The Trojan Women Essay

The idea of freedom is something in today’s society that people like to place on a pedestal and praise because without freedom, there is nothing. Freedom is considered intrinsic to life, and in the play The Trojan Women written by Euripides and The Joys of Motherhood written by Buchi Emecheta it shows how without freedom it takes a severe negative effect on people’s lives. In the play The trojan Women it captures how tragedy has stuck the lives of the Trojan women Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache, and Helen. Their city is destroyed, their husbands, brothers, and sons are killed, and nothing from their previous life is left. Now, they face their fates of being captured by the Greeks and being forced into slavery. Before the war, they lived their lives with such freedom because of the fact they were
royalty and had no limits of what they could now.
Now, that freedom has been stripped from their grasps for they are being forced to become concubines or are being sacrificed to the gods. The idea of freedom a major theme covered in the play, for what the Trojan Women discuss most is their fates. They do not wish to be taken by the Greeks and due to the extrinsic factors of losing the war and the heartbreak of learning the fates of their families, the Trojan Women lose hope for their futures. In the end, the freedom the Trojan Women have lost is unable to be regained and they suffer their fates of being enslaved. In the novel The Joys of Motherhood, the storyline follows the life of a woman named Nnu Ego and how she is affected by the way women are seen in Nigeria. In the novel, the idea portrayed believed by most people is that motherhood will release a woman from her unhappiness and will fulfill her every need in life. However, as we follow Nnu Ego’s story it is realized motherhood is anything but joyous. Nnu Ego sacrifices everything she has to raise her children to her best capabilities and by doing so causes her to lose her freedom of being able to take care of herself. The idea held in society
in Nigeria is that if you do everything you can for your children, they will take care of you in your old age. However, this never happened for Nnu Ego and in the end she makes the connection her children are the reason for her unhappiness. Nnu Ego lived in poverty and slaved herself working to provide for her children in order to give them a better life. This was due to the extrinsic factors of how Nigerian society forced women into having children because if a woman did not have a child she was a failure. However, Nnu Ego never received anything in return and died by herself on the side of the road. When she died her children threw the second largest party and funeral for her and even had a shrine dedicated towards her. Finally, after working her entire life, Nnu Ego was able to gain freedom of having to take care of her children by passing away. However, even after death, Nnu Ego was stilled prayed to to bring children to women. “Stories afterwards, however, said that Nnu Ego was a wicked woman even in death because, however many people appealed to her to make women fertile, she never did. Poor Nni Ego, even in death she had no peace,” (224). But she never answered anyone’s prayers because she knew that children would not bring the happiness and freedom promised by motherhood. Mothers would only be held captive by the responsibilities of raising a child and doing everything she can to do best by the child. Overall, the idea freedom and captivity is captured thoroughly throughout The Trojan Women and The Joys of Motherhood. Whether it is having freedom taken away forcefully or by unknowingly giving up freedom, both show the negative impact on the lives of those without freedom.