Aidoo's Changes 3
Discussion Question on Aidoo's Changes (Ch. 13-18, pp. 101-136)
1. How do Ali’s elders in Nima respond to Ali’s decision to have a second wife? Why do Ali's elders send their wives to talk to Fusena? How do Ali’s female relatives feel about Fusena's situation? Why does Fusena say "yes, ... yes" (107) to their suggestion? What do you make of her response? Did Fusena have any choice here? Despite that some Ghanaian women have received an education, the older women are shocked to realize "how little had changed for their daughters -- school and all!" (107). What has not changed for women (including educated women) in modern Ghanaian society?
2. Why does Esi's grandmother tell Esi, "My lady Silk, remember a man always gained in stature through any way he chose to associate with a woman. And that included adultery. Esi, a woman has always diminished in her association with a man. A good woman was she who quickened the pace of her own destruction" (109-110). What does Esi’s grandmother think of Esi’s decision? Why does Esi's grandmother tell Esi about many young women in her days who felt her wedding day was more like "a funeral of the self" (110)? What is Esi’s grandmother trying to say here? What does marriage mean to women in Ghanaian society? Does marriage as an institution oppress women in Ghanaian society?
3. After encountering initial disapproval from her grandmother and mother about her decision to become Ali's second wife, Esi questions the education she received in "strange and foreign lands" (114), and she feels that she is in "the dangerous confusion" (114). To what extent has Esi's modern western-education affected her view of love and marriage? Why did Ali not follow the traditional procedure for polygamy with Esi? Were Esi and Ali influenced by the "white man's customs" (115) in their decision to marry and their romantic relationships? Why does Ali's father Musa Musa in Bamako think Ali's marriage to Esi is "unforgivable" (133)?
Discussion Questions for Aidoo's Changes (1991, Ch 19- End pp. 137-166)
4. After a year of her marriage to Ali, Esi began to wonder about "the kind of marriage she was involved in" (139) and had "the delay in her awakening" (139). What is her delayed awakening about? Why does Esi explode towards the end of their third year of marriage telling Ali that "I can't go on like this. . . This is no marriage" (158)? Why is she dissatisfied with Ali? Why is Ali puzzled by her statement?
5. When Kubi sees Esi crying, he holds her close and makes a sexual advance to Esi. Then, Esi thinks of Opokuya and remembers her grandmother's advice ("[R]emember that a man always gains in stature any way he chooses to associate with a woman - including adultery. . . But, in her association with a man, a woman is always in danger of being diminished" 164). What does she realize at this moment? Why do you think Aidoo created a scene of Kubi's sexual attempt on Esi? What do you make of Aidoo's choice of Kubi's occupation as a surveyor and his house, which used to be an old colonial surveyor's bungalow (see pages 16-17 &page 110)? Does Kubi take advantage of Esi's vulnerable situation? How would you characterize Kubi?
6. Despite Es's relationship with Ali "stopped being a marriage" (164), she decides to stay in the marriage, while "radically changed" (165). What do you make of her radical change in their marriage arrangement? (Please note that Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart beat his third wife during the Week of Peace when he found out that she was not home and did not prepare dinner for him.) Does Esi make a choice for herself in her unhappy marriage, or does she find herself trapped? Does Esi manage to navigate her life path within her unhappy polygamous marriage, or is she stuck in her polygamous marriage with Ali? Does Esi become a victim of Ali's patriarchal domination of her body? Tuzyline Allan in "Afterword" writes that Aidoo's novel Changes is "as much about stasis as it is about change" (Allan 179). What do you make of Allan's analysis of the novel? Why does Esi (Opokuya or Fusena) find her marriage unfulfilling? What prevents Fusena (Esi or Opokuya) from achieving her autonomy as an educated professional woman in modern Ghanaian society? (i.e. Was Fusena voiceless before her marriage to Ali?)