While this novel is a work of fiction, it provides excellent insight into how the status of women in a particular culture is manifested through many different outlets. For example, a widow (such as Ibo Aku-nna’s mother, Ma Blackie) is responsible for mourning the loss of her husband alone in rather brutal conditions. Polygamy is also normalized in this novel, such that it is not an outlandish threat when Okoboshi states that he will have Aku-nna act as a servant to his subsequent wives.  The concept of the bride price and the customs surrounding it that are expressed in this piece are also a useful lens into this culture’s specific brand of misogyny. The marriage of a girl is seen as a sale, with the groom’s family buying the girl from her family. The bride price is not given to the girl; it is given to her father. Thus, the girl is treated as a piece of property to be handed off from one owner to the next. If the bride price is paid and the girl’s father approves, she has no say in her own marriage, even if she detests her groom. Even the superstitions (and what actually plays out in this novel)  simultaneously disempower women while putting the burden of responsibility solely onto them. This is illustrated in the fact that if a girl’s bride price, which is the responsibility of the groom and his family, is not paid, she is the one who dies. Thus, the girl—while de-valued and even prohibited from not consenting to her own marriage—pays the consequences of the misogynistic framework in which she lives. The bride price may also be taken to represent honor, in which case the lack of honor (i.e. the lack of the bride price being paid) is such an awful idea that girls are believed to pay for it with their lives. 

The scene where the girls wear their hair short to prevent poor youth from cutting away locks of their hair (and therefore making them their wives without having to pay a bride price) is worthy of particular analysis because it beautifully portrays the wider, even global culture of misogyny. The girls cut their hair short to protect themselves, and those with long hair have to protect themselves with a headscarf. Rather than informing the youth that it is not acceptable to find wives in this manner, it is the girls and women who must protect themselves in a society where their value as autonomous human beings is almost non-existent. This is reminiscent of rape culture, which the West often sanctions. In modern-day rape culture, women are instructed to wear “decent” clothing and not drink alcohol so as to prevent their own rapes, rather than educating men that rape is not an acceptable thing to do. Misogyny, even when portrayed in cultures that are oceans apart, is always misogyny. 

A great strength of this novel is how the author motivates the reader to feel that the bride price and other systematic instances of misogyny are unacceptable without directly saying as much. Instead, by causing the reader to sympathize with Aku-nna, the victim of this infrastructure, the author gently guides the reader into siding against such injustice.