In Petals of Blood, Kenyan women suffer specifically sexual forms of economic exploitation. Even the novel’s more politically enlightened male characters sometimes fail to see women as people, not just objects of male sexual desire. The novel illustrates the economic exploitation of female sexuality primarily through the character Wanja. When Wanja is an adolescent, her parents violently beat her for walking home with a male classmate whose family is “even poorer” than they are. Her parents’ reaction implies that they see Wanja as a commodity they don’t want to trade cheaply. Perhaps rebelling against her parents, Wanja starts skipping class to meet her father’s adult married friend Kimeria, who impregnates her. When Wanja goes to Kimeria for help, he mocks her. In desperation, knowing she can’t support a baby, Wanja abandons her baby to die and starts working in bars. In bars, Wanja faces sexual harassment from employers and patrons; at one point, a German patron implied to be a sex trafficker targeting Kenyan girls almost rapes her before she manages to escape. After years of relentless sexual violence and exploitation, Wanja starts a brothel, reasoning that as a sex worker, she at least benefits from her own commodification. Yet Wanja gives up sex work after murdering Kimeria—which suggests that becoming a sex worker was a symptom of her earlier sexual trauma and that she is better off obtaining agency some other way.
Even male characters sympathetic to women treat Wanja badly in sexual situations. The political activist Karega sees sexism as a pernicious tool that employers use to prevent male and female employees from uniting in solidarity. Yet at one point, while alone with Wanja, he removes her clothes and penetrates her while she says, “oh please Karega don’t.” Even though she subsequently participates in the sex and pursues a romantic relationship with Karega, his initial disregard for her explicit lack of consent shows he doesn’t consistently respect her as an autonomous individual. Similarly, Wanja’s friend Abdulla admires Wanja’s intelligence and helps her on various occasions. Yet at one point, he goes to her house to have sex with her, which the book describes in the following way: “he took her and she did not resist.” Karega and Abdulla—two of the novel’s more politically enlightened male characters—sometimes treat Wanja as a sexual object to “take” rather than an individual who needs to give consent. Their poor treatment of her shows how deep-rooted the problems of sexual violence and exploitation are, suggesting that even greater economic and racial equality may not solve gender inequality.
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Gender, Sexuality, and Exploitation Quotes in Petals of Blood
He stole a matchbox, collected a bit of grass and dry cowdung and built an imitation of Amina’s house at Kamiritho where he had sinned against the Lord, and burnt it. He watched the flames and he felt truly purified by fire. He went to bed at ease with himself and peaceful in his knowledge of being accepted by the Lord. Shalom. But the cowdung had retained the fire and at night the wind fanned it into flames which would have licked up the whole barn had it not been discovered in time.
‘But boys were always more confident about the future than us girls. They seemed to know what they wanted to become later in life: whereas with us girls the future seemed vague . . . It was as if we knew that no matter what efforts we put into our studies, our road led to the kitchen and to the bedroom.’
The others surrounded the sculpture and commented on the fighter’s hair, the heavy lips and tongue in open laughter, and the sword around the waist. But why did he possess breasts, somebody asked: it was as if it was a man and a woman in one: how could that be?
They were arguing about it until Nyakinyua almost silenced them with her simple logic.
‘A man cannot have a child without a woman. A woman cannot bear a child without a man. And was it not a man and a woman who fought to redeem this country?’
‘I saw in the cities of America white people also begging . . . I saw white women selling their bodies for a few dollars. In America vice is a selling commodity. I worked alongside white and black workers in a Detroit factory. We worked overtime to make a meagre living. I saw a lot of unemployment in Chicago and other cities. I was confused. So I said: let me return to my home, now that the black man has come to power. And suddenly as in a flash of lightning I saw we were serving the same monster-god as they were in America.’
‘We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of inequality and injustice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil […] we are all prostituted. For as long as there’s a man in prison, I am also in prison [. . .]. Why then need a victim hurl insults at another victim?’
‘Even with you, I was hoping, but it did not work out. With him it has been different. I want him. I really want him. For himself. For the first time, I feel wanted . . . a human being . . . no longer humiliated . . . degraded . . . foot-trodden . . . do you understand? It is not given to many: a second chance to be a woman, to be human without this or that “except,” “except” . . . without shame. He has reawakened my smothered woman-ness, my girlhood, and I feel I am about to flower . . .’
‘Must we have this world? Is there only one world? Then we must create another world, a new earth[.]’
