Efuru is an astute commentary on the ways women navigated cultural norms in colonial Nigeria. The novel, Flora Nwapa’s debut, was the first to be published internationally by a Nigerian female author and follows the eponymous protagonist as she and other female characters bend, twist, implement and break gender norms in the small lakeside town of Oguta.

Regarded as one of the most beautiful women, Efuru shocks her townspeople when she choses Adizua, a poor man without pedigree as her husband. Outraged by news of the scandal, her father, a man of noble heritage, sends emissaries to Adizua’s house to convince Efuru to return home, especially since the dowry hadn’t been paid.

But Efuru doesn’t budge, signalling her strong-willed nature and disinclination to blindly follow tradition. It’s a stance she reinforces when her mother-in-law entreats her to stay an extra month in the fattening room to prepare her for pregnancy.

 “Never mind what people would say,” Efuru tells her mother-in-law who worries about the faux pas.

For her part, Efuru wants to trade in order to boost their dwindling finances and settle the unpaid dowry, something she achieves with great aplomb.

When rumours swirl of Adizua’s affair with a married woman, Efuru’s mother-in-law’s sister, Ajanupu, opines that only a bad woman would prevent her husband from taking another wife, but condemns her nephew’s behaviour as disrespectful. Also, like Ajanupu, many townspeople are sympathetic to Efuru’s plight, aware of the generosity and goodwill she’s shown her husband.

Nwapa makes a point of dismantling the idea that a wife’s piety, beauty and industry can guarantee a happy marriage, and questions the logic of pinning a woman’s worth on her ability to bear children, especially sons. She also takes aim at the detrimental tradition of prizing boys over girls.

For instance, Efuru’s second husband, Gilbert, and his friend argue over the latter’s decision to educate his younger sister since she would most likely end up in her husband’s kitchen. In another, Gilbert’s mother and a distant relative discuss the relevance of having daughters, with the women criticising another woman for birthing six girls. It’s not long before Efuru’s childlessness comes to the fore of their conversation.

“A woman, a wife shouldn’t look glamourous all the time, and not fulfil the important function she’s made to fulfill,” the relative reminds Efuru’s new mother-in-law in a bid to make her find another wife.

Gilbert’s mother acquiesces, adding that a woman ought to be “productive”, effectively writing off Efuru’s productivity as a trader as inferior to the ultimate achievement of having children.

While Efuru doesn’t object to her husband marrying a second wife to bear him children, a tradition embraced by wives seeking to also lighten their workload, Gilbert himself isn’t keen on the suggestion. He professes his love for Efuru, one that seems true until his unexplained disappearance forces her to re-evaluate their marriage.

Aside from gender politics, Efuru touches on colonialism and western influence on the social mores and tradition of Oguta people: Hospitals slowly replace traditional medicine; churches bar congregants from participating in dances with their age-group, even as some churchgoers secretly turn to indigenous deities for help, and pupils adopt foreign Christian names as a prerequisite for obtaining Western education. Even the manufacture and sale of local gin is banned to make room for those imported from England. However, consumption of homemade brew continued, with women burying the so-called contraband in the sand or hiding them in obscure locations inside their homes.

For its nuanced examination of gendered norms and depiction of women as strong-willed and independent characters unafraid of interrogating the status quo, Efuru’s remains relevant fifty years on. More importantly, its unflinching positioning of women at the centre of the story and men in the margins, blazed a trail at a time when the opposite was often the norm in African literature.

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