This Second Class Citizen Chapter 13 summary will highlight the following incidents in Buchi Emecheta’s novel. Please note, however, that this presentation may not necessarily follow the same order in which the below incidents in Second Class Citizen are arranged. And, since Second Class Citizen has a total of thirteen chapters, the Chapter 13 summary here will be the last in our series of the chapter by chapter summaries of the novel.
- Adah writes and finishes the manuscript of The Bride Price.
- Bill and Peggy encourage Adah to have her book published.
- Francis burns Adah’s manuscript.
- Adah’s dreams and worldview undergo a transformation.
- She gets a new job at the British Museum.
- Adah moves out and separates from Francis.
- Our heroine discovers she is pregnant for the fifth time.
- The Big Fight incident
- Adah sues Francis at a magistrate’s court
- A chance meeting with an old male friend from the past.
Are you ready? Let’s get on with this Second Class Citizen Chapter 13 Summary then!
Summary of the Last Chapter of Second Class Citizen
Adah now has four children all under five, Dada having arrived in May of that year. The names of Adah’s children are Titi, Vicky, Bubu and Dada.
She decides not to work and tells Francis so. Her argument is that she cannot leave four very young children in the care of a different woman for the sake of work.
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Adah’s New Housewife Routine
Her days are now occupied with the duty of taking care of her children. Here is a list of Adah’s main activities on a typical day.
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- Take Titi to the nursery attached to Carlton School near Queen’s Crescent.
- Shop at the Crescent
- Take the other three babies to the park to spend about one to two hours.
- Return home and give the babies lunch.
- Write The Bride Price, her novel.
Adah is beginning to enjoy her new housewife role. Now, she is also into some seamstress work at home. She knits jumpers and Cardigans for others. And she wishes she will forever remain in the role of being just a mother and wife.
The narrator clarifies that this is a period in England when it is fashionable for married women to just be housewives. But Francis, who is now working (as we saw in Chapter 12), hates the idea of Adah trying to be like an English woman.
Resentment from the feeling that Adah is ‘cheating’ him makes Francis decide to retaliate. He begins to stay away from work on too many occasions.
Let’s now move to one of the most important incidents in Second Class Citizen Chapter 13.
Adah writes The Bride Price
Around this time, Adah has begun writing the novel, The Bride Price. It is an exercise she enjoys a lot.
Writing to her, was like listening to good sentimental music. It mattered little to her whether it was published or not, all that mattered to her was that she had written a book.
BUCHI EMECHETA (Second Class Citizen)
Adah, out of sheer ecstasy, appears to have forgotten about Francis and his conservative views and his possible reaction to all this.
The truth is this. Francis is a product of a culture that has no tolerance for women who dare to assert their independence or pursue their personal dreams.
For this reason, Francis is now in a state of internal struggle, torn between two disturbing thoughts. He battles inside his own mind as to how to respond to Adah’s irritating claims to independence and also deal with his own conservative views regarding a woman’s status in her marital home.
Though Adah cannot help but sympathize with Francis’s torment, she resolves to assert herself and claim her freedom.
Changes in Adah’s Personal Dreams
An important point worth mentioning in this Second Class Citizen Chapter 13 summary is that Adah has undergone some drastic changes during her short stay in England. Following are some points regarding this observation.
- Her childhood passion to train and become a Librarian has gone down considerably. Adah now cares little about whether she becomes a Librarian or simply be a seamstress and a housewife.
- She only cares about being happy because this makes her little children happy too. The children have become used to being scared of their own father.
In her naivety, Adah expects Francis to also undergo some changes. But as later events will prove, this can only remain a pipedream.
Bill and Peggy read Adah’s novel.
When Adah finally finishes her novel, she takes the manuscript to Bill and Peggy, her colleagues at Chalk Farm Library. She wants them to read it first before “her Francis” does so.
Bill is the first to read Adah’s manuscript. Then Peggy reads it as well.
For now, the Bride Price is written in longhand. Bill, therefore, encourages Adah to type it so that he, Bill, can take it to a publisher for her.
Adah informs Francis about the manuscript.
With the positive feedback coming from Bill in particular, Adah now nurses much higher hopes. She imagines herself becoming a writer in the class of William Shakespeare and her own compatriot, Flora Nwapa.
It is in this state of ecstasy that Adah breaks the news to Francis. Francis’s reaction, though predictable, is still too shocking for Adah to digest. Francis reacts coldly and with a good dose of contempt. He would rather watch TV than read Adah’s ‘rubbish’.
You keep forgetting that you are a woman and that you are black. The white man can barely tolerate us, men, to say nothing of brainless females like you who could think of nothing except how to feed her baby.
BUCHI EMECHETA (Second Class Citizen)
This shallow-minded reaction coming from Francis is yet one more eye-opener for Adah. It is crystal clear to her that Francis will never be able to tolerate an intelligent and ambitious woman as a wife.
The Destruction of Adah’s Manuscript
It is Saturday and Adah goes back to the Crescent for her usual weekend shopping. As she approaches their apartment on her return, Adah notices that something strange is going on.
Then she sees Francis burning paper. He will not even respond to Adah’s queries about what it is that he is burning.
But nothing could have prepared her enough for what she is about to find out.
With a sadistic but triumphant smile on his face, Francis keeps his broad back turned to Adah and burns everything.
When Adah, with a sharp pain in her heart, tells him he has just destroyed what Bill calls her ‘brainchild’, Francis foolishly retorts:
‘I don’t care if it is your child or not. I have read it, and my family would never be happy if a wife of mine was permitted to write a book like that.’
So Francis actually read the manuscript of The Bride Price but didn’t like its contents. For that matter, he must destroy it. And, once again, it is the sentiments of his parents that the adult Francis must satisfy first. His wife’s own feelings mean nothing to him.
Adah’s Latest Job at the British Museum
Around this same time, Adah gets a new job as a Library Officer at the British Museum. This job comes with much higher pay than she has ever earned.
In Second Class Citizen Chapter 13, therefore, Adah has landed her third major job since she arrived in England a few years before.
Again, Francis does his thing. He quits his own job hoping that Adah will take care of him with her salary. But he does not have too long to wait to learn that Adah is willing to take care of only herself and her children. His needs are no longer her concern.
The Separation – Adah Moves Out
With Francis’s destruction of the manuscript, Adah knows she has finally had it. She gets a two-room rat and cockroach-infested flat and, together with her four children, she is ready to move out of Francis’s life.
The Fight Before The Big Fight
Francis refuses to allow Adah to take anything out of their flat to her new place. The landlady has to call in the police to prevent Francis from killing Adah.
So, at long last, and for the first time since her arrival in the United Kingdom, Adah has separated from Francis. She hopes to begin to enjoy her new freedom and all the benefits that will come with it. But she also carries with her a broken finger and swollen lips.
She will later go to the Archway Hospital for treatment.
Adah is pregnant for the fifth time.
Adah has been carrying her fifth pregnancy for three months. However, she only gets to know one month after moving out of Francis’s life.
The Big Fight – Francis goes to assault Adah
Francis, who has vowed not to come looking for Adah, now follows Titi and Vicky from school to their new home.
He comes in violently claiming that in their Igbo culture, a wife can never cease being her husband’s possession.
In our country and among our people, there is nothing like divorce or separation. Once a man’s wife, always a man’s wife until you die. There is no escape. You are bound to him.
BUCHI EMECHETA (Second Class Citizen)
Adah reminds Francis that what sets the other Igbo men apart from the likes of him is that those men are responsible husbands and fathers. They take good care of their wives and children. This is why they are able to keep their wives. But Francis has never loved or respected any woman. Not even his own mother.
It is at this point that Francis attacks Adah. He chokes her and threatens her with a knife. Francis also causes a lot of destruction in Adah’s flat. Among the destroyed items is a new radiogram.
Proceedings in the Magistrate’s Court
The events in the magistrate’s court cannot escape our attention in this summary of Second Class Citizen Chapter 13.
The Indian doctor’s wife who has treated Adah after the fight encourages her to take the matter to court. Thus a visibly shaken Adah reports Francis to the magistrate’s court at Clerkenwell.
All she wants the magistrate to do is to restrain Francis from ever coming near her.
She still does not want the court to punish Francis in any way. Adah only wants to have her safety and that of her little children guaranteed.
Interestingly, Adah cannot find her voice in court. She stammers throughout the proceedings. She has also refused to heed the Indian doctor’s wife’s advice to call her as a witness.
Francis is charged with assault but Adah begins to entertain fears for the consequences this might have for Francis.
Thus, Francis has a field day in court. He concocts so many shocking lies and tells them to the judge in such a manner that Adah cannot find words to express her shock.
He leans heavily on his knowledge of the law (Law is one of his subjects of study) to tell lies. So Francis gets away with his crime.
Here comes a portion of what Francis tells the magistrate.
All the bruises and cuts and bumps Adah had to show the court were the result of falls. Yes, he broke her radiogram because he thought it was a chair. He would pay for the repairs. Nobody asked him how he was going to pay since he was jobless.
BUCHI EMECHETA (Second Class Citizen)
Francis disowns Adah and the children.
Another shocking lie coming from Francis is that he and Adah have never been officially married. Then he challenges Adah to produce a marriage certificate to prove him wrong.
The truth is Francis has already burnt all those documents. Adah cannot even find her passport and the children’s birth certificates.
He then disowns his own children. Now speaking in Igbo, Francis tells Adah that as far as he is concerned, she and the children have ceased to exist.
The fact that the court ends up doing very little to help her in the face of Francis’s blatant lies makes Adah hate courts for the rest of her life.
But she is happy to know that Francis has left the children for her. She tells the magistrate not to bother. She will take care of her children. She walks out of the courtroom.
Camden Town – Adah meets an old male friend
At this time, Adah is tired and hungry. But she has no appetite for food. When she gets to a butcher’s shop in Camden Town, she cannot hold her emotions any longer. She cries freely.
A voice calls her by her Igbo name, ‘Nnenna’. She is surprised to hear someone call her by that name. Only her dead Pa used to call her affectionately so. That was when she was a little girl.
The voice belongs to a man. It is deep and gentle at the same time. Then Adah recognizes him. He is an old friend coming from the distant past. That was when she was in the Girls’ High school.
This old friend pays for Adah’s transport fare from Camden Town. To his understanding, Adah is still with Francis.
THE END
We have come to the end of our summary of Second Class Citizen Chapter 13. As you can see, Buchi Emecheta has used the narrative technique known as a cliffhanger to bring her story to a close. Click or tap here to learn more about a cliffhanger and other narrative techniques in Second Class Citizen.
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