Abstract:
‘That’s what you always say. But I don’t believe anybody will be so unlike other people that
they will be unhappy when their sons are engaged to marry’ (Achebe, 2009, p. 18). These
words are spoken by Nene, a central character in Chinua Achebe’s short story “Marriage is
a Private Affair,” after the man she has just got engaged to, Nnaemeka, turns down her
request that he writes to his father to inform him of the couple’s decision to marry.
Nnaemeka’s refusal is based on his appreciation of the challenge that the fact that Nene is
of a different ethnicity from him would pose to his father’s ethnocentric worldview. He
decides that it will be wiser to inform his father in person. Directly, Nene’s words capture
the anxiety of a soon-to-be bride. She wants to be accepted by and in the family of her
husband-to-be. In her view, which the narrative also endorses, that is just as it should be.
Therefore, not only does Nene hope that she will be accepted, but she also fears that she will
not be accepted. Beyond this anxiety of a soon-to-be bride Nene’s words also help convey
what I argue to be Achebe’s anxiety about the possibility of realizing a Nigerian nation out
of the diverse peoples that inhabit the state. In “Marriage is a private affair” Achebe pushes
for the building of a Nigerian nation. But he fears that the realization of a Nigerian nation
may not come to pass. His fear arises out of an acknowledgement that there are many ethnic
groups in the state, and is heightened by an acute awareness of how entrenched exclusivist
ethnic sentiment is in the country. Achebe recognizes that the exclusivist ethnic sentiment
leads to the consideration of those outside one’s ethnic group as being “unlike ... people.”
