Birdsong

Sexism in Everyday Life is the secondary theme of the story. It supports the narrative’s main theme, Gender as Pageantry, by demonstrating how gender roles unfairly impede women’s self-realization.

This theme appears during the story’s climax where the narrator’s lover’s driver, Emmanuel, refuses to show the same level of respect to the narrator as he does her lover’s wife (Paragraph 35). In a separate flashback, Chikwado contextualizes the power married women have in Lagos society. After a car accident involving a taxi, the taxi driver—who is clearly at fault—calls the narrator a “stupid girl…a common nuisance” (Paragraph 49). When she recalls the incident to Chikwado, Chikwado states that if the narrator had been “wearing a wedding ring, he would not have shouted at [her] like that” (Paragraph 51).

These two instances paint a clear picture of the gender politics of the city. Married women are honored while unmarried women are made either made invisible (e.g., the waiter refusing to greet the narrator (Paragraph 66)) or disposable (e.g., the narrator’s lover kicking her out of his house when she calls him a “bastard” instead of crying (Paragraph 47)). Sexism influences relationships—preventing a true, durable connection between the narrator and her lover.

Cultural signals such as the need to “settle down” (Paragraph 4) by a certain age create additional barriers to meaningful relationships. Men acquire social capital through their careers and connections, but for women, this form of capital comes only through marriage. To be seen and respected as full-fledged members of their society, they must get married. They must also do so in a hurry, because unlike men, their perceived marriageability declines with each passing year. This pressure then becomes a contest wherein women must prove their worth, even if they have earned it through society’s rules.

When reflecting on the woman staring at her in the secondary narrative, the narrator notes that “there was something in the set of [the woman’s] lips…that suggested an unsatisfying triumph, as though she had won a battle but hated having had to fight in the first place” (Paragraph 18). If the woman is indeed the lover’s wife, then she has won the battle—earned external validation from society—but this does not mean that her victory is permanent. The narrator’s lover, through his affair with her, proves the precariousness of his wife’s status. As her husband, it would seem that he does not have the same concerns: His status derives from his own accomplishments, evidenced in newspaper clippings and text-message accolades (Paragraph 12), not in his connection to a marriage partner.

When the narrator finally leaves him, she leaves because she now understands “the game” he and other men play. Men in the story reinforce gendered power dynamics that place women in servile positions, such as when the narrator’s boss makes her and Chikwado serve cake at the office. Sexism in this environment is an inescapable reality that requires interrogation despite how ordinary—like being stuck in traffic—it may seem.