How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Nnaife could tell that Nnu Ego did not approve of him. But he could not help the way he was made, and what anyway was she going to do about it? In his five years in Lagos he had seen worse situations. He had seen a wife brought for an Ibuza man in Lags running away at the sight of her future husband, so that friends had to help the poor bridegroom catch the runaway bride. At least Nnu Ego did not do that. Very few women approved of their husbands on the first day. It was a big joke to the men, women from home wanting to come to Lagos where they would not have to work too hard and expecting a handsome, strong figure of a husband into the bargain. Women were so stupid! (4.17)
In this paragraph, we learn that Nnaife is so confident that he doesn't care how Nnu Ego perceives him. As he sees it, he's the husband and it doesn't matter what she thinks of him. But we also see what he thinks of women and their expectations: pure ridiculousness.
Quote #5
"Pity your ideal Amatokwu almost beat you to death because you did not bear him a son. Look at yourself—you look pregnant to me, and you were not like that when you came here. What else does a woman want? I've given you a home and, if all goes well, the child you and your father have been wanting, and you still sit there staring at me with hatred in your eyes. The day you mention Amatokwu's name in this house again I shall give you the greatest beating you have ever had. You spoilt, selfish woman! You who put Amatokwu's manhood in question so that he had to marry again quickly and have many children in quick succession. Now you come here, where I did not particularly press you to be pregnant in the first month, and you talk this foolishness." (4.53)
A woman who cannot get pregnant is considered a failed woman, but her failure also reflects on her husband.
Quote #6
When Nnu Ego later confided in Cordelia, the wife of Ubani, she had laughed at her moanings about her husband and had said to her, "You want a husband who has time to ask you if you wish to eat rice, or drink corn pap with honey? Forget it. Men here are too busy being white men's servants to be men. We women mind the home. Not our husbands. Their manhood has been taken away from them. The shame of it is that they don't know it. All they see is the money, shining white man's money"
"But," Nnu Ego had protested, "My father released his slaves because the white man says it is illegal. Yet these our husbands are like slaves, don't you think?"
"They are all slaves, including us. If their masters treat them badly, they take it out on us. The only difference is that they are given some pay for their work, instead of having been bough. But the pay is just enough for us to rent an old room like this." (4.66-68)
Nnu Ego points out the hypocrisy of whites in Nigeria: they outlaw slavery for the black master but they then essentially enslave blacks. Cordelia, meanwhile, points out that men may be slaves to the whites, but women are slaves to the men.