Journal of The English Literator Society ISSN 2455-393X
and both of them will continue their educations and become prominent figures in
society. Adah is alone hoping for her dream to come true,
"So she found herself alone once more, forced into a situation dictated
by society in which, as an individual, she had little choice. She would
rather that she and her husband, who she was beginning to love,
moved to new surroundings, a new country and among new people.
So she said special prayers to God, asking Him to make Pa,
agree to their going to the land of her dreams, the United Kingdom!
Just like her Pa, she still said the name United Kingdom in a whisper,
even when talking to God about it, but now she felt it was coming
nearer to her. She was beginning to believe she would go to England"
27
.
The news Adah receives from her husband is not that she will go to England, but
that her husband will go to England to study to better himself while Adah will stay
at home and continue to support the family. Her husband's father does not approve
of women going to England and so he will not allow both of them to move there.
At first Adah is filled with rage, but she controls her anger and she comes up with
a plan. "'Be as cunning as a serpent but as harmless as a dove,' she quoted to
herself."
28
. Once again she uses her smarts to get what she wants. She sends
Francis
her husband
off to England to study and in the meantime she works and
sends him money.
Adah does not give up here, she keeps her hopes up and when her husband writes
to her a few months later that he is going to be in England for at least four or five
more years she decides it is time to make her move and she convinces her in-laws
that it is necessary for her to be in England with her husband and that Francis
wants her there, which he did say to her in his letter. She soon books herself and
her two children first class tickets on a ship to England and as the real struggle
begins for Adah she is arriving in England, welcomed by cold, rainy and cloudy
skies. A foreshadowing of all that is to come for her, she is shocked by the grayness
but she will not give up on her dream. Adah has arrived in the United Kingdom
and this is where she goes from a first class citizen in her native Nigeria to a Second
Class Citizen in England.
Some of the main points of struggle for Adah are being a black woman in a
predominantly white society, learning of the women's rights movement during the
seventies and the fact that there is birth control available to her, and her struggle to
pursue her goal in becoming a writer and ultimately between four children and a
lazy abusive husband the time to write. This book deals with many different issues
and movements and how they all interconnect and relate to one another and also
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Volume 1 Issue 4 Jun