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 16-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Nwashike’s death devastates Efuru, but something else is weighing on her mind. Gilbert was not present at her father’s burial, and no one knows where he has gone. Four weeks later, he still has not returned. Efuru wonders if something happened to him. Nkoyeni is home, and Efuru reasons that he would not leave her because she is expecting.
Amede comes to Efuru and tells her that Nkoyeni is in labor. Efuru arrives, and she and Ajanupu help Nkoyeni deliver a baby boy.
Gilbert returns two months after his son’s birth. He does not look well, and he will not say where he has been. Ajanupu calls Efuru to her house and tells her that she overheard that Gilbert was jailed in Onicha for three months. Ajanupu does not know what he did and hopes that it was not theft.
Efuru is angry because Gilbert hid the reason for his absence from her. She realizes that she has loved him in vain, just as she did with Adizua, without seeing his true nature. Ajanupu asks what Efuru will do, and Efuru replies that she will ask Gilbert for the truth, and if he does not tell her, she will leave him.
She asks Gilbert about it that night. He admits that he was in jail but assures her that he did not steal. He only says that he was foolish and paid for his foolishness (Chapter 16, Location 3918). The response satisfies Efuru where it would not satisfy other women because of her kind, sweet nature. The whole incident confuses people because everyone attests to Gilbert’s jovial, loving nature. No one knows what he could have done to be imprisoned for three months.
Unlike Efuru, Nkoyeni is enraged when she hears the news. Efuru tries to convince her that the story is not true and that Gilbert did not go to jail. Nkoyeni’s unruly behavior prompts Efuru to suggest that Gilbert marry another wife. She tells Ajanupu that Nkoyeni needs a young wife to compete with as an incentive to curb her behavior. Both women agree that Ogea would be a good match. They have already lived together for a long time, and Ogea’s parents, Nwosu and Nwabata, are like family. Gilbert and Ogea are happy with the arrangement.
Suddenly, Efuru becomes ill. A dibia tells her that she has angered Uhamiri by not properly worshipping her. He prescribes a sacrifice for the family members to carry out. They perform the sacrifice, but Efuru does not recover.
Omirima appears and tells Amede that Efuru is ill because she committed adultery. Unless she confesses, she will die. The claim is baseless but because no other cause for Efuru’s illness can be found, the town begins to believe it. Gilbert is skeptical at first but succumbs to public opinion. He tells Efuru that he will not throw her out but says she must confess in order to save her life. Efuru is too ill and dumbfounded to reply.
Ajanupu arrives, and Gilbert apprises her of the situation. Ajanupu rails against the accusation, asking Gilbert who he thinks he is that he should believe that Efuru committed adultery. Gilbert slaps Ajanupu and knocks her down, but she gets up and breaks a mortar and pestle over Gilbert’s head, causing blood to pour down his face.
Chapter 17 Summary
Dr. Uzaru visits Efuru, and Efuru tells him that she has left Gilbert’s house. She tells the doctor the story about Gilbert missing her father’s funeral and returning four months later after having been in jail. She says that she and members of her age group went to the shrine of a local goddess; if Efuru had truly committed adultery, the goddess would have killed her.
After seven weeks (seven Nkwo), she was exonerated. She took her things and moved back into her father’s house. The doctor tells her that she should go back to her husband, but Efuru refuses. He asks about Adizua, and Efuru says that he never returned. He is dead to her.
Dr. Uzaru tells Efuru that he has left his wife and two children “in the country of the white people” with an elderly woman who takes care of them (Chapter 16, Location 4109). Once more, the doctor tells Efuru to return to Gilbert, but Efuru tells him that it is not possible.
That night, Efuru dreams of Uhamiri, the goddess of the lake. She is wealthy, beautiful, and happy. What puzzles Efuru is that Uhamiri does not have children. She does not understand why women worship her.
Chapters 16-17 Analysis
These chapters comprise the novel’s climax and denouement. The climax comes in Chapter 16, when Efuru falls ill and is accused of adultery. The claim is absurd because everyone knows Efuru is a devoted wife, but the mysteriousness of her illness leads the townspeople to assume a moral cause rather than a medical one.
Notably, no one calls a doctor to treat Efuru, even though she has sent two people—Nwosu and Nnona—to have successful operations. Both patients were skeptical at first, but both returned praising the white doctors who cured them. The townspeople do send for several dibias, which produces no results. Efuru is skeptical of dibias, believing most of them to be quacks, but for reasons that the text does not specify, she does not request a doctor for herself. Dr. Uzaru lives abroad and only returns periodically, and the events of Chapter 17 indicate that he was not present while Efuru was ill.
The climactic moment comes when Gilbert himself asks Efuru to confess. In that moment, Efuru realizes that he is just like Adizua and thinks more about himself than he does about her. She recognizes that she has deceived herself, which suggests that deep down, Efuru had doubts about both men, or perhaps about marriage in general, but persisted because of her feelings for them.
After she leaves Gilbert, she finds herself where she began: in her father’s house (though without her father). The narrator does not reveal exactly how Efuru feels about her situation, even though she is resolute in her decision not to return. Dr. Uzaru mentions that other men will approach Efuru for marriage because she is still young. Efuru does not respond to this, and the reader is left to wonder if, given the chance, Efuru will choose to marry again.
Her dream at the novel’s end suggests a remaining tension. On the one hand, she sleeps soundly. This implies that her conversation with Dr. Uzaru did not change her mind about having left Gilbert; she seems at peace with her decision and is not worried about what will come next. However, the question of Uhamiri’s relationship to womanhood remains—and, by extension, what Efuru’s association with Uhamiri means about her own identity as a woman.
