and returning to it a changed person, is the new woman, successfully becoming the man of the house as a result of her economic empowerment. In her subsequent fiction, Cobwebs and Other Stories, and The Descendants, Alkali moves beyond the idiom of marriage, the rather comfortable province of womanism. The gap between The Stillborn and The Descendants sees Alkali as an innocent author of a well received, well discussed, debut, gradually finding herself participating in a complex socio-feministic discourse, giving public talk on the education and emancipation of Nigerian girls, especially from Northern Nigeria. That there still is a legion of uneducated girls, especially in Northern Nigeria is enough reason for anyone sitting on the margin
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Seytu “is a victim of an early marriage with all its evil consequences” (136). Married to Lawani Dam at thirteen, she has Vesico-Vaginal Fistula VVF, as a result of early child-birth. Her husband abandoned her, her two year marriage collapsed. With encouragement from her grandmother, Seytu is undergoing a third surgery. After the successful surgery, Seytu forges a new path and steadily treads it. With support from Magira Milli, becomes the greatest physician to emerge from her society. Peni and Mero who were intended to be specimens of socio-culturally damaged womanhood, are presented as objects of pity, even of angst to the readers. Married to Madu Chimba, a vicious brute and by all means, Alkali’s “greatest creation of a feminist antagonist in the Emechetan mould” (Egya 218), Peni surfers battering from the first day she enters her husband’s house. The man she marries is not his choice. Though Magira Milli is outraged that her granddaughter is been married to a village butcher known for his wickedness, her uncle, Aji Ramta forces her to his house. Peni, too gains her freedom, but not to live any fruitful life; she is a frustrated woman who eventually turns to a gagging
Seytu “is a victim of an early marriage with all its evil consequences” (136). Married to Lawani Dam at thirteen, she has Vesico-Vaginal Fistula VVF, as a result of early child-birth. Her husband abandoned her, her two year marriage collapsed. With encouragement from her grandmother, Seytu is undergoing a third surgery. After the successful surgery, Seytu forges a new path and steadily treads it. With support from Magira Milli, becomes the greatest physician to emerge from her society. Peni and Mero who were intended to be specimens of socio-culturally damaged womanhood, are presented as objects of pity, even of angst to the readers. Married to Madu Chimba, a vicious brute and by all means, Alkali’s “greatest creation of a feminist antagonist in the Emechetan mould” (Egya 218), Peni surfers battering from the first day she enters her husband’s house. The man she marries is not his choice. Though Magira Milli is outraged that her granddaughter is been married to a village butcher known for his wickedness, her uncle, Aji Ramta forces her to his house. Peni, too gains her freedom, but not to live any fruitful life; she is a frustrated woman who eventually turns to a gagging