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The Family in Crisis: An Analysis of the Home Spaces in a Selection of Contemporary Nigerian Novels in English

by Bettina Cowin (Author)
©2025 Thesis 302 Pages

Summary

This study examines the representation of home spaces in three twenty-first-century Nigerian novels written in English, applying various spatial theories to analyse their portrayal. These contemporary novels, which center on family life, are set in different regions of Nigeria – a postcolonial nation characterised by diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa communities. Despite their regional and cultural distinctions, the novels depict families in crisis as a unifying theme.
By situating the novels within their social and historical contexts and employing spatial theories, the research explores the underlying causes of familial dysfunction. It seeks to determine whether the rigid, hierarchical patriarchal structures present in many of the family homes reflect similar power dynamics at the national level. Furthermore, the study investigates how the oppressive political and social conditions of postcolonial Nigeria permeate the varied domestic environments portrayed in these narratives.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Theoretical Framework
  • 2.1 The Spatial Turn and Geocriticism
  • 2.2 Selected Thirdspace Theories from Edward Soja’s Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996)
  • 2.2.1 Henry Lefebvre’s La production de l’espace (1974)
  • 2.2.2 Edward Soja’s Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace
  • 2.2.3 A Postcolonial Thirdspace Theory: Homi Bhabha’s Third Space
  • 2.2.4 A Feminist Spatial Approach to Space: bell hooks’ Intersectional Theory of Space
  • 2.2.5 Michel Foucault’s Heterotopias in “Des espaces autres” (1967)/“Of Other Spaces” (1984)
  • 2.3 The Body and Space
  • 2.3.1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of the “Lived Body” and Its “Zur-Welt-Sein” (“Being-in-the-World”)
  • 2.3.2 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949): Second Wave Feminism and the Body
  • 2.3.3 Third-Wave Feminism and Foucault
  • 2.4 Spatial Theories of the Home: Gaston Bachelard and bell hooks
  • 2.4.1 Gaston Bachelard
  • 2.4.2 bell hooks
  • 3 The Home Spaces and Other Related Spaces in Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • 3.1 Synopsis and Structure
  • 3.1.1 Synopsis
  • 3.1.2 Structure and Time of Purple Hibiscus
  • 3.2 The Enugu Home
  • 3.2.1 The Compound and House, along with St. Agnes Church as a Related Space
  • 3.2.2 The Living Area of the Enugu Home
  • 3.3 The Two Abba Homes
  • 3.3.1 The Real-World and the Fictional Abba
  • 3.3.2 The Country Home
  • 3.3.3 Papa-Nnukwu’s (Eugene’s Father’s) Home
  • 3.4 The Nsukka Home
  • 3.4.1 The Surroundings of the Nsukka Home: The Town and the University
  • 3.4.2 Ifeoma’s Flat: The Living Room, Kitchen, Bathroom and Toilet
  • 3.4.3 The Garden and the Verandah
  • 4 The Home Spaces and Other Related Spaces in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin
  • 4.1 Synopsis, Structure and Distribution of Space in the Novel
  • 4.1.1 Synopsis
  • 4.1.2 Structure
  • 4.1.3 Distribution of Space in the Novel
  • 4.2 The Real-World and the Fictional Ibadan
  • 4.3 Baba Segi’s and His Four Wives’ Home
  • 4.3.1 The Compound and House in Comparison with Iya Tope’s Father’s Home
  • 4.3.2 The Sitting Room and the Red-Light District as a Related Space
  • 4.3.3 The Bedrooms
  • 5 The Home Spaces and Other Related Spaces in Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
  • 5.1 Synopsis and Structure
  • 5.1.1 Synopsis
  • 5.1.2 Structure
  • 5.2 Hajiya Binta’s Home
  • 5.2.1 The House and Compound
  • 5.2.2 Hajiya Binta’s Bedroom and the Shagali Hotel
  • 5.2.3 The Verandah
  • 5.2.4 Fa’iza’s and Ummi’s Bedroom
  • 5.3 Reza’s Transitional Home, San Siro, and the Senator’s Mansion as a Related Space
  • 6 Conclusion
  • Bibliography
  • Primary and Secondary Literature
  • Online Sources

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my first supervisor, Professor Dr. Manfred Loimeier, from Heidelberg University, who placed his trust in my abilities and accepted me as his doctoral candidate, he always encouraged and supported me by offering pertinent criticism as well as valuable suggestions.

I would equally like to thank my second supervisor, Professor Dr. Peter Paul Schnierer, from Heidelberg University, who offered immeasurable help by taking me on board, helping me to find the right approach and allowing me to attend his Oberseminar, where some of my texts were critically discussed by its members.

I would also like to say thank you to Professor Dr. Cecile Sandten from the TU Chemnitz, who supported me generously by reading my texts and giving me useful and critical advice. The members of her Chemnitz colloquium also provided many ideas.

I would very much like to thank my comrade in arms, Sara Rassau, whose constant support I could not have done without.

Also, I would like to thank Dr. Katrin Hudey for generously helping me with the formatting of my text.

I would like to thank my friends and my two daughters for always lending an open ear to my needs, and, last but not least, I would like to thank my husband, Andrew, for his tireless support.

1 Introduction

[F]‌inding a place in the world where one can be at home is crucial. Home is literal: a place where you struggle together to survive; or a dream: ‘a real home,’ something just out of one’s grasp; or a nightmare: a place to escape in order to survive as an individual. Home is an idea: an inner geography where the ache to belong finally quits, where there is no sense of ‘otherness,’ where there is, at last, a community. (Janet Zandy, 1990, 1; quoted in Blunt, 2006, 5)

no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark (extract from Warsan Shire’s “Home”, 2013)

“Home […] is a place, a site in which we live. But, more than this, home is also an idea and an imaginary that is imbued with feelings. These may be feelings of belonging, desire and intimacy […], but can also be feelings of fear, violence and alienation” (Blunt and Varley, 2004, 3; qtd. in Blunt, 2006, 2). The aim of this study is to apply spatial theory to examine the specific nature of the home spaces in three 21st-century Nigerian novels in English, namely Purple Hibiscus (2004) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010) by Lola Shoneyin and Season of Crimson Blossoms (2016) by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. The three contemporary novels have been selected because they all depict family life, yet they have their settings in different areas of Nigeria with diverse ethnic backgrounds. A second reason is that all three are worthy representatives of the Nigerian novel of the contemporary period, having received the most highly acclaimed literary awards.1

The three novels can be assigned to the genre Entwicklungs- or Bildungsroman, depicting their protagonists’ personal development and maturing, situated and experienced, predominantly, within the family context. Family life, consequently, is an important theme, mainly presented in the respective family homes. While in two of the novels, Purple Hibiscus and The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, one female family member is the main protagonist, Season of Crimson Blossoms has a female and a male protagonist, both of equal importance. Due to destructive tensions between the individual family members, which can also be attributed to clashes between traditionally African and so-called modern or Western values, the families can be characterized as being in crisis. Power structures and dependencies are revealed that become constant sources of trouble, because the various family constellations turn out to be incompatible with individual family members’ wishes, needs and aspirations. All of the protagonists, whether female or male, are trapped in circumstances that can be seen as intolerable. In all the novels, the prevailing family conflicts become so irreconcilable that they lead, albeit for different reasons, to the violent or intentional killing of one family member.

While sharing this common theme, the three novels, nevertheless, have their geographical settings in cities and villages in different areas of Nigeria that have highly diverse ethnic backgrounds. The settings span the Nigerian map from the South-East, the traditional Igbo area, the fictional location of Purple Hibiscus in Enugu and Nsukka, via the South-West, the primarily Yoruba area, where The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is set in Ibadan and some of its surrounding villages, to Nigeria’s central area and up to the North, the traditional Hausa area, where the third novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms, has its setting in the capital Abuja as well as in in Jos and Kano. The map of Nigeria below may be helpful in ascertaining the geographical range of the literary works.

Figure 1.1:Political Map of Nigeria

Figure 1.1:Political Map of Nigeria

(Source: https://www.ubuy.co.id/en/product/1OHIKDWB4-nigeria-political-map-paper-laminated-a2-size-42-x-59-4-cm)

Furthermore, the family systems themselves differ greatly: there is the Roman Catholic monogamous marriage in the Igbo community in Purple Hibiscus, the polygynous marriage with mixed religious affiliations in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives and the incomplete Muslim Hausa family, exiled from their hometown, consisting of a widowed grandmother, her niece and granddaughter, who, coming from a monogamous marriage, is now expected to enter a polygynous one, in Season of Crimson Blossoms. Apart from that, the novels are set at different times, 1995, 2001 and 2011, and thus reflect different national and local political situations, which exert a discernible influence on the families’ private spheres.

With about 206 million inhabitants, the present Federal Republic of Nigeria is the most populous state in Africa, comprising 250 ethnic groups (and 521 languages), all with their own cultures and political systems. The three largest population groups are the Hausa, the Yoruba and the Igbo inhabiting the North, the West and the South-East of Nigeria, respectively. British colonial rule lasted from the beginning of the 19th century to 1960, when the country became an independent state, yet Nigeria’s territory retained its colonially designed shape, thus presenting, like many other former colonies, a postcolonial space with arbitrarily drawn borders.2 The Muslim Hausa people, for example, are today spread over six African countries and make up about thirty per cent of the Nigerian population (sixty-four million). This ethnic group traditionally lived in hierarchically structured sultanates, emirates or caliphates. The Yoruba, whose ancient territory, Yorubaland, is spread over five different African countries today, are one of the largest peoples in Africa, making up the second biggest group in Nigeria with forty-three million. They traditionally lived in powerful kingdoms (like Ile-Ife or the Oyo Empire), but also in city-states. They practiced the Yoruba religion. Today, they are mainly Christian or Muslim. In contrast to these two ethnic groups, the primarily Christian thirty-five million Igbo people traditionally entertained a quasi-democratic system of government where, in tight-knit communities, people considered each other as equals, and decisions were taken communally. They traditionally practiced the Igbo religion. Having to deal with these differences, the Nigerian nation state has been the venue of struggles between different ethnic groups ever since.

After Independence and only six years of democratic sovereignty, Nigeria experienced a military coup, followed by civil war from 1967 to 19703, ensued by long phases of authoritarian military rulership, the most notorious of which was Sani Abacha’s military dictatorship from 1993 to 1998. Only after 1999 did Nigeria return to democracy, yet her election processes are still woefully inadequate.4

Belonging to the most important oil producers worldwide, Nigeria boasts the largest economy on the African continent. Nevertheless, recent governments, despite certain political and economic reforms, have not managed to use the great wealth of the country’s natural resources to promote the economic and social development of the people.5 The country’s biggest current challenges are widespread poverty, a lasting economic crisis due to the non-diversification of the economy, the fight against ubiquitous corruption, the scarcity of fuel and electricity, and the tense security situation due to crime and terrorism. Human rights violations with respect to gender equality and sexualized violence against women and girls are the order of the day. In twelve of the Northern states, the sharia law applies (cf. Nigeria, n.d.).

This thesis aims at applying spatial critical theory, also named geocriticism, to capture the complex realities of the family homes presented in the novels. In doing so, the question is asked why the “four ‘normative values of home’”, identified by the political theorist, Iris Marion Young, namely “‘safety; individuation […]; privacy; and preservation’”, “‘that should be thought of as minimally accessible to all people’” (Young, 1997, 161; qtd. in Blunt, 2006, 5) cannot be successfully achieved in these family homes. The location of the homes in a postcolonial space is even further reason for applying geocriticism as a method of literary analysis to the novels, especially as “postcolonial literature in general (and African literature in particular), has not been much explored in geocritical analyses to date” (Crowley, 2021, 207). Another reason is, secondly, that postcolonialism has “a pronounced concern for issues of geography” (Crowley, 2021, 207), with European colonialism employing “‘powerful strategies of territorial dispossession, military occupation, cultural domination, [and] economic exploitation,’ practices of intrusive colonial organization that produced and reproduce spatial conditions of ‘exclusion, domination [and] disciplinary control’” (Seeking Spatial Justice, 2010, 37; qtd. in Crowley, 2021, 207). This is due to “the economic, material and cultural conditions that determine the global system in which the postcolonial nation is required to operate – one heavily weighted towards the interests of international capital” (Young, 2009, 57). Finally, the very aim of geocriticism is to identify in what way spatial practices “are employed and deployed, both for repressive ends and as means to help political liberation” (Tally, 2013, 114), the latter one of its explicit targets. Postcolonialism, like geocriticism, is also

both contestatory and committed towards political ideals of a transnational social justice, [signaling] an active engagement with positive political positions and new forms of political identity in the same form as Marxism or feminism. With respect to the latter, the politics and theory of postcolonialism can be largely identified with the goals and practices of so-called ‘Third World Feminism’ (Park and Sunder Rajan, 2000)6 (Young, 2009, 58).

The family homes in the selected novels are thus described with the help of spatial theory within their postcolonial context, attempting to find answers in what way repressive spatial practices provoke the crises in the families and what feminist emancipatory solutions the novels have to offer, at least for some of the characters.

With regard to the structure of this thesis, following the introduction Chapter 2 presents the selected spatial theories that are used to analyse the three novels. The American urban geographer Edward Soja’s theory of “Thirdspace” has proven especially helpful in this investigation. In his study, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996), Soja primarily presents a detailed interpretation and continuation of the three categories of space developed by the French Marxist sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre in La production de l’espace (1974), in which he distinguishes a “conceptual triad” (Lefebvre, 1991, 33) of space, which consists of: 1 “Spatial Practice”, 2 “Representations of Space” and 3 “Representational Space” (cf. Lefebvre, 1984, 33–38), thus referring to the interaction between space, individuals and society by claiming that space is produced by humans, just as well as humans are shaped by space, and both processes occur within the framework of the modes of production and reproduction of their particular social formation. Soja premises his own spatial theory on Lefebvre’s three categories of space and terms or redescribes them as “Firstspace”, “Secondspace” and “Thirdspace” (Soja, 1996, 66–68). Firstspace denotes the “materialized, socially produced, empirical space” (Soja, 1996, 66), in which everyday life takes place in interaction with its surrounding locations. Secondspace is the space of planners and architects, who impose “order or design” on space representing power and ideology “via control over knowledge, signs and codes” (Soja, 1996, 68). Thirdspace denotes the spaces “vitally filled with politics and ideology, […] capitalism, racism, [and] patriarchy” (Soja, 1996, 68), the “dominated” space (c.f. Lefebvre, 1991, 33, 38; Soja, 1996, 68) that overlays and permeates every place, individual and society. Soja localizes Thirdspace in “the spaces of the peripheries”, the margins and the marginalized, the “Third Worlds” that can be found at all scales, in the corpo-reality of the body and mind, in sexuality and subjectivity, in individual and collective identities from the most local to the most global. These spaces can become “‘counterspaces’, spaces of resistance to the dominant order” or “the chosen spaces for struggle, liberation, emancipation” (Soja, 1996, 68). All three spaces, Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace, can be located in “the real and the imagined, things and thought on equal terms” (Soja, 1996, 68), thus also inviting critics to use the three categories as a method of interpreting fiction. Also, all three can be seen as mutually interactive.

Soja’s categories of Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace will provide my analysis of the three novels with its basic structure. To determine the role of Firstspace, the study aims at describing the corpo-realities of the home spaces in interrelation with their inhabitants’ everyday life in them. With respect to Secondspace, it is interesting to see what motives can be detected behind the planning and construction of the houses and interiors described in the texts. With respect to Thirdspace, the space “vitally filled with politics and ideology” (Soja, 1996, 68), the ideologies that dominate the different home spaces and lead to the family disagreements will be identified, but also the various “counterspaces” that function as spaces of resistance and liberation.

From his definition of Thirdspace, Soja sets himself the task of presenting more spatial theories since the 1960s, under the heading of Thirdspace theories, that explore these “dominated” spaces and envision them as innovative spaces of liberation and recognition of difference. Three of these are also of major interest to my thesis.

Firstly, from the group of postcolonial spatial theories, Homi Bhabha’s concept of a non-hegemonic “third space” that leads to translation between cultures, developed in his study, The Location of Culture (1994), proves useful with respect to the examination of the selected novels. A “third space” in Bhabha’s sense is successfully achieved in, at least, one of the home spaces in each of the three selected novels, which might serve as a blueprint for the future.

Secondly, among the various feminist theories, bell hooks’ spatial theory concerned with “the intersections between race, class, and gender” (Scholz, 2010, 29) in different societal spaces, especially the margins, has shown itself to be beneficial to this thesis. Aiming at the liberation of spaces where social exclusion and disadvantages are the rule, she envisages marginality “as site of resistance – as location of radical openness and possibility” (hooks, 1990, 153; qtd. in Soja, 1996, 105) and “attempts to move beyond modernist binary oppositions of race, gender, and class into the multiplicity of other spaces” (Soja, 1996, 96).

As his last theory, although it is chronologically the earliest, Soja presents the French philosopher, Michel Foucault’s, heteropology from “Des espaces autres” (1967)/“Of Other Spaces” (1984), which, when Foucault first presented it in 1967, constituted the triggering moment for a changing attitude towards space in literary, cultural and social studies as well as in the studies of history. Foucault, like Lefebvre, claims that the space around us is not an “empty space”. Not only do we engage with it with the whole range of our internal space, but also, as an external space, it has its significance in a “set of relations” with other spaces. Foucault is interested in his essay in the “other spaces” of a society, which he names heterotopias, “which are something like counter-sites, […] in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (Foucault, 1998, 26). Such heterotopias can be considered as a “mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live” (Foucault, 1998, 28), “‘embedded in a system of spatial effects of power’” and “‘located in a society where all places (spaces) are in a certain relation to power and to each other’” (Best, 2000, 1; qtd. in Özün, 2013, 25). Foucault distinguishes six principles that characterize heterotopias, which will be discussed in detail in Section 2.2.5. In all of the novels, heterotopias can be detected that illuminate and reflect on the home spaces and will be thus examined in detail. In most cases, the homes themselves may be said to be of a heterotopic quality.

Another set of spatial theories, dealing with the theme of the body in and as space, will also be applied to the interpretation of the three novels, namely the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s, theory of the body as a “corps sujet” (cf. Slatmann, 2021), a concept which has been translated into German as “Leib” (PhW, 1962, 89) and into English as “one’s own body” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 148), “lived body” or “embodied subject” (Slatmann, 2021), developed in his main work, Phenomenology of Perception (1945). This work discusses the lived body’s perceptiveness and experience of its surrounding space as well as the body’s sensation of itself (cf. Günzel, 2007, 22). For Merleau-Ponty, space provides the philosophical bracket for his endeavours to connect the corporeality of the body with its ability to perceive its surrounding space and consequently create sense or meaning in it in a productive way (cf. Günzel, 2007, 21).

Simone de Beauvoir takes up Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the “lived body”, in her seminal work The Second Sex (1949). She points out that in the case of women, unlike men, their bodies prove to be the decisive hurdle for their existential self-realization and self-actualization. This does not refer to the body in an anatomical sense, but to women’s lived body, which she sees as inscribed by the patriarchal culture and thus reduced by it to its bodily functions, especially its ability to reproduce, which thus degrades women to sexual objects.

Second Wave Feminism, in her wake, “imagined the human body as […] a politically inscribed entity, its physiology and morphology shaped and marked by histories and practices of containment and control” (Bordo, 1999, 251), a perspective that perceives the body as a “dominated space” (cf. Lefebvre, 1991, 33, 38; Soja, 1996, 68). Then again, Third Wave Feminism places itself beyond the binary of gender and processes Foucault’s “re-conceptualization of modern ‘power’”, which “(as opposed to sovereign power) is non-authoritarian, non-conspiratorial, and indeed non-orchestrated; yet it none the less produces and normalizes bodies to serve prevailing relations of dominance and subordination” (Bordo, 1999, 252). Both perspectives are useful in the interpretation of the spatial practice of the characters in the three novels.

To complete the second chapter, two theories of the home, namely by Gaston Bachelard and bell hooks, are introduced.

While Chapter 2 of this thesis presents the theories of space mentioned above in detail, the second, third and fourth chapters consist of the application of spatial theory to the three novels consecutively. Each chapter presents a short synopsis and structural analysis of the novel in question as well as an overview of the spatial distribution of places within the novel.

Chapter 3 entails a detailed analysis of the spatiality of the contrasting compounds and living areas in Purple Hibiscus (2004) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: the Enugu home, the two Abba homes and the Nsukka home. Also a few additional spaces that illuminate, contrast or reflect on them are discussed.

Details

Pages
302
Publication Year
2025
ISBN (PDF)
9783631925157
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631925164
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631925140
DOI
10.3726/b22485
Language
English
Publication date
2025 (January)
Keywords
postcolonialism geocriticism families in crisis patriarchy the traditional sub-Saharan African family system polygyny The contemporary Nigerian novel in English
Published
Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2025. 302 pp., 1 fig. col.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Bettina Cowin (Author)

Bettina Cowin’s postgraduate studies at the University of Heidelberg have focused on English literature by contemporary Nigerian authors. Having completed her current research in 2024, she is now exploring further applications of spatial theory, combined with ecocriticism, to colonial and postcolonial literature.

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Title: The Family in Crisis: An Analysis of the Home Spaces in a Selection of Contemporary Nigerian Novels in English