Feminism is the ideology and belief that men and women should have equal rights and
opportunities. Reading Amma Darko’s ‘Faceless,’ we are presented with the malaises
in the African society and the problem an African woman faces, of which abuse
and negligence are primary focal points. We cannot deny the fact that African culture
gives little value to women regardless that they contribute more in building a
home. Darko addresses this problem from a rather tragic perspective – perhaps
in a message that there is nothing more tragic than treating a woman like she’s
not actively important.
Living in a society where women are used as pawns and little regard
given to, Dina divorces her husband and starts an NGO organization, MUTE, where
she addresses society’s troubling issues more critically. Darko presents a
situation where only women work in this organization which supports the claim
that women can do as well as men in any position.
On the other hand, Kabria shares the same independent view as her friend
and boss, Dina. She is married with three children, but often, she disagrees
with her husband’s point of view. Darko shows that both educated and uneducated
African men are not different in issues of marriage. Her husband still holds
the view that he is not supposed to do any other work in the house so long as
he has a job and provides for the family. Kabria, however, does not agree with
this. She too has a job which she combines with house chores, taking care of
the children and always running off from work to pick them from school. Meanwhile,
her husband, who expects his meal to be ready as soon as he comes back, doesn’t
see her as a busy woman. Let’s react to this:
“Adede’s car horn sounded at the gate
about an hour after Kabria and the children had all eaten and bathed and were
settled behind the television. She managed a smile for him at the door after
Abena had opened the gate for him. But inside, she fumed as she reflected upon
all that long and easy talk about how if a woman wanted to keep her marriage
always fresh and her husband all to herself, she had better make him feel good
at home. ‘Welcome him home with a smile,’ they say, ‘look good for him. Wear a
mini skirt for him if he loves seeing you in one. Pamper him. Do him this. Do
him that. Gosh! Who pampered her when she returned home tired from work, only
to go and continue in the kitchen… who met her with a smile? Who wore Levi’s
jeans and an open neck polo shirt, which she loved so much on, for?” (57)
The problem we have in this except is that women are taught how to keep
their men at all cost, whereas men are not taught the same. Here, Adede
represents the majority of African men who see women just as housewives and a
man’s tool for sexual satisfaction. These men don’t bother themselves with
other things that make a woman happy so long as they have a job that puts food
on her table. We can also argue that such men know a lot about the engine of
their cars than they know about their wife’s feelings, what they really need,
and what makes them tick. Kabria knows what she must do to make her husband
happy and keep her family together, but Adede believes every other thing is
settled on his path providing he pays the family bills. Most of the efforts
that are needed to keep the family together are expected from the women while
the men only give orders and when they are bored with events at home, they go
out to spend time with friends, but it becomes a problem if the reverse serves
the case.
On another instance, unlike Kabria, Maa Tsuru is an uneducated character
that represents a timid and illiterate African woman who has no knowledge of
what she is doing or what she’s supposed to do. Though her plight is nobody’s
fault but Darko presents a sad situation of how a woman without standard; a
women of total conformity is treated in the society. Maa Tsuru, like most
African women, holds the view that her only role as a woman is to have children
and so she does not see herself as more valuable in other things. Her ignorance
and vulnerability makes her become a sex tool to men. In her time, she has met
a lot of men who take advantage of her and walk away. Darko shows a
circumstance where things always go wrong for most women as soon as a man comes
into their lives. Maa Tsuru has five children without a husband. Her first four
children are with a man who comes back severally as her husband and runs away
at the birth of each child. The children all fend for themselves on the street and
the first two girls, at fifteen and fourteen, are already sexually exposed. In
fact, a neighbour who has two children with two separated women takes advantage
of this and rapes one of the underage girls.
We are introduced to a kind of
Sodom-and-Gomorrah Street life where both boys and girls are living in but it
is the boys who are in control. The boys are comfortable because they live like
kings in the street and use the girls’ plights to their own advantage. This act
demonstrates that the society has no pity for defenseless women.
The image of feminine gender in Faceless
depicts the evil in treating women as second-rates. We are exposed to the
situation where the woman tries harder than the man to keep the family
together; a society where vulnerable and susceptible women become tools of
sport for men, even when they are still underage and need protection.
More so, ‘Faceless’ reminds us of a society in which there is no joy for
a mother who has no male child.
