Gender Roles in Things Fall Apart

For most of recorded history, and even today, women have and continue to pursue gender equality. In the past, women were treated as the inferior sex. They were forced to rely on men to provide for them, and to make their decisions for them. Thanks to the women of previous generations, today women have more independence and credibility, and the gender gap is significantly smaller. Chinua Achebe’s tragedy Things Fall Apart takes place in a pre-colonial Nigerian village community in the 1890s, where the gender gap is still very decided. Gender roles play a big part in the story’s progression and we see how this imbalance between genders negatively impacts men as well as women. The tragic hero, a man named Okonkwo lives with a constant fear of not being manly enough. Okonkwo’s apprehension of weakness and women contributes to his fall from prosperity to adversity.

In Okonkwo’s village, Umuofia, gender roles are very established. The expectation is that men bring home the yams, provide everything for their family, and do not show emotions or weakness. Women cook the meals, tend the children, and remain as inconspicuous as possible. Men collect wives as they gain wealth. Men use women as a projection of power and status and so they are seen less as people and more as property; “He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even a young wife” (18). Like livestock or land, women are passed down from father to son. As with livestock, when women make a mistake, it is not only socially accepted for the man to beat his wife, it is expected; “ No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man” (53). It is with these values Okonkwo is raised, and these valu...

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... Okonkwo to his fateful end. When white missionaries infiltrate Umuofia and the village refuses to go to war with them, Okonkwo refuses to cope. He commits suicide to escape the weakness he sees growing in the village that taught him weakness is wrong. Today, the media reinforces gender stereotypes that were established years ago, both for men and for women. By continuing to portray women as weak and submissive, and men as strong and capable of dominating any environment, the media preserves ways of the past. As shown in this story, such stereotyping harms both men and women by forcing them into roles that may not suit them. We need to learn to accept the Okonkwos and the Unokas as themselves. As a society we need to recognize the blessing of diversity, and welcome the individual.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Random House. 1994. Print