Content area
Full Text
Abstract
In the novel, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, the narrator explores how Christianity can be exploited and abused by the male gender to exercise extreme and devastating control within the family. Eugene, as the father figure, believes that he is a devout Christian, yet his actions throughout the novel show total disregard to Christian teachings. Christianity should encourage love and respect for others both within and outside the family. Commentators have observed that women are often forced to take a subservient role within the African churches and church communities. The distortion of religious values can be used to propagate the abuse of power to the advantage of the male gender over the female gender and children. Eugene inherits patriarchal power but he goes far beyond the African tradition in his abuse of his wife and children within the home. Such controversial behavior is a portrayal of the hypocrisy that may be practiced by acclaimed devout Christians consciously or unconsciously. Through colonization, the African mind has been groomed to embrace Christianity, together with education, as the most valuable components of social acceptance. Thus, Eugene uses religion to justify the punishment that he inflicts on his wife and the emotional torture to which he subjects his children. He adores the missionaries who assisted him to acquire his formal education but despises and disowns his own biological father because he worships 'gods of wood and stone' (p. 47), the traditional deities. In fact, his father and his unorthodox sister display far more Christian charity than Eugene does. In Eugene's view of Christian life, patriarchy dominates while women and children simply exist as subjects for control and manipulation. This is a pervasion of both Christian and African values which is not uncommon on this continent.
Keywords: Adichie, Patriarchy, Religion
In most women-authored literary works, various narratives reveal what it is like to be a woman in the patriarchal African culture. There seems to be a parallel drawn between sexual and racial discrimination. In the novel Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie, the narrator explores how religion and oppression can be used as tools to exercise extreme and devastating control over individuals, families and even the community at large. The protagonist, Eugene, is portrayed as a charismatic yet...