The place of women education in Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen and gender discrimination

The author uses the theme of ambition as Adah's primary motivation throughout the novel. Though Adah is born into a society that devalues women, she has a singular focus to achieve and succeed from an early age. Most families in Nigeria at this time did not send their daughters to school, but Adah is determined to go and puts a tremendous amount of effort into making this happen. She refers to her ambition to attend school as her dream, or sometimes “the Presence,” as she feels it so strongly it is almost a physical manifestation that “seemed to take life, to breathe and to smile kindly at her (19). After she makes her dream to attend school a reality (suffering multiple canings in the process), her ambitions expand to include emigrating to the U.K., as she believes passing the librarian exams there will open up far greater employment opportunities. Unfortunately, because Adah is a young woman, she cannot achieve her dream entirely on her own. She marries Francis so that she can attend college because it would be culturally unacceptable for her to live alone. She manages to convince Francis to go to the U.K. with her, but once they are there, he becomes the most significant roadblock to Adah achieving all that she has planned to do. He is not supportive of her dreams, he is abusive, and she is continuously pregnant and/or taking care of her children. Francis fails his accounting exams multiple times, and the narrator notes that he feels like a failure and wishes to make Adah feel like one as well. He does not wish to have a wife who is more ambitious and successful than he is.

These conflicts cause Adah to lose confidence in the novel's second act, heightening the dramatic tension and increasing the reader's sympathy for her. Ultimately, she perseveres, too strong and ambitious to give up on her dreams despite the challenges she faces. By the time she has her fourth child, Adah has her heart set on another dream. She always hoped to become a writer later in life, so she decides to pursue this particular ambition while she is at home with the new baby and writes her first novel, The Bride Price. Adah's library co-worker Bill is a supportive influence, showing Adah books by other Black authors so she can see that her race should not prevent her from pursuing her goal, and then complimenting The Bride Price when Adah shows it to him. When Francis burns her manuscript at the novel's climax, it is a symbolic act that represents his total lack of support for Adah's dreams, and it is the motivating factor that causes her to finally leave him.

Through the theme of sexism, the author examines the challenges girls and women faced in Nigeria in the 1960s if they wished to pursue goals beyond marriage and having children. It is noted at the beginning of the novel that Adah's birth was “a disappointment” (7) for her parents because she was a girl, and Adah herself carries this notion with her into adulthood. After her son Vicky is born, she tells people that her other child is “only a girl” (62). From the time she is eight years old, Adah wishes to attend school, but this is difficult because most families provide only minimal education for their daughters. Adah's family is relatively supportive, but she still has to resort to subterfuge to pursue her goals, first sneaking off to school without her parents' permission and later stealing money from her cousin to pay entrance exam fees. By age 11, Adah's family is introducing her to much older suitors, because it is expected of girls to marry very young. A potential husband is meant to pay a bride price, as though he is purchasing the woman from her family like an object or chattel. Adah only marries Francis because she has dreams of attending college and emigrating to the U.K., and it was culturally unacceptable for a young Nigerian woman to do these things on her own at this time. After the marriage, she is expected to live with Francis's family and allow his father to dictate her behavior. He forbids her from going to the U.K., but she manages to change his mind by promising to earn more money for the family. Since Nigerian society is firmly patriarchal, Francis is initially uncomfortable with the notion of his wife working and earning more money than him, but he is motivated by laziness more than custom, so when it becomes clear that Adah can work and support him and their children, he adapts to these circumstances.

Despite Adah's fairly unorthodox ambitions for a woman in this time and place, she is also traditional in many ways, as her primary motivation is to take care of her children and provide them with a good life. In Chapter 13, it is noted that if Francis would work to support his family, Adah would happily be “just a housewife” (163). After her third child, Adah attempts to get birth control from a family planning clinic because she must work and she does not wish to have any more children with her abusive husband. However, she is told at the clinic that Francis must sign a form giving her permission to get birth control, demonstrating that even in the U.K. women were not treated as fully autonomous individuals at this time. When she finally moves away from Francis, she has to tell her new landlord that her husband has returned to Nigeria and will be sending for her shortly, as she knows that no one will rent an apartment to a single woman with children. Virtually everything Adah tries to do through the entirety of the novel is made more difficult by cultural attitudes and laws relating to her gender.