The Child
The pervasive image of the child in The Joys of
Motherhood represents the destiny and supposed common goal of Ibo
women. Children represent a complement to a woman’s identity, and her life
is viewed as incomplete or unjustified unless she has had children. The
child is consistently and idealistically portrayed as an image of completion
and female self-fulfillment. These abstract notions of motherhood and its
attendant joys inform Nnu Ego’s early years. Her dreams are haunted by
visions, including images of babies in peril or children being taken away by
her chi. Nnu Ego conjures fantasies of kidnapping
Amatokwu’s son and running off to raise the child alone in bliss. As the
novel progresses, however, the iconic significance of the child changes.
Children are still viewed as a delight, but they are also a source of agony
and deep emotional pain. When Nnu Ego slowly strips away her illusions about
motherhood and her unrealized expectations, she is left with the unadorned
reality of her life as it is, not as she wants it to be.
Palm Wine
Palm wine suggests Nnaife’s refusal to confront reality and his
failure to be an active force in shaping and guiding his family. On one
level, palm wine represents the negative influences and social ills of life
in the city. It also stands for a shirking of male responsibility, and
drunkenness becomes emblematic of Nnaife’s detachment as a father. He
prefers intoxication to the living reality of what his family has become. At
one point, about to drink a glass of palm wine, Nnaife states that the wine
in the glass is the only truth he knows. His drinking only masks other
problems, and his alcohol abuse plays a key role in sealing his fate during
his trial for attempted murder.
Carter Bridge
In addition to the account of Nnu Ego’s actual suicide attempt,
references to Carter Bridge appear in the novel both explicitly and
teasingly in Nnu Ego’s random thoughts and memories of the past. The bridge
serves as an ambiguous or double symbol, standing for various impressions
and emotional states at the same time. On the one hand, Nnu Ego sees it as
salvation, a gateway to freedom. Suicide is the only way she can address the
pain of losing her child, but it is also her frantic response to the
claustrophobic and predetermined role she finds herself cast in as an Ibo
woman. At the same time, the bridge stands as an emblem of shame. Shame
lurks in Nnu Ego’s irrational response to the death of Ngozi and in her
desire to seek death as a means of accepting her “failure” as a mother.
Shame also lies in her desire to sidestep the expectation that she would
bear male heirs. For Nnu Ego, the edge of the bridge represents the
precarious intersection of failure and freedom, life and death.
