Marriage In Flora Nwapa's 'The Chief's Daughter'

Across the culture, parents who love their children seek to steer them toward a happy and successful life by influencing major decisions regarding college, career, and marriage. Guided by their social and cultural values, parents decide what's best for their children and try to get their children to obey to their decision, using a range of methods that include cajoling, persuasion, ultimatums and coercion. Conflicts arise when the children embrace significantly different values, and can only foresee an unhappy and meaningless life for themselves if they follow their parents’ decision. Desperate to escape this miserable fate, they reject their parents’ direction and as a result the parents feel bewildered, hurt and disrespected. In Flora Nwapa’s

This decision highlights the significant difference in cultural norms regarding marriage between Igbo people and Western society. In Igbo culture, the purpose of marriage is to produce babies in order to continue the family line. It is acceptable for a father to marry his own daughter, so that she can produce babies who will take her father’s name. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the father will have sex with his daughter – it simply means the daughter will not marry anyone else. The identity of the baby’s biological father is not important, as long the baby takes the name of its mother’s father’s. By contrast, when two people marry in Western society they commit to loving each other for the rest of their lives, and they establish a family based on this commitment. Adaeze loves Ezenta, she is already married to him and she is pregnant with his child. She cannot accept the idea of marrying her father. When she fails to convince her father to change his decision, she decides to disobey her father and flees to London to live the life she

Set in Scotland in a mythical time, a skilled archer and horse-rider Merida defies old custom by not behaving as a proper, ladylike princess and enjoying elegant pursuits. After having an argument with her mom Elinor, Merida finds a witch and makes reckless choice that results an unintended consequence. Similar to the situation in “The Chief’s Daughter”, Elinor makes choices that are intended to make her daughter better but results an unexpected consequence. What parents do not realize is that they have different perspective than their daughters. In this case, Elinor refuses to respect Merida’s strong aversion to marriage and compels her to follow the custom since it was how she was raised. Raised to accept the princess stereotype, she wants Merida to meet the high standards and be respected as a daughter of loyalty by accepting the custom. On the other hand, Merida has completely different perspective than her mother. Her free-spirited and rebellious nature wants her to have freedom and lives life fully in her own way. Therefore, unlike ordinary princesses, she takes matter into her own hands and goes to the witch house in search of solution to change her