Abstract
This article examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s exciting novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) not so much for the ways in which it reproduces the unsettling effects of the Biafran War but for how it draws attention to the diversity of sexual behaviours and identities in Africa as well as the grittiness of being human in a frightening war-ridden zone. This article argues for the ways in which Adichie emphasizes the humanity of her female characters through their claims to sexual freedom, even in the context of overwhelming civil unrest. By bringing sexuality into the heart of a Biafran War narrative, Adichie is read as a progressive feminist writer who advances a worldview that allows new ways of thinking about sex through the normalization of sexual behaviours that have been construed as unAfrican. In this way, Half of a Yellow Sun forms a counter-narrative to critical approaches that view female sexual agency as something inherently Western.
When African writers talk about sex, they tend to situate its expression elsewhere. From Cyprian Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana (1961), Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not Child (1964), Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters (1965), to Ama Aidoo’s (1977) Our Sister Killjoy, fictional sexual behaviours are coded in pejorative terms as foreign. Ekwensi’s and Ngũgĩ’s depictions of prostitutes, much like Soyinka’s and Ama’s presentation of homosexuality, figuratively represent women who are obdurate in their sexual behaviour as an emblem of moral degradation instigated by Westernization. The writers, preoccupied with nationalist issues, rarely explore romantic love except in refracted semantic symbols. Normalizing such depictions in “Wounded Eros and Cantilating Cupids’ (2009), Femi Osofisan reproves new millennium writers for diverging from the critical works of art set by their predecessors, yielding entirely to the god Eros. Akin Olaniyi and Anthony Akinwale concur, claiming that contemporary writers, having dispensed with literature instilled with a thoughtful political message, are now centring on “individuality, promiscuity, sex, women and wine […] themes which negate the core African values cherished by their predecessors” (Osofisan, 2012: 146). This kind of viewpoint has indeed shaped the way texts with overt sexual content by African authors are read, making it difficult to view sex as a pleasurable African experience. Focusing on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, this article reverses the trend, advocating the rethinking of female sexuality. It argues that Adichie’s unapologetically sensual descriptions disrupt the social order that frames female sexual independence as alien to African culture, and maintains this as a shift from a past depiction of African women as inert objects of male voyeurism to young women as active, autonomous, and sexual agents. Structured around Adichie’s fictional figures as desiring subjects and erotic actors, the article highlights the minor as well as the major characters’ sexual agency, upholding such performance as a distinctively African experience.
Recent reviews of Half of a Yellow Sun have fixated on the Biafran conflict, supposed carnal transgressions, and sexual violence — readings that pay less attention to the fulcrum of the text, “the grittiness of being human — a book about relationships, about people who have sex and eat food and laugh, about people who are fierce consumers of life” (Adichie, 2008b: 50–51). Centring on the Biafran War, critics have described Half of a Yellow Sun as “a realistic fiction about war” (Cooper, 2008: 133) that “sheds light on ethnic divisions” in Nigeria (Mabura, 2008: 207), with particular emphasis on the betrayal allegory of the “Northerners [against] their Igbo neighbours” (Nnolim, 2010: 145–151), which led to “the deprivations of refugees, the swift brutalisation of ordinary people and the bullying and horror of armed lawlessness” (Gurnah, 2007: 1). The text has also been read as a transgressive work infused with “female characters [who are at] liberty of being vulgar and ‘indecent’ about sexual matters in conversations” (Onukaogu and Onyerionwu, 2010: 191), emblematic of a “middle-class hybridized new woman”, with a shallow knowledge of the rules and values of traditional Nigerian society (Balogun and Oriaku, 2014: 127), by engaging in “[a]typical African relationship[s]” (Eromosele, 2013: 105), which are “detrimental to [health] with respect to sexually transmitted diseases such as STDs and HIV” (Olaniyi and Akinwale, 2012: 150). Finally, some critics have read the text mainly as a work that addresses sexual violence. Fascinated by horrific sexually violent acts in the text, Zoe Norridge concludes that sex proffers the access point to “the sadness, the horror [of] rape, mutilation, and death” in the novel (2012: 28). I argue instead that regardless of the disturbing effects of war which form the background of the story, Half of a Yellow Sun foregrounds erotic pleasure as a soothing remedy for distress and through this depiction indicates an escape route for the female characters to detach themselves from the traumas of war portrayed in the novel. I also advance the idea that the fictional figures’ sexual behaviour as desiring subjects reflects realistic African experience.
Half of a Yellow Sun, which derives its title from the symbol for Biafra, a secessionist municipality in eastern Nigeria from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970, charts the story of twin sisters Olanna and Kainene through the passage of the 1960s. Having just returned to the country from studies abroad and in the process of deciding what to do next, they are the daughters of an influential Igbo businessman, Chief Ozobia. Beautiful Olanna teaches at the University of Nsukka, where she lives with her partner Odenigbo, a “revolutionary” mathematics lecturer from the same university, and his 13-year-old houseboy Ugwu. Kainene, confident and innovative, supervises her father’s assets, including the factories and oil “wells” in the city of Port Harcourt, and eventually falls in love with Richard Churchill, an ambitious, albeit unsuccessful, English writer. The text chronicles, from the multiple perspectives of Olanna, Ugwu, and Richard, chains of civil unrest, genocides, and mayhem that befall post-independence Nigeria: Biafra’s passionate struggle to institute a sovereign state in Nigeria, and the unsettling violence that followed.
Organized in four main sections alternatingly relating proceedings in the “early sixties” and “late sixties”, the first part introduces the reader to the convoluted domestic lives of the principal characters. The second part jumps ahead about four years, featuring Olanna, Odenigbo, and their child, Baby, and Richard and Kainene’s love relationship. Part three narrates events that occurred three years back in time, focusing on Olanna’s discovery of Odenigbo’s infidelity with a village girl, Amala: An act that resulted in the birth of Baby, who Olanna and Odenigbo later adopt. This betrayal provokes Olanna’s revenge, as she sleeps with Richard, Kainene’s boyfriend. The fourth and final part recounts events that happen in the late 1960s by detailing the impact of war on the characters and their survival strategies: Olanna is forced to depend on the relief centre for sustenance after the family is displaced, with four people sharing a room, and Ugwu becomes conscripted into the army, while Kainene is declared missing. Meanwhile, all these uncertainties are also explored within the sexual narrative, as Adichie is bent on showing the humanity of her characters, despite the threats of war.
Half of a Yellow Sun recounts in detail the sexual experiences of Adichie’s dynamic desiring subjects who, regardless of their fictional status in the text, employ sex as a means of empowerment to assert agency. Narrating the sexual encounter between Ugwu, the novel’s first protagonist, and Chinyere, the next-door female servant, Adichie describes sexual activities between two consenting adolescents: “[Chinyere] pulled her blouse off, untied the wrapper around her waist, and lay on her back. [Ugwu] imagined that she was Nnesinachi [and] she imagined that he was someone else too” (2006: 127). 1
Chinyere’s sporadic sexual adventures that allow her to set the pace as to when to have sex demonstrate her sensual supremacy over Ugwu, as she both initiates sex and actively participates in their lovemaking. 2 As a desiring subject, Chinyere uses Ugwu to satiate her sexual needs, ignoring him the moment she is done with him, “[for] when [Ugwu] saw her the next day across the hedge, hanging out clothes on the line, she said ‘Ugwu’ and nothing else; she did not smile” (127). By not playing the sort of feminine part that Ugwu has anticipated, Chinyere is presented as a sexual subject whose erotic engagement is purposefully for pleasure and devoid of any emotional attachment. In Chinyere, Adichie represents female sexual agency which does not originate in mimicry of foreign influences, but is something which is intrinsic to herself.
Discourses on female sexuality in traditional Igbo society underscore chastity and purity before marriage, even though there exists historical evidence of a fluid gender system that permits female sexual freedom. Discussing precolonial Igbo society’s predilection for sexual abstinence before marriage, Emmanuel Obiechina writes, “It can be said with a fair degree of certainty, in view of customary attitudes in Igbo society, that kissing, ‘necking’, hand-holding, cuddling, ‘petting’ and such physical expressions of romantic relationship were unknown in Igbo” society as female premarital virtue is socially encouraged (1973: 35).
3
Although there “were cases of stolen ‘encounters’ and under-the-palm-tree clandestine rendezvous” (Obiechina, 1973: 35), such rare instances were socially construed as abnormal, as sex and childbearing are authorized only within marriage. For Obiechina, however, this value became eroded through Westernization during the 1940s, as The average young man and women whose education had progressed beyond the primary level had acquired enough of the “romantic” notions of love and marriage through formal literary reading and reading of “romantic” books and magazines to feel resentful of the old “puritanical” code of sexual behaviour, and especially of parentally–organised marriage. (1973: 39)
It could be inferred from the above statement that sexual behaviours socially construed abnormal, if they exist, are encouraged by Western education. However, it should be noted that pre(extra)marital sex might not be rare in traditional Igbo society, although there seems to be a collective silence about it, and by focusing on sex and not necessarily on war, Adichie breaks this silence. Stressing the fluidity of gender roles in traditional Igbo society, and women’s attendant sexual liberty, Ifi Amadiume expresses the existence of a flexible gender system in the political and social structure of the Nnobi society that allows for what may be construed as bisexual relationships (1987: 40–42). In precolonial Nnobi society, Amadiume suggests, women could usurp masculine roles and consequently wield significant influence in society. This is encapsulated in the episode of Igba ohu, woman-to-woman marriage [where the] female husband might give the wife a (male) husband somewhere else and adopt the role of a mother to her but claim her services [while the wife stays] with her, bearing children in her name. (Amadiume, 1987: 42)
Adichie equally describes an aspect of Igbo culture where women exercise significant sexual influence. However, Adichie’s female characters’ sexual behaviour, unlike Amadiume’s women, who engage in sex for procreative purposes, is mostly for pleasure. Chinyere, Adichie’s reader is informed, is a maid with no formal education; however, this supposed limitation never deters her sexual agency over Ugwu. Through her unplanned sexual escapades, she establishes an autonomy that enables her to enjoy and engage in sex during her less fertile period, since “they never planned it, she just appears on some days and didn’t on others” (126). Adichie, through this powerfully sexual character, confirms female sexual agency as a fundamental aspect of traditional Igbo society.
Like Chinyere, Amala — the illiterate country girl employed by Mama, Odenigbo’s mother, to break up her son’s private relationship with Olanna — also permits sex without wanting to succumb to motherhood. Introduced early as an obedient, naïve, uneducated, and reserved young girl who listens to Mama’s instruction, Amala is depicted as having allowed Odenigbo to have sex with her: he makes a “drunken pass at her and she submitted willingly and promptly” (250). Mary Olayinka Balogun and Remy Oriaku suggest that Amala does not only succumb unreservedly to Mama’s objectification but also lacks influence over Odenigbo as she is in awe — of the master who “speaks English and drives a car”— and yields to his objectification of her without questioning (2004: 127). While this scene is subject to different interpretations, including but not limited to objectification and rape, as demonstrated in the cinematic adaptation of the novel, it is my suggestion that Amala be potentially viewed as an autonomous sexual personality endowed with the ability to “willingly” and “promptly” reciprocate Odenigbo’s drunken pass. She also exhibits some level of agency by consenting to sex but not necessarily motherhood. The same person who complied with sex intensely rejects the risk of pregnancy, affirming to Ugwu, “If you eat plenty of peppers, they will remove pregnancy” (240), and never relents when self-abortion fails, as she refuses to nurse her baby after delivery. As one of the nurses relates to Odenigbo and Olanna, “you know her mother has refused to touch her […]. We are using a wet nurse” (249). Emphasizing the importance of motherhood, Oyèrónké Oyèwùmí insists that this is cast as the pre-eminent virtue for Nigerian women (Oyewumi, 2000: 1096). What Adichie describes, however, is a character who does not subscribe to the normative notion of motherhood. In her seminal work The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir argues that a woman should be allowed the option to either keep or terminate the baby, where each option is socially authorized (1971 [1949]: 760). Amala likewise asserts her autonomy when she rejects motherhood.
Meanwhile, Mama could be read as a representative of the Igbo culture that insists on “puritanical” (employing Obiechina’s term) sexual conduct that is based on parentally prearranged matrimony. Her ideal wife for Odenigbo must be uneducated, since Western education, for Mama, is corruptive in the way in which it permits women to be wayward: “Too much schooling ruins a woman; everyone knows that. It gives a woman a big head, and she will start to insult her husband”, and education also makes women “follow men around until their bodies are useless” (98). Thus Mama organizes a respectable illiterate village girl for her son, as an uneducated woman is assumed to be subservient and more pliable than her educated counterpart. Allwell Abalogu Onukaogu and Ezechi Onyerionwu affirm that “Odenigbo’s mother may be right about education empowering women, even to the point of seemingly unacceptable radicalism” (2010: 218–222). Uneducated Amala, however, refutes this assumption through her outright refusal of motherhood, demonstrating through her action that radicalism is inherent to her rather than an acquired mannerism — a performance that validates her agency as a person in charge of the result of her liaison, even though she was not its instigator.
It is worth noting that though Adichie’s minor female characters manifest sexual agency, there are moments when such freedom seems to be threatened by hyperaggressive male sexuality, which solely aims at establishing male sexual dominance through the forceful removal of female sexual autonomy. A stark incident of sexual violence is presented through the perspective of Ugwu, newly conscripted into the Biafran Army. Ugwu together with other soldiers participates in a gang rape: The bar girl was lying on her back on the floor, her wrapper bunched up at her waist, her shoulder held down by a soldier, her legs wide, wide ajar […]. Ugwu pulled his trousers down, surprised at the swiftness of his erection. She was dry and tense when he entered her. (365)
Zoe Norridge, whose reading of Half of a Yellow Sun concentrates mainly on sex as a language of violence, describes Ugwu’s gang rape as both an “extension of the sexuality of young boys [that elect] to have sex with a young girl […] and as a bonding male exercise in the practice of war” (2012: 26). Taking the discussion further, Brenda Cooper views rape as “symbolic of the abnormality of war”, an awareness that fuels Adichie’s effort to redeem Ugwu by “playing down his role as a participant in the gang rape [explaining] that he was drunk”; “he had been outside when the others had initiated the rape [and that he was provoked] by the demonic character, High-Tech” (2008: 148). For Cooper, “Adichie adjudicates in his favour [and] in the interest of an African cultural and national healing project [which encourages] black feminists, womanists [to] distance themselves from [what is characterized as] Western feminism’s anti-male stance” (2008: 148). Yet, far from letting Ugwu off the hook for this rape, Adichie in fact explores the horror of the scene from the perspective of both victim and perpetrator, precisely as Ugwu never escapes the moral condemnation which haunts him for much of the text.
Discussing the traumatizing effect of sexual abuse, Augustine Asaah argues that rape, whether it is “perpetrated in non-conflict contexts or conditions of armed conflict […], is always a patriarchal issue, for it is grounded in the sexist belief that brute force can be used to elicit sexual favours” (2007: 336). Maintaining the same proposition, Bulent Diken and Carsten Laustsen argue that “in war rape, the enemy soldier attacks a civilian (not a combatant), a woman (not another male soldier), and only indirectly with the aim of holding or taking a territory” (2005: 56). Taking the discussion further, Darlene Clark Hine writes that “rape has always involved patriarchal notions of women being, at best, not entirely unwilling accomplices, if not outwardly inviting a sexual attack” (1989: 912). Thus, implicit in sexual violence is the idea of a male hegemony that struggles to subjugate the defenceless woman.
The way in which Adichie represents sexual violence in the novel does not only foreground wartime rape, but the contexts which surround it, including the sexual hypocrisy she diagnoses in contemporary Nigeria. Concerning the subject of Nigeria’s hypocrisy in banning women from wearing miniskirts, Adichie writes, “‘Culture’ is the other justification. We must preserve our culture, and miniskirts aren’t [in] our culture. Rape and incest and sexual abuse of children are not part of our culture, even though they happen all the time” (Adichie, 2008a: 1). For Adichie, there remain instances of “rape all over Nigeria, especially in urban areas, yet a collective silence reigns”; women are “blamed for rape: if she hadn’t worn that blouse, she would not have been raped” (Adichie, 2008a: 1). Rape is not just a weapon of war but, for Adichie, a reflection of a degraded society that has embraced and codified the culture of hypocrisy. As such, the most vulnerable to this sexual violence, much like the bar girl, are low-class women who “do not have cars, who have to hitch up their skirts to climb on okadas (motorbike taxis), who do not know a Big Man or Big Woman to call for help, who will be vulnerable to rape at police stations” (Adichie, 2008a: 1). By questioning this aspect of Nigerian culture, Adichie also proposes to stimulate a discussion that will encourage a positive view of women as independent sexual agents.
Discourses on female sexual freedom, choice, and autonomy have thrived in feminist studies in the past decades. Catharine Mackinnon, on the subject of sexual objectification, maintains that men and women are explicitly defined by their roles in society: women are the objectified, and men are the objectifiers (1987: 143–144). Mackinnon’s idea is helpful in understanding human sexuality as a site of power interplay; however, enshrined within the notion is the perception that women who engage in heterosexual intercourse are most susceptible to patriarchal dominance. Conversely, Sue Jackson upholds the idea that diverse expressions of female sexuality might be empowering to women when they are freely selected, and that female sexuality can be an avenue of pleasure for women who through this act subvert the normative notion of women as sexually passive. Jackson contends that despite a cultural environment that problematizes female sexuality, women’s voices still enunciate desire and pleasure, even though they must struggle to be heard (2005: 295–313). Similarly, for Adichie, a woman’s sexuality belongs to her, and she should be allowed to explore her sexuality if it empowers her to do so. This is the same sexual freedom I have discussed in Adichie’s minor female characters so far. For example, while Chinyere and Amala explore their sexual autonomy through their unplanned, abrupt late-night sexual intercourse with Ugwu and rejection of motherhood respectively, the bar girl’s rape typifies the masculine effort to contain such sexual freedom. By writing “the kind of book that [she would] like to read” (Adichie, 2008a: 48), Adichie relates the daily life experiences of African women who although surrounded by civil unrest continue to enjoy life by exploring their sexual freedom.
Adichie’s minor female characters undeniably exert sexual autonomy; however, such sexual assertiveness is particularly pronounced in the case of her main female protagonists. Starting first with Kainene, it becomes important to examine precisely how she asserts her sexuality as a desiring subject. Described from the onset of the text as a model of a strong masculine female character who is resolute, tough, aloof, headstrong, independent, fearless, outspoken, sarcastic, intelligent, and less attractive than her twin sister, Olanna, Kainene significantly exhibits sexual agency for much of the text. This assertiveness manifests in her sexual preference for white men, a tendency that is disapproved of by her family and relatives, particularly Olanna, who “had never liked any of Kainene’s boyfriends and never liked that Kainene dated so many white men in England” (36). Kainene’s friendship with Richard Churchill, a shy English amateur writer who is fascinated by Igbo culture, heightens such criticism, to which she repeatedly responds, “My choice of lovers is none of [anyone’s] business” (80).
Kainene plays a dominant sexual role in this relationship, since she always “leads the way”, holds Richard’s hands and “ask[s] if he wanted to go inside” (62, 64). Richard, in turn, follows with an air of sexual uncertainty as Kainene did not give him the usual goodbye kiss and instead pressed her mouth to his, lips parted, he was surprised. He had not allowed himself to hope for too much. Perhaps it was why an erection eluded him […] as he did not become hard. He could feel the flaccid weight between his leg. (63)
Kainene always initiates sex; he in turn often fails to reciprocate appropriately, for which he apologizes relentlessly “I’m so sorry” (64) and turns to sexual performance-enhancing drugs. Here, he is an object of derision; she, by contrast, has been sexually assertive, often in charge of setting the pace. In turn, Adichie suggests a reversal of traditional perceptions of female sexuality: she is the active sexual subject and he the object.
Kainene’s sexual liaisons with Richard subsequently improve, but his subservient position remains the same. The clearest example is the sex scene at the peak of the war: They would go out to the veranda and he would push the table aside and spread out the soft rug and lie on his naked back. When she climbed astride, he would hold her hips and stare up at the night sky and, for those moments, be sure of the meaning of bliss. It was their new ritual since the war started, the only reason he was grateful for the war. (307–308)
The sexual ritual that sees her always on top embodies the enormous influence she wields in the relationship, and this transgresses prescriptive sexual behaviours that arrogate power to men by putting them literally on top.
It is meanwhile fascinating that Kainene’s and Richard’s sexual exploration takes place in the period when the war is at its peak; an act that consolidates the notion that the story is not mainly about war. In his description of the effects of the war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu — warlord and leader of defunct Biafra — posits that the Igbo people are so intensely “traumatised by the [war] experience that they are [explicitly] caught in a sort of time warp” (qtd. in Maier, 2000: 283). On the contrary, Adichie, in a discussion on the Biafran experience, writes that the war was in many ways shabby, painfully shabby. And yet, it was also a time when [her] brother was born, when people discovered strength and talent and courage when people got married and found reasons to laugh when people came together in different ways. (Adichie, 2008b: 52)
Similarly, Kainene’s and Richard’s frequent lovemaking, which flourishes as the war rages, suggests that although the Biafran conflict is traumatic, it is also during this period that people discover alternative lifestyles. Here, sex is portrayed as bliss amid disaster, proposing the possibility of enjoyment through the performance of numbing oneself from the uncertainties of war. Sex, as employed by Kainene, has an anaesthetic functionality that numbs the painful aspect of war, which in turn positions her as someone able to control her environment and sexuality, a stance I also identify with Olanna.
Young, attractive, and educated, Olanna is, Adichie’s reader is meant to believe, a self-willed personality who is accustomed to her parents’ disapproval of most of her decisions. For example, when she chose two weeks’ suspension rather than apologize to her Heathgrove form mistress for insisting that the lessons on Pax Britannica were contradictory; when she joined the Students’ Movement for Independence at Ibadan; when she refused to marry Igwe Okagbue’s son, and later, Chief Okaro’s son. (35)
Empowered by this resistant instinct, Olanna refutes the “puritanical code of sexual behaviour” (employing Obiechina’s terms) that would have her parents organize marriage for her. She also declines sexual objectification by her parents who intend to use her as sex bait to win a contract from the finance minister, Chief Okonji; preferring instead to maintain a sexual relationship with Odenigbo, her partner whom she lives with at the University of Nsukka.
Sexually empowered, Olanna is unique in the way she subverts male supremacy by always setting the terms of her relationship with Odenigbo. It is her idea that they should live together and maintain a sexual association without necessarily being married, and “[e]ach time he suggested that they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it to a prosaic partnership” (52). Her refusal never discourages Odenigbo, as he continues to press her: We are at war, and my mother would have to decide what will be done with my body if anything happened to me. You should decide that […]. I just want you to marry me. We really should marry. It no longer makes sense. It never made sense. (187)
Crestfallen at Olanna’s refusal, Odenigbo pleads, “If you won’t marry me, nkem, then let’s have a child” (106). Odenigbo says this tentatively, bearing in mind that “[s]he once told him that she did not have that fabled longing to give birth, and her mother called her abnormal until Kainene said she didn’t have it either” (104).
Akin Olaniyi and Anthony Akinwale in their analysis of the novel contend that Olanna’s action reflects Adichie’s “unAfricanness”, especially since she seems to endorse sex outside marriage, as “Olanna prefers to live in Odenigbo’s house even against her parents dictate [not minding] the stigmatization that goes with the birth of a child outside wedlock” (2012: 149–150). Such supposedly perverse behaviour is, for Olaniyi and Akinwale, “permitted in Western culture where Adichie spends an impressionable part of her live [sic]. It is frowned at in traditional African environment” (Olaniyi and Akinwale, 2012: 150). Balogun and Oriaku articulate a similar proposition, locating the “unAfricanness” of the text within Adichie’s creation of a “new woman who lives in an amalgamated world of western and traditional values” (2014: 127). Implicit in these arguments is the idea that Nigerian culture is morally superior to Western culture, and that Nigerian women are happily beleaguered.
I argue instead that Olanna’s sexual agency is inherent to her, it is not some imposition born of a Western education and, moreover, it is completely in keeping with the experiences of many ordinary Nigerian women. Olanna’s refusal of Odenigbo’s marital proposal is based on her notion that “prosaic partnership” flattens relationships, and by repeatedly refuting his persistent requests she intends to circumvent the monotony brought about by marriage: the marital boredom that prioritizes procreation over female sexual pleasure. Earlier, I discussed Amadiume’s argument about aspects of precolonial Igbo society where women wielded sexual influence. According to Amadiume, a dual-sex principle existed whereby the eldest daughter took on the place of the eldest son, partook in the father’s inheritance, and elected to live in her natal home while maintaining a sort of intricate sexual attraction with both men and women (1987: 31). Olanna and Kainene, Adichie’s readers are similarly informed, are the only children of an influential Igbo businessman. Having only two female children with such enormous wealth is considered tragic in a patriarchal Igbo society where sons are highly valued. It thus becomes possible to hypothesize that Olanna and Kainene, much like the male daughters of Amadiume, are presented as male daughters — although not in the sense of engaging in sex for procreation, but for pleasure. Their dual-sex role as sons entitles them to a place in their father’s inheritance while maintaining sexual relationships without necessarily being maritally bonded with their partners. What Adichie describes are everyday African women who decline the orthodoxy of marriage.
Olanna is depicted as a sexually active character who transgresses the archetypal conventional femininity. Her sexual subjecthood is graphically portrayed through her encounters with Odenigbo: she unbuttoned his shirt to suck the soft-firm flesh of his belly. She felt his intake of breath when she touched his trousers’ zipper. In her mouth, he was swollen stiff. The faint ache in her lower jaw, the pressure of his outspread hands on her head, excited her. (246)
Olanna’s erotic overtures that arouse Odenigbo bespeak her sexual agency to not only initiate but also enjoy sex. Carole Vance, in “Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality”, argues that “[f]eminism must speak to sexual pleasure as a fundamental right” (1984: 24). Drawing on her work, Mumbi Machera stresses further that “the issue is not finding out how women get sexual pleasure but of asking what constitutes ‘sexual pleasure’ and what functions it serves?” (2004: 166). Oral sex within the context under consideration similarly provides a source of pleasure that suits Olanna’s liberated interest as a sexual subject, for she observes in “her mouth, he was swollen stiff”. Olanna is presented as being in control by holding his penis in her mouth. It is possible for her, in this posture, to not only sexually stimulate Odenigbo but also inflict pain on him. The sense of power based on her knowledge of being in control is responsible for her erotic pleasure, and far from serving a reproductive purpose, is for personal sexual gratification.
Olanna’s sexual autonomy is framed by her ability to direct erotic scenes even in the midst of uncertainties brought about by war: Her lips were still against his [and she] pulled her dress over her head in one fluid gesture. She unbuckled his trousers. She did not let him take them off. She turned her back and leaned on the wall and guided him into her. (282)
For Norridge, “sexuality and awareness of suffering are intricately interlinked”, as Adichie through sexual intercourse proffers the body language with which to examine the dense feelings of her female characters (2012: 22). It is plausible to entwine sex with loss, particularly as the text explicitly centres on the trauma of war in Nigeria. However, Adichie’s focus is not mainly on war, but on the female characters’ pleasurable sex lives that are, in a sense, bound up with their chances of survival. The indignity of sharing a room with four family members and the threat of death typified by the air-raid alarm’s echo of “the sharp ka-ka-ka of the anti-aircraft gunfire”, intensify rather than dampen Olanna’s sexual craving (275). It takes a certain high level of concentration and sexual assertiveness, I would argue, to actively engage and enjoy a sexual act to the sound of bombs, unimagined air raids that infuse fear and terror, the countless deaths of loved ones and the dusk-to-dawn curfews that characterize war-ridden zones. Moreover, the sex scene that Adichie describes is absorbing, as it depicts Olanna to be in practical control, while Odenigbo struggles to meet her sexual demands. Her sexual agency is clear in her readiness to engage in sexual activities even at the most awkward moments. At the news of the death of Okeoma, Olanna employs sex as a therapy: she relieves her loss by clutching Odenigbo’s arm, and She did not let go of his arm until Dr Nwala stumbled back into the rain, until they climbed silently onto their mattress […] He was still, so still she thrashed around and pulled at his hips. But he did not move. Then he began to thrust, and her pleasure multiplied. (39–92)
While Odenigbo, depressed by Okeoma’s death, is somewhat unresponsive, Olanna pursues the sexual pleasure that distracts her from her own loss.
Half of a Yellow Sun portrays women not only as desiring subjects but also as retributive agents that can punish men’s infidelities. Having just returned from her vacation back to Nsukka, Olanna suspects Odenigbo when she observes his awkwardness around Amala: Odenigbo moved towards Amala but stopped a little way away so that he had to stretch out and lengthen his arm to give her the key. She took it carefully from his fingers, [but she] noticed how scrupulously they avoid any contact. (223)
Convinced that something must have happened between them, but willing to be proved wrong, she enquires, “[y]ou touched Amala” (224); a question to which he, out of guilt, never responds. Infidelity is, as Eromosele contends, a common motif throughout the text, since virtually all the characters are involved in some form of betrayal against those that trust them (2013: 104). Charles Nnolim (2010) analyses such perfidy as an allegory of the Nigerian civil war where the Nigerian government betrays the Igbo living in the North. Hamish Dalley agrees, noting that the text narrates “Nigerian civil war through an allegory of sexual rivalry and marital tensions, a process that is enabled by its quintessential realist asymmetry between individuals and their historical settings” (2012: 64–65).
On the contrary, betrayal as it is represented in the text typifies the social hypocrisy that celebrates men’s virility while disapproving of women’s sexual assertiveness. Odenigbo’s philandering experience with Amala is notably endorsed by Mama, even as she construes Olanna’s independent lifestyle, her willingness to live with a man who is not legally her husband, as wayward and Western. This asymmetry underpins Odenigbo’s self-assured response to Olanna that represents his affair with Amala as “a brief rash of lust” (225); a tone and expression which, for Olanna, are far more upsetting than the actual betrayal of trust. His unimpressive reconciliatory effort is evident not only in his lack of concern for Olanna’s emotional comfort but also in his priorities, for he still “plays tennis and goes to the staff club” (228). This nonchalant attitude in continuing his daily routine indifferent to her feelings exacerbates the situation. It makes her “feel that there was something wrong with her”, and she reasons that “it was her right to be upset, her right to choose not to brush her humiliation aside in the name of an over-exalted intellectualism, and she would claim that right”. She tells him, “Go and play your tennis and don’t come back here” (102). Olanna comforts herself by travelling to her uncle’s place in Kano, where her sense of individuality is restored through her interactions with Aunty Ifeka. She discloses her intention to permanently stay in Kano, but Aunty Ifeka opposes it. She tells Olanna, “Odenigbo had done what all men do and has inserted his penis in the first hole he could find when you were away”, and goes on to divulge her own personal experiences: “when your uncle first married me, I worried because I thought those women outside would come and displace me from my home. I now know that nothing he does will make my life change” (226).
Aunty Ifeka seems to imply that men will always be sexually adventurous, while women are expected to mind the family. Discussing the subject of female sexuality, Assitan Diallo (2004) writes that while female sexuality is conceptualized as a threat to the priority given to motherhood, men’s pursuit of greater sexual fulfilment is often viewed instead as a will to take on more responsibilities as a father. Flirting is sometimes rationalized as the necessary step for a married man to take on a new wife in order to increase his offspring. (185)
Adichie likewise represents a somewhat silenced aspect of Nigerian culture where men’s sexuality is condoned to the detriment of women. Aunty Ifeka’s compliance with this unjust social convention is responsible for her marital insecurity and earlier ambivalent reactions to her husband’s infidelity. She only fights back later when she is sure of her permanent place in her husband’s house. Assured of her marital position, she subsequently encourages Olanna to go back to Nsukka and never allow her life to be ruined by what Odenigbo has done or failed to do — an emboldening statement that fuels Olanna’s revenge mission.
Implicit in Aunty Ifeka’s statement is the assumption that men’s infidelity is a regular occurrence that is tolerable or even acceptable, since Odenigbo’s unfaithfulness replicates Uncle Mbaezi’s and Olanna’s father’s adulterous living. Cooper argues that Adichie’s black feminism/womanism both “condemns and condones [such] generalized male behaviour [as the men] may behave badly [because they] cannot help themselves” (2008: 149). For Cooper, this justifies why “Odenigbo, again a very different kind of man from Olanna’s father or uncle, can love Olanna so deeply and yet allow himself to be seduced by Amala during the week of peace and maybe by Alice during war” (2008: 149). Yet conversely, Adichie in fact intensely condemns such male misdemeanours, insisting that they should take responsibility for their actions. A case in point is when Odenigbo blames everybody but himself: it is either “Amala has forced herself on him” when he is drunk, or his mother is responsible, as this could not have happened “if my mother didn’t have a hand!” (225). Far from making flimsy excuses for male lack of self-control, Adichie responds vehemently through Olanna against this flagrant sidestepping of responsibility by insisting, “it’s you and not your mother. It happened because you let it happen! You must take responsibility! […]. Did your mother pull out your penis and insert it into Amala as well?” (240, 241).
Back in Nsukka, Olanna cultivates her sense of agency by taking the first step of cultivating new relationships with Edna, her African American next-door neighbour, and later with Richard, her twin sister’s boyfriend. She distances herself from Odenigbo by retrieving her remaining belongings from his house, and then decides to sleep with Richard: She kissed his lips […] unbuckled his trousers […] She took her dress off […] felt his mouth limply enclose her nipple […]. Everything changed when he was inside her. She raised her hips, moving with him, matching his thrusts. (234)
The encounter is pleasurable, emotionally healing, and affectionate; establishing herself as a sexual agent in an atmosphere devoid of shame, Olanna does not “regret the act itself” (244). Olanna’s erotic retaliation for Odenigbo’s unfaithfulness facilitates a feeling of wholeness, “as if she was throwing the shackles away from her wrists, extracting pins from her skin, freeing herself with the loud, loud cries that burst out of her mouth” (234). The experience empowers her; she becomes surer of herself and takes responsibility for her actions and emotions. She visits Richard’s house and informs him, “I think we should keep things normal” — an act that enables her to set terms for her subsequent relationship with Odenigbo, that ensure he cooperates with her in preserving what they share in common (244). For Adichie, Olanna’s sexual retaliation is conditioned by her reasoning: that Odenigbo should make a conscientious effort to preserve what they share together, and when he fails to do that, she, too, does not feel obligated to protect it either. Through Olanna, Adichie exposes and reverses the convention of a virtuous woman who minds domestic issues while the man philanders (Nwokocha, 2017, 2018).
This is also the case for Kainene. At the discovery of Richard’s infidelity with Olanna, she listens meditatively to Richard’s evasive explanation without saying anything for some minutes, then eventually says, “I hope you won’t say forgive me [for there] is nothing more trite […]. It would be forgivable if it were somebody else. Not my sister [and from now on you] should sleep in the guest room” (256). The narrative presents Richard in a most miserable state, but Kainene as a wounded partner deserves the right of vengeance, and if by distancing herself from him she intends to deflect her pain and regain status in the relationship, then her response, for Adichie, deserves to be celebrated. She ultimately assuages her anger when with an expressionless face she announces, “I took your manuscript from the study this morning and burnt it” (258). By burning Richard’s manuscripts, Kainene intends to punish his betrayal appropriately and to make him understand that what he has done is morally unacceptable. It is undoubtedly a remarkable punishment, which does inflict pain on him: he felt a soar in his chest of emotions [as] “The Basket of Hands”, the collection of pages he was finally confident could become a book, was gone. He could never duplicate the unbridled energy that had come with the words. (258)
Seeing him in pain, for Kainene, is the only way to get even for his reprehensible behaviour. Through the symbolic act of burning a manuscript, destroying a writer’s word, Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun echoes Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen. In a similar way to Kainene, Francis (Adah’s husband) spitefully burns her manuscript partly in revenge when he finds out she has been using contraceptives. Yet where Emecheta’s Francis demonstrates the power that men wield over women, Adichie’s Kainene displays the power women have to act in spite of or as a response to male domination.
I have established the prevalence of erotic pleasure as a salve for pain in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and equally acknowledged gratifying sex as an African experience. Half of a Yellow Sun explores the disturbing effects of war, but it also brings to the forefront sexual satisfaction as a therapy for pain, and through this sexual narrative foregrounds the humanity of the characters in the midst of the indignity of war. Adichie’s female characters’ agency is framed within their sexual autonomy as desiring subjects and agents. From these two perspectives, Adichie advances a particular type of feminist awareness that is based on uncensored sexual autonomy. Female characters are represented as desiring subjects with the ability to initiate, control, and enjoy the erotic scene, a level of sexual freedom which Adichie’s male protagonists struggle to eliminate through hyperaggressive male sexuality; and women are empowered to punish, rather than tolerate, men’s infidelity. Thus, Adichie insists on her African female characters as sexual agents, not because of some amorphous Western influence but because of their own emotional and physical needs and desires.
