By Edoama F. Odueme

Chimdi Maduagwu’s novel, Women Without Hearts (UNILAG Press; Lagos) steps into the loop and offers interesting insights to the complex relationship that exists between men and women in the modern world. The novel presents an intriguing lifestyle of some young women on a journey to success in their chosen careers. The desperate bid to climb the social ladder through despicable means and the exploitation of the weaknesses of powerful men in order to achieve their desired goals is at the heart of this captivating narrative.

The plot

Having decided to let in her daughter on her real but hidden life, Mrs. Racheal Dike, approaches Anita, the protagonist, and tries to get intimate with her only daughter for the first time in her adult life, before taking her through the journey of her eventful life. The transformation of Mrs. Dike from an obscure village girl to a highly placed society lady has many ugly sides.

Rachael Dike’s life has been steeped in dodgy maneuverings and dark secrets, some of which Daisy, Chioma, and Angelina, her partners in immorality, are not even aware of. Rachael Dike must have considered her daughter (a fresh London law graduate) matured enough to handle the sleazy details of her life. Pleased that at last, she has someone she could trust, Mrs. Dike begins to release to Anita the burden she has carried in her heart for many years.

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Flashback

The scene is primary school, and Rachael is brilliant. But her poor parents can no longer pay her school fees. The headmaster and his wife volunteer to help. Rachael finishes with distinction, but cannot go further. The headmaster comes to her aid again by introducing her to the supervisor, Mr. Dike, who appoints her assistant teacher, pending when she would be trained and qualify as a full teacher. Unable to save money, Rachael decides to use her physical endowments to entice the rich and influential men of her society to achieve her aims and solve her pressing family problems.

The Anglican Priest, Reverend Obi, and the Catholic Archbishop, Revered Father Iben are among the victims of Rachael and her wayward friends. Nemesis, however, catches up with them. They damage their reproductive systems in the course of evacuating unwanted pregnancies. Undeterred still, they plot and win the powerful men as husbands, though with catastrophic outcomes.

Daisy kills Funke, the surrogate mother of her child, and the doctor who helped her to procure the child, all in the effort to conceal her inability to bear children for her husband. Although Rachael and Chioma, on their own part, miraculously conceived, they cannot marry the men responsible for their pregnancies. So they devise means of getting conscientious men to be surrogate fathers of their babies.

Chioma blackmails the venerated Revered Father Iben into getting her brother, Nathan, who lives abroad, to marry her. Rachael, after rejecting her friends’ heinous advice to get rid of Mrs. Dike in order to marry the respectable old supervisor, she coerces Dike into arranging for his son, Fabian, to marry her. Thus, Rachael succeeds in transferring her baby’s paternity to Fabian Dike, keeping everyone in the dark as to the identity of the baby’s true biological father. Anita is that baby!

Anita’s  Problems

But Anita has her own problems. Her parents have refused to allow her marry the man of her choice, Chigozie, an accountant, with whom she is obsessed, in preference for Tony, a medical doctor and arrogant son of a former governor. This distresses Anita. As though in a trance, she accepts to wed Tony, but then sicknesses strike and in her confusion, she seeks help from her maternal grandmother, and ended up compounding her misery by linking her adversity to the refusal of her lineage to keep a covenant with the Otamiri River deity.

During her marriage ceremony, however, her true love, Gozie, shows up and the spell appears to be lifted from her. The wedding is concluded, anyway. Anita gets pregnant which results in the loss of her fallopian tubes. But these events culminated in Anita’s self-discovery – the discovery of her inner strength to fight for all the things she ever believed and stood for, and the courage to take her future into her own hands.

Women Without Hearts is a novel that explores the rich African mythos of the Otamiri River deity. It captures the intricacies of the inter-dependent relations between men and women, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of both sexes. It is creatively crafted using mixed point of view – the third and first person point of view. Chimdi Maduagwu is a Professor of English and lectures in the Department of English, University of Lagos.