Gender Roles In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

For as long as we can remember, men have been the owner of power and women subsequently have been the object. But recently, this has had a hand in millions of women being abused or even killed by men- specifically their partners. This problem has acquired increasingly more and more attention as the feminist movement has been on the rise. The unequal power between men and women is a societal conflict that causes many problems, the most pressing of them being violence. In the novel Things Fall Apart gender roles are very significant and prominent in their culture. To be an esteemed man in the tribe, you must be a strong warrior and farmer, as well as have multiple wives, children and titles. As a woman in the tribe, you must bear (and care for) many children (preferably boys), cook, and clean- a very traditional role. Due to this obvious gap in power between men and women, women in the tribe are pushovers and at the mercy of men. Once, when Okonkwo’s wife made a trivial comment about his hunting Okonkwo was enraged and “ran madly into his room for the loaded gun, ran out again and aimed at her” (Achebe 45). Although he missed, the damage had already been done. His wives were petrified and his children shaking, but none of them did or said anything about it. Okonkwo’s family was …show more content…
In the book Okonkwo uses being a woman as an insult when “[a] man who had contradicted him had no titles.” and he “called him a woman” (Achebe 34). Okonkwo uses being a woman as an insult and only heartens the fact that women weren’t considered equal to men. This leads to instances now, where “1.5 million women in the United States are assaulted by their intimate partners every year” (“The Facts About Domestic Violence”). So, as you can see the cause of domestic violence generally comes from unequal treatment of women and