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“Sit Like a Woman!”: Posture, Position, and Power in Things Fall Apart

ABSTRACT:The essay focuses on the well-known scene in which Okonkwo peremptorily orders his daughter Ezinma to sit in accordance with the culturally mediated dictate for girls and women. It analyzes the significance of sitting as action and as attitude in the novel, showing how it is shaped by gender, social status, and occasion and its use in enhancing character, illuminating cultural values, and demonstrating communal cohesion. It is argued that Ezinma is the novel’s most non-conformist character and thus utterly unamenable to the attempt at entrenching patriarchal control implied in being ordered to sit like a woman. Her continual interrogation of cultural norms simultaneously identifies the shortcomings of traditional society and outlines prospects for progressive growth. She is seen as the pioneer of a line of women in Achebe’s fiction who defy societal efforts to force them into the mold of compliant, tractable women who spend their lives obeying orders.