of a story that includes the loss of innocence and the achievement of a rare self-understanding and self-respect, as well as the transformation of an individual from the status of victim to the self-possessed status of a life conducted in a self-aware manner. Left with her grandmother when her parents emigrate to England from the grinding poverty of Jamaica, Gwendolen (June-June) Brillianton is raped and repeatedly assaulted by an uncle and ridiculed and ostracized when she reveals the abuse to the family. What begins as help and support from her Granny Naomi ends as the uncle is welcomed back into the family and Gwendolen becomes the target of family abuse. Fearful of any confrontation, she retreats from the external world of confrontation into a world of secret thoughts and dreams. When her parents send for her, she believes that she will be able to reclaim herself, "happy, trusting, Gwendolen again" (39).

Gwendolen's arrival in England is not so much the arrival of a welcome child as of a maid for her younger siblings, called pikneys in the Jamaican vernacular. There is also culture shock to contend with--tak

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ather. Hearing the parents settling her future, hearing them talk about her as if she is not present drives Gwendolen to the brink of madness. During her commitment to a mental hospital, Gwendolen settles on carrying the baby to term, and Sonia begins to suspect but will not permit herself to think about who the real father is. She is much too wedded to tradition and the norms of the Jamaican peasantry to have any original thoughts in this regard. Winston's sudden death, occurring as it does just before Sonia has made up her mind to confront him about Gwendolen's pregnancy, initially makes Sonia feel guilty. But that does not last long, as she focuses on spending or more exactly squandering the insurance money on new possessions in anticipation of receiving 60,000 pounds, and on a budding relationship with James Allen. What she does not do is understand how to plan prudently, after the English manner, for the future of her children. Gladys Odowis tries to explain how the system works in England, but Sonia perceives everything through the filter of Jamaican culture and experience. Her concept of worldliness is built around things, possessions, material wealth, but the fact is that Sonia is not at all worldly, to the degree

Category: Literature - B