Feminism in Amma Darko’s ‘Faceless’

Feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. Reading Amma Darko’s ‘Faceless,’ we are presented with the malaises in the African society and the problem an African woman faces, of which abuse and negligence are primary focal points. We cannot deny the fact that African culture gives little value to women regardless that they contribute more in building a home. Darko addresses this problem from a rather tragic perspective – perhaps in a message that there is nothing more tragic than treating a woman like she’s not actively important. Living in a society where women are used as pawns and little regard given to, Dina divorces her husband and starts an NGO organization, MUTE, where she addresses society’s troubling issues more critically. Darko presents a situation where only women work in this organization which supports the claim that women can do as well as men in any position. On the other hand, Kabria shares the same independent view as her friend and boss, Dina. She is married with three children, but often, she disagrees with her husband’s point of view. Darko shows that both educated and uneducated African men are not different in issues of marriage. Her husband still holds the view that he is not supposed to do any other work in the house so long as he has a job and provides for the family. Kabria, however, does not agree with this. She too has a job which she combines with house chores, taking care of the children and always running off from work to pick them from school. Meanwhile, her husband, who expects his meal to be ready as soon as he comes back, doesn’t see her as a busy woman. Let’s react to this:

“Adede’s car horn sounded at the gate about an hour after Kabria and the children had all eaten and bathed and were settled behind the television. She managed a smile for him at the door after Abena had opened the gate for him. But inside, she fumed as she reflected upon all that long and easy talk about how if a woman wanted to keep her marriage always fresh and her husband all to herself, she had better make him feel good at home. ‘Welcome him home with a smile,’ they say, ‘look good for him. Wear a mini skirt for him if he loves seeing you in one. Pamper him. Do him this. Do him that. Gosh! Who pampered her when she returned home tired from work, only to go and continue in the kitchen… who met her with a smile? Who wore Levi’s jeans and an open neck polo shirt, which she loved so much on, for?” (57).

The problem we have in this except is that women are taught how to keep their men at all cost, whereas men are not taught the same. Here, Adede represents the majority of African men who see women just as housewives and a man’s tool for sexual satisfaction. These men don’t bother themselves with other things that make a woman happy so long as they have a job that puts food on her table. We can also argue that such men know a lot about the engine of their cars than they know about their wife’s feelings, what they really need, and what makes them tick. Kabria knows what she must do to make her husband happy and keep her family together, but Adede believes every other thing is settled on his path providing he pays the family bills. Most of the efforts that are needed to keep the family together are expected from the women while the men only give orders and when they are bored with events at home, they go out to spend time with friends, but it becomes a problem if the reverse serves the case. On another instance, unlike Kabria, Maa Tsuru is an uneducated character that represents a timid and illiterate African woman who has no knowledge of what she is doing or what she’s supposed to do. Though her plight is nobody’s fault but Darko presents a sad situation of how a woman without standard; a women of total conformity is treated in the society. Maa Tsuru, like most African women, holds the view that her only role as a woman is to have children and so she does not see herself as more valuable in other things. Her ignorance and vulnerability makes her become a sex tool to men. In her time, she has met a lot of men who take advantage of her and walk away. Darko shows a circumstance where things always go wrong for most women as soon as a man comes into their lives. Maa Tsuru has five children without a husband. Her first four children are with a man who comes back severally as her husband and runs away at the birth of each child. The children all fend for themselves on the street and the first two girls, at fifteen and fourteen, are already sexually exposed. In fact, a neighbour who has two children with two separated women takes advantage of this and rapes one of the underage girls. We are introduced to a kind of Sodom-and-Gomorrah Street life where both boys and girls are living in but it is the boys who are in control. The boys are comfortable because they live like kings in the street and use the girls’ plights to their own advantage. This act demonstrates that the society has no pity for defenseless women. The image of feminine gender in Faceless depicts the evil in treating women as second-rates. We are exposed to the situation where the woman tries harder than the man to keep the family together; a society where vulnerable and susceptible women become tools of sport for men, even when they are still underage and need protection. More so, ‘Faceless’ reminds us of a society in which there is no joy for a mother who has no male child.

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