Relationship and the Concept of Marriage in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting, and Buchi Emecheta’s the Bride Price

From the critical perspectives of the New Historicism, Feminism and Psychoanalysis, one can examine the relationship and the concept of marriage in the Nigerian and Indian contexts. In Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting and Buchi Emecheta’s The Brie Price, both authors highlight the societal notions of patriarchy, social discriminations, child bearing, bride price, amongst others, which directly affect matrimonial relationships, thus hindering the development of the Indian and Nigerian women. This article equally depicts that the levels of literary similarities and differences are influenced not only by literary trends and cultures, but, most especially, by the authors’ life experiences, sensitivities and worldviews. Indeed, Desai and Emecheta through different socio-historical, political and cultural contexts in their writings share identical broad elements of content on issues such as the castes system, virginity, memory, diaspora life, gender biases, patriarchy and diverse manners toward bride price. Their works equally display divergent in aesthetics and ideology. These novelists transcend time and national boundaries because of the humanistic values of their social message, which holds that prior knowledge of each other, a serene and laudable intimacy ought to precede formal matrimonial relationships, which are sometimes imposed and clouded with hatred, violence and trauma. Both authors also affirm that women, if given a better chance, can also contribute positively in national development. This article thus focuses on the narratives of Anita Desai and Buchi Emecheta, which portray the ordeals undergone by displaced peoples, especially women, in the diaspora in order to adapt to the diverse cultural practices they encounter in the new environments; and how they also find it difficult to completely discard of their own identities in the face of such cultural clashes and other social conflicts. Caught in this web of incompatible cultural values, some characters opt to renegotiate space. Thus, the article is motivated by the vivid pictures of constant struggle between male and female characters presented by Anita Desai and Buchi Emecheta. The wrench of racial discrimination and stigmatization faced by blacks and particularly women; and their ability to readapt to strange cultures and regain their rightful identity makes the issue interesting and worth examining. Besides, the patriarchal societies had always kept women abase; reducing them to cooks and child bearers. But a wind of change seemingly blew across many communities in the 21st century, giving rise to female uprising against suppression and oppression. It would also be interesting to know how successful the revolutions have been. This article therefore focuses on the methods adopted by female characters to renegotiate their identity and whether they succeed; and also the methods used to renegotiate space for themselves in a context of cultural clashes. As such, the article is based on the hypothesis that as a result of displacement individuals in the novels under study find themselves in cultural contexts in which they are marginalized and are compelled to renegotiate space for themselves and their values; and that the women worldwide are striving to upset the old order in order to gain recognition from their male counterparts. It adopts the post-colonial theory to better evaluate and analyze the texts under study. Bill Ashcroft et al; in the “General Introduction” to the Post-Colonial Studies Reader posit: Post-colonial theory involves discussions about experience of various kinds, migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place, and responses to the influential master discourses of imperial Europe such as history, philosophy and linguistics, and the fundamental experience of speaking and writing by which all these come into being. (p. 2) The above definition leads us to the understanding that this theory is based on otherness and resistance. Ashcroft et al further say that this theory rejects the egregious classification of ‘first’ and ‘third’ world and contest the lingering fallacy that the post-colonial is somehow synonymous with the “economically underdeveloped”. The post-colonial theory also involves concepts such as centre/margin, ethnicity and indigeneity, universalism, hybridity, representation, subalternism and gender. Hybridity refers to the integration of cultural signs and practices from the colonizing and the colonized cultures. Ashcroft el at in the Post-Colonial Studies, state that ‘… Hybridity occurs in post-colonial societies both as a result of conscious moments of cultural suppression, as when the colonial power invades to consolidate political and economic control or when settler invaders dispossess indigenous people and force them to “assimilate” to new social patterns. (p.183) Thus, migrants accumulate two different cultures and from that, they create a new space for themselves, becoming hybrids. This is depicted in Desai Fasting, Feasting when Arun creates his own relationship in the West and accepts some of their ways of life, in doing this, he still creates a new space for himself; he prepares a dish which resembles his West Indian taste although not exactly, nor is it a typical dish from the West. In addition to that, Chinua Achebe in an article entitled “Name for Victoria, Queen of England” in the Post-Colonial Studies Reader gives a clear illustration of what hybridity is all about as it is written ‘… We lived at the cross roads of cultures…on one arm of the cross we sang hymns and read the Bible night and day. On the other, my father’s brother and his family blinded by heathenism offered food to idols. That was how it was supposed to be anyhow. (p.191) The migrants believe in the tradition of offering sacrifices to their ancestors which show the closeness between the death and the living. The sacrifices offered to idols place a very significant role in the lives of the blacks. Although they have accepted the Whiteman’s Bible, they do not see any closeness between them and the Whiteman’s God. They invoke their ancestors and offered foods to them in a way not to cut off their relationship since time and again, they will consult them when things are not going on well in the society. Thus, ancestral relationships play a very important part in the lives of the blacks.