Roger's "Girly" Blog

In the novel, "Things Fall Apart", it revolves around gender and feminism so to speak throughout the whole novel. Essentially in the Igbo life the women are the weaker or less dominant gender. They do have certain characteristics that are essential in the novel that the men need. That is the ability to get pregnant and have many children. The ideal man has to bear material and fight in battle or whatever is needed for his family. The wife is supposed to be honorable and do whatever the husband says, whether its from cleaning or just being a good wife for her husband in which taking care and feeding the family. Throughout the novel the author hits key points where the ideal man is the protagonist and very masculine whereas feminism is devalued. "Even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken to title." In the Igbo culture women are considered weaker than man and its an insult to be called an agbala.