When Big Daddy, the husband of Adunni’s wealthy boss, Big Madam, is cruel to his wife, Adunni observes “how [their] money is not helping them escape from problems.” But although wealth doesn’t necessarily guarantee an effortless life, the novel shows that it can give a person more options to solve their problems. In contrast, poverty limits a person’s choices and opportunities for self-improvement. Like Big Madam, Adunni also finds herself in an abusive (and in her case, arranged) marriage—but her options for dealing with it are comparatively limited. While Big Madam is financially secure enough to kick Big Daddy out at the end of the novel, Adunni only has two options: stay in an abusive situation or leave and risk cutting off the financial security that the marriage arrangement provides her father and siblings. The Girl with the Louding Voice repeatedly presents this inequality of choice, with wealthy characters having many opportunities to better themselves and impoverished characters often having to choose between bad and worse options. By contrasting the problem-solving methods available to characters from different classes, the novel suggests that while wealth doesn’t eradicate all of life’s problems, it can offer better ways to solve them.
Economically disadvantaged characters like Adunni are limited in their ability to control their lives and improve their circumstances. At the beginning of the novel, Papa informs Adunni that he has arranged for her to marry Morufu, a much older man, in exchange for food and rent money. Adunni is appalled—she is only 14 years old, and marrying Morufu will put an end to her dream of returning to school and becoming a teacher. But Papa sees the marriage as necessary to support the family, so Adunni doesn’t have because the option of choosing a different life path. Adunni pleads with Papa to call off the marriage, citing how it will complicate her future—but Papa holds firmly to his decision, stating, “we cannot be eating promise as food. Promise is not paying our rent.” Essentially, because the family is so poor, Papa is more concerned about their immediate future (their ability to eat and pay rent) than about Adunni’s long-term goals. So, while it might be true that Adunni could eventually support her family by going to school and getting a good job, this isn’t an option for her when the family has urgent financial problems to solve.
Even when Adunni gets lucky and encounters favorable circumstances that might improve her quality of life, her limited ability to make her own decisions prevents her from fully enjoying these opportunities. After Khadija (another one of Morufu’s wives) dies in childbirth, Adunni runs away to avoid being blamed for the death. She then has an opportunity to escape to Lagos when Iya (a friend of Mama’s) arranges for her brother, Kola, to find Adunni work as a maid in a rich woman’s house. Despite the fact that Adunni has always wanted to see Lagos, she feels sad about this opportunity: “this is what I been wanting all my life, to leave this place and see what the world outside is looking like, but not like this. Not with a bad name following me.” Adunni can’t enjoy the good things that happen to her because these events are not a matter of choice, but of desperation. She is going to Lagos to escape from an immediate threat (being severely punished for Khadija’s death), not to chase new opportunities in the city.
In contrast, characters with greater financial means have more opportunities and more freedom to make decisions. Like many other female characters in the novel, Ms. Tia finds herself under immense pressure to have a baby and become a mother; she reveals to Adunni that doctor mama, Ms. Tia’s mother-in-law, regularly stops by Ms. Tia and Ken’s house to inquire about grandchildren. But Ms. Tia’s class status and access to education give her the freedom to choose whether to have children, and to marry a man she loves—and whose opinions on childrearing are aligned with her own. Although people will stereotype Ms. Tia as nothing but “an empty barrel” if she remains childless, she still has more choice in the matter than a character like Khadija, who is forced to have children if she doesn’t want to face domestic abuse, social ostracization, and poverty.
Similarly, Big Madam’s wealth allows her to deal with her abusive marriage more effectively than characters like Khadija, whose poverty forces her to stay married to Morufu. Big Madam is a businessowner and her household’s breadwinner, meaning that she has more financial independence than most of the other female characters in the book. So, although Big Madam puts up with her husband’s infidelity and disrespect for years, she ultimately kicks him out of the house after walking in on his attempted rape of Adunni and finding out about his affair with Caroline Bankole, Big Madam’s best friend. Big Madam’s wealth doesn’t spare her from experiencing the trauma of an unequal, abusive marriage. It does, however, allow her to end her marriage on her own terms, without the anxiety of wondering what will become of her if she no longer has her husband’s financial support. In an unjust world, nobody can eradicate suffering completely, but the novel shows that wealth certainly makes it easier to manage and overcome one’s hardships.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Wealth, Poverty, and Choice ThemeTracker
Wealth, Poverty, and Choice Quotes in The Girl with the Louding Voice
“Adunni, you know how this is a good thing for your family. Think about how you been suffering since your mama[…]. I know it is not what you want. I know you like school, but think it well, Adunni. Think of how your family will be better because of it. Even if I beg your papa, you know he will not answer me. I swear, if I can find a man like Morufu to marry me, I will be too happy!”
“In this village, if you go to school, no one will be forcing you to marry any man. But if you didn’t go to school, they will marry you to any man once you are reaching fifteen years old. Your schooling is your voice, child. It will be speaking for you even if you didn’t open your mouth to talk. It will be speaking till the day God is calling you come.”
That day, I tell myself that even if I am not getting anything in this life, I will go to school. I will finish my primary and secondary and university schooling and become teacher because I don’t just want to be having any kind voice…I want a louding voice.
“There is no money for food, talk less of thirty thousan’ for community rent. What will becoming teacher do for you? Nothing. Only stubborn head it will give you.”
“When you begin to born your children, you will not be too sad again,” she say. “When I first marry Morufu, I didn’t want to born children. I was too afraid of having a baby so quick, afraid of falling sick from the load of it. So I take something, a medicine, to stop the pregnant from coming. But after two months, I say to myself, ‘Khadija, if you don’t born a baby, Morufu will send you back to your father’s house.’ So I stop the medicine and soon I born my first girl, Alafia. When I hold her in my hands for the first time, my heart was full of so much love. Now, my children make me laugh when I am not even thinking to laugh. Children are joy, Adunni. Real joy.”
She open her eyes, give me a sad smile. “I wish I am a man, but I am not, so I do the next thing I can do. I marry a man.”
I am leaving Ikati. This is what I been wanting all my life, to leave this place and see what the world outside is looking like, but not like this. Not with a bad name following me. Not like a person that the whole village is looking for because they think she have kill a woman. Not with one half of my heart with Kayus and the other half with Khadija. I hang my head down, feeling a thick, heavy cloth as it is covering me. The thick cloth of shame, of sorrow, of heart pain.
When she come out, she draw deep breath and her chest, wide like blackboard, is climbing up and down, up and down. It is as if this woman is using her nostrils to be collecting all the heating from the outside and making us to be catching cold. I am standing beside Mr. Kola, and his body is shaking like my own. Even the trees in the compound, the yellow, pink, blue flowers in the long flowerpot, all of them too are shaking.
I am not understanding why Kofi is always saying Nigerians are spending this and that when him too, he is using the Nigerians money to be building his house in his Ghana country. I see when the visitors of Big Madam give him money, how he will squeeze it tight and slide it inside his pocket with a big smile and a big thank you. Why didn’t he refuse the money if it is thief money? He too is among the problem wrong with Nigeria.
Honest, honest, I never hear of a adult woman not wanting childrens in my life. In my village, all the adult womens are having childrens, and if the baby is not coming, maybe because of a sickness, then their husband will marry another woman on top of them and the adult woman will be caring for another woman’s baby so that she don’t feel any shame.
How is Morufu and Big Daddy different from each other? One can speak good English, and the other doesn’t speak good English, but both of them have the same terrible sickness of the mind.
“God has given you all you need to be great, and it sits right there inside of you. […] Right inside your mind, in your heart. You believe, I know you do. You just need to hold on to that belief and never let go. When you get up every day, I want you to remind yourself that tomorrow will be better than today. That you are a person of value. That you are important. You must believe this, regardless of what happens with the scholarship. Okay?
Fifteen years ago, I was selling cheap materials from my boot, going from place to place, looking for customers. I wasn’t born into wealth. I have worked hard for my success. I fought for it. It wasn’t easy, especially because my husband, Chief, he didn’t have a job. If you want to be like me in business, Adunni, you will need to work very hard. Rise about whatever life throws at you. And never, ever give up on your dreams. Do you understand?”
“Why don’t you wait till we get to church so you can take the microphone and announce to the congregation that you gave your husband, the head of the family, the man in charge of your home, two hundred thousand naira for retreat, and that he spent the money? Useless woman.”
I step inside, see about five girls sitting on the floor, their head down. They all look the same age of me: fourteen, fifteen. All are wearing dirty dress of ankara or plain material with shoes like wet toilet paper, tearing everywhere. Hair is rough, or low-cut to the scalp. They smell of stinking sweat, of a body that needs serious washing, and they all look sad, lost, afraid. Like me. […] One of the girls look up then, hook her eyes on me. There is no kindness in her eyes. Nothing. Only fear. Cold fear. She say nothing, but with her eyes, she seem to be saying: You are me. I am you. Our madams are different, but they are the same.
