The House of Falling Women

Rosemary Ekosso

Description

House of Falling Women is the story of a young woman with quixotic ideas about improving the lot of women who finds out that the crusader's cloak is an uncomfortable one. Martha Elive, armed with a university education and a substantial legacy from a Dutchwoman she meets while studying abroad on a scholarship, decides to create an institute for the empowerment of women, only to find that the contradictions to be resolved are more firmly anchored in her psyche than elsewhere. In addition to her unexorcised ghosts and the legacies of a chequered love life, she has to contend with recalcitrant public opinion and moral inertia, the opposition of old-guard reactionaries, and the incomprehension of her small-town parents. House of Falling Women is a poignant, often hilarious story of the search by a group of women for a new place in society in a world where women are dissatisfied with the old values and bewildered by the new.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956717248
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 15 Mo

Extrait

House of Falling Women

Rosemary E.

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Th e H ou se o f F a l l i n g Women

Rosemary Ekosso

LangaaResearch & Publishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG (LangaaResearch & Publishing Common Initiative Group) P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Province Cameroon [e-mail] http://www.africanbookscollective.com/publishers/langaa-rpcig

ISBN:9956-558-25-7

Rosemary Ekosso 2008 First Published 2008

DISCLAIMER All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Langaa RPCIG.

Dedication

To my father, Lucas K. Ekosso, who did not reap where he sowed

Acknowledgement

I have two people to thank (or to blame) for this work. The first person is S. Dibussi Tande, who, since the early 1990s, has always encouraged me to write and has always been instrumental in finding outlets for my work. The other person is my husband, David A. Woodward, whose moral and other support, in this and other aspects of my life, I now find indispensable.

Author’s Note

I have taken some liberties in writing this book. To my knowledge, there is no Centre for Soil Sciences in The Hague. The nearest location where soil science is studied is Wageningen University. Legal practitioners in Cameroon will probably cringe when they see what I have done with the rules of procedure in the Cameroon legal system, at least in the English speaking part of the country.

Prologue The Weekly Correspondent 16 May 2007 Women’s House in Trouble – Again The impressive green and gold unemployed and unemployable, not wrought- iron gates of the Women’s to say totally unmarriageable. House (WH) were sealed at 11 The boastful, smug and self- o’clock yesterday morning in the congratulatory attitude of these latest episode of the drawn-out drama former inmates of the WI has that has pitted that establishment spawned domestic upheaval on a against the Douala city council scale never before experienced in our authorities, our Littoral correspondent society. reported. Lest this be construed as an attack  Created in 1998 by the self-styled bordering on misogyny, we hasten to philanthropist, Martha Elive, assure our readers that this ostensibly to improve the lot of those publication has nothing against she called “poor, downtrodden decent, God-fearing women who women”, the WI rapidly became a recognize their proper role in the haven for runaway wives and lazy, scheme of things. However, when a headstrong girls determined to get on group of frustrated man-haters decide in the world with minimum effort on to go against the grain, nay, rip apart their part and maximum cost on the carefully woven fabric of a others’. Pseudo-intellectuals and society which, though not perfect, women of easy virtue regularly certainly has its organized merits, swarmed around its founder to then responsible citizens must be indulge in futile discussions about the alarmed. need for societal change. It would be disastrous for our  The promised “empowerment society were we to allow the centre”, as some of the Centre’s iconoclastic Centre to open its doors unsurprisingly female minders glibly again. Destructive, self-serving describe it, has become a badly-run initiatives, which seek to unravel a seventies-style commune full of foul- status quo developed and mouthed, sluttish women, biting and painstakingly established over kicking and scratching, each centuries, should be squashed without scrabbling for a foothold on the slope compromise. It is not by accident that of a society they are paradoxically women have always played a doing their feminine and inadequate subordinate role in this world. If God best to destroy. The schools and had wanted woman to fulfil a workshop which were to produce the different role, she would have been firm-minded, focused craftswomen created before man. Initiatives such and hardworking professionals have as these should be nipped in the bud. instead spawned half-baked, This newspaper holds the opinion inefficient trainees with vague but that the mere (though thorny) sapling nonetheless violent ideas about the WH has become is not yet too attaining what they consider to be sturdy for the righteous axe of their rightful station in life, concerned, right-thinking citizenry.

Part One

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