44 pages • 1 hour read
Flora NwapaEfuru
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1966A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Adizua and Efuru meet at a festival. They fall in love and decide to marry even though Adizua cannot afford the dowry. They plan for Efuru to sneak out of her father’s house on the next market day. Nwashike, Efuru’s father, suspects that his daughter is seeing someone and asks her cousin, who saw Efuru out late at night, to investigate.
On market day, Efuru takes her things to Adizua’s mother’s house, and they pronounce themselves married. Adizua’s mother, Ossai, is happy because Efuru is a good woman, but Efuru’s father is upset when he hears the news. He sends a group of young men from their family to see Efuru and convince her to come home. When they arrive, she greets them warmly and assures them that her husband will pay the dowry. They see that she is happy and has no intention of returning, so they leave. Nwashike sends another group of men to Efuru with the same result.
Efuru undergoes female circumcision, which the women call “having her bath” (Chapter 1, Location 137). It is terribly painful, and Efuru screams so much that the neighbors think something terrible has happened. Ossai’s sister, Ajanupu, arrives and scolds her sister for not telling her about Efuru’s circumcision. Efuru begins her “feasting,” a month-long period in which her only task is to eat and gain weight in preparation for motherhood. Everyone praises her beauty when the period ends, but though she is happy, something weighs on her mind.
Chapter 2 Summary
Adizua works on a farm that is a 10-hour canoe ride away, while Efuru stays in town. He cannot stand the farm work, which is exhausting and requires him to sleep outside and be bitten by thousands of mosquitos. Most workers—men and women—stay at the farm for long periods of time, but Adizua comes home frequently—behavior that displeases the neighbors. Eventually he leaves the farm altogether and begins selling goods in the market with Efuru. She has good business sense, and they make a large profit off the items she decides to sell. They earn enough money for Adizua to pay the dowry, and Nwashike is pleased when Adizua and his family come to perform the wine ceremony and make the marriage official.
Two years into their marriage, Efuru has not conceived. She and her father visit a dibia to learn the cause. The dibia says that Efuru is not barren, but she does not have “many children in her womb” (Chapter 2, Location 407). He emphasizes that this is not her fault or God’s; it just happens sometimes. The news that Efuru can become pregnant excites Adizua, but he tells her that he loves her whether or not she has a child.
Three months later, Efuru becomes pregnant. Her husband and mother-in-law are excited, and Ossai spoils her. Efuru goes into labor one night while Adizua is asleep. Ossai calls Ajanupu to assist the delivery. Ajanupu has eight children (one of whom died as an infant) and delivered most of them without help. She helps Efuru deliver a healthy baby girl. The experience is surreal for Efuru; she feels like it is happening to someone else. She is elated to have had her child and names her Ogonim, which means “that which I am given through mercy.”
She and Adizua visit the dibia to thank him, but when the dibia makes an offering to the ancestors, he learns that some misfortune will befall the child. He asks Efuru and Adizua to return in a week so he can provide more information, but he dies before they can visit again.
Chapter 3 Summary
Adizua is not good at trading, and the family’s finances begin to suffer. They decide to hire a young maid to take care of Ogonim so that Efuru can focus on her business.
Ossai brings Efuru a 10-year-old girl named Ogea. She is the daughter of a farming couple, Nwosu and Nwabata, who lost their farm in a flood. They cannot afford to feed their five children, so they loan Ogea to Efuru in exchange for 10 pounds, which they will use to restart their farm. They plan to pay Efuru back in a year, at which point Ogea will return home.
Ogea takes good care of Ogonim and becomes part of the family. Although Efuru’s friend warned her that maids cannot be trusted, Efuru is happy with Ogea and trusts her to take care of Ogonim and the other household duties.
Ajanupu is skeptical of Ogea; she sees that Ogea does not know proper etiquette or how to cook, and she scolds Efuru for not teaching her. Efuru admits that her trading has been going poorly and that people are not paying their debts. Ajanupu goes to the house of Nwabuzo, a woman who owes money to Efuru, to collect the debt. Nwabuzo gives Ajanupu one pound and a piece of cloth worth four pounds. When Ajanupu returns, a woman is waiting for her. The woman asks Ajanupu to pay her the five shillings Ajanupu owes, but Ajanupu tells her she does not have any money. After the woman persists, Ajanupu gives her the five shillings.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first three chapters establish the main characters and the world of the novel. They also establish the narrative style, which is clear and direct. Nwapa allows her characters to speak without too much narratorial intervention, and the characters’ conversations—in which they discuss their families, customs, opinions, and life events—obviate the need for exposition. This is an effective technique, as Nwapa would have known that the English-speaking audience reading her work would most likely not be familiar with Igbo culture. Nwapa’s presentation of that culture extends to the novel’s structure: Giving the characters lively personalities and voices brings the tradition of oral storytelling into the literary medium.
These chapters form the first narrative arc—that of Efuru’s and Adizua’s marriage. Though they face some difficulties, their experience is positive overall, and they grow into a prosperous family. These chapters set up many of the events that will take place over the course of the novel, introducing major themes such as family, community, and gender roles. The reader learns early that an individual in this society is never alone; all events, celebrations, and hardships are communally shared. The saying that having people (or children) is more important than having money is a key theme that will reappear and be questioned throughout the novel (Chapter 3, Location 635).
The theme of colonialism and the presence of white people produce undercurrents of tension in the narrative. The poverty the people in Efuru’s town experience relates to the trade restrictions placed on locals; for example, police raid people’s homes to confiscate homemade gin and force them to buy British-made gin, which is much more expensive. Nwapa even draws a parallel between local thieves and the police: Both of these groups raid people’s homes and take their belongings, leaving them impoverished, and both are bullies and opportunists. However, Nwapa’s style of storytelling through dialogue mitigates the potential preachiness of such points, letting readers make these connections on their own.
