Feminism And Racism In Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition” (Hustvedt, 2011). Before the emergence of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Hugh Trevor-Roper had claimed that African history did not exist (Achebe, 1997). As such, Things Fall Apart was Achebe’s way of historicizing Africa, proving to Trevor that the history of Africa did exist even before the arrival of the Europeans. However, Joseph Conrad had already attempted to achieve the same feat in Heart of Darkness, which condemns the evils of imperial exploitation in Africa. That notwithstanding, Achebe in “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” pinpointed how indiscriminately Conrad embedded his narrative in a yarn of racism that craftily reinforces a damaging ideology of Africa as “"the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization” (Achebe, 1997). This among other reasons triggered Achebe to write Things Fall Apart as a counter-narrative to this imperialistic view about Africa and its distinct culture. Nevertheless, Achebe achieves this motive at the peril of gender equality as he buried his narrative in a heap of male patriarchy. Accordingly, this paper seeks to analyze Things Fall Apart through a feminist and post-colonial literary lens to pinpoint how an effort to undermine ideologies of white supremacy, imperialism, and Eurocentric hegemony cunningly reinforce sexism and male patriarchy.

Things Fall Apart is a novel