Re-writing motherhood in Flora Nwapa’s Efuru

Abstract

In the critical commentary about African women’s writings, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru has become the quintessential novel that ostensibly privileges the discourse of motherhood. In response to this critical position this paper examines Nwapa’s debut novel, and the potential connection between female objectification, heterosexuality, motherhood, and patriarchal domination. Reading the novel through the prism of Adrienne Rich’s idea of “compulsory heterosexuality,” it observes that even though motherhood is central to African communities and literary production, uncritical internalization of it helps to perpetuate heterosexual power, which objectifies women as targets of male sexual fantasy. The paper argues that the centrality of motherhood to Efuru might suggest its supremacy and consequently, women’s fulfilment, but the subliminal text of the novel is that motherhood is not necessarily always biological, and that women can find fulfilment in their social and sexual relationships as well as in their material wealth. Therefore, Efuru is radical in its own way, in the sense that it dares to create a women-centred space, which not only subtly challenges patriarchal social production, but also their representation as signifier and embodiment of male libidinal energy.