Catholicon of Marriages: What if …? by Linda Jummai Mustafa

Abstract

Flora Nwapa was among early African female writers and her first novel, Efuru is on femalesubjugation by men. This novel created a scenario of women being intimidated and subdued bytheir spouses and envisages women’s revolutionary attempt to take their rightful positions intheir families and society as free humans and not slaves to their husbands. Today, women in allfacets of the society record positive growth as their immense contributions and impact arecontributing to the growth and sustainable development of both families and society at large.However, many women still suffer violence in their matrimonial homes which hinders theircontributing meaningfully in their homes and society. Some of these women die in silence. Cansuch violence be attributed to joblessness? Using Linda Jummai Mustafa’s What if …?, thisstudy examines the catholicon of marriages for healthy marriages and homes. It goes further toexamine and analyze the reasons for unhealthy marriages and calls for solutions. Contextualqualitative method is used to appraise the text while trauma theory is used to explore the text. Anappraisal of the text shows that a lot of men marry much younger women and so have negativenotion concerning marriages and women as they seem to marry believing that women are mereobjects or slaves kept in the house for procreation. This shows that most men marry withoutknowing the meaning of marriage. The findings reveal that men contribute more to the failure oftheir marriages than women.