Identity and Commitment

Abstract

In the conceptual system of the Colonial Service, as documented earlier, wives were considered to be instrumental: they were credited with the improvement of the health and well-being of male officers. Wives perceived no devaluation in this utilitarian, subsidiary ascription; rather, it gave them worth. Noel Rowling, for example, repeats the accepted view that the high death rate of officers in the early days decreased when wives were allowed to come to Nigeria. The reasons were simple:

Men, after a hard day’s work in the heat of a tropical day, can’t as a rule, bother to inspect the kitchen or make sure that the water is properly filtered. And when a young man is posted to a lonely out-station with no compatriot near, he needs the companionship of a wife.

My daughter recently asked me if I had been content to lead the life of a bird shut up in a gilded cage. It was never like that… When I left university, I wanted a job because I wanted to be independent and to have a life of my own. But I was never a career woman. I taught in a school because there seemed to be no other jobs open to me. But when I married, marriage was my job. The ‘gilded cage’ was never gilded. A mud house, no proper sanitation, a vile climate and tropical heat were not much fun.

(Noël Rowling, 1982, p. 12)