Adichie’s take on Abortion Rights pre-Roe v. Wade Overturn
I had to change a few rules to review The Visit by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie according to the Bechdel-Wallace and various tests. In many fictional pieces that attempt to prove a feminist perspective, the narrators tend to paint extremes to portray oppression. Perhaps they do this knowing the privileged of society may not understand the subtleties of sexism or the microaggressions of racism.
Adichie does not resort to painting an extreme picture of humanity but rather skillfully exchanges the genders and their corresponding roles. Instead of 63% of CEOs are men, in Adichie’s world, almost all CEOs are women. Instead of the regulation of women’s bodies by the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court regulates men’s bodies via the Male Masturbatory Act. Instead of women staying home and/or sacrificing careers for a family, men stay home and sacrifice their careers.
Adichie turned the world on its head, reflecting how women are raised and how they feel daily. It was a tricky initial read. My mind kept shifting the pronouns and genders back to what I’ve seen since childhood: No, not that. The woman says that not the man. The woman asks if the food is good and how everyone is doing while the man sits behind the newspaper, ignoring everything around him.
I had to pause, re-read, digest, and then pause multiple times. Why? Regardless of the author’s gender, the book’s genre, and the author’s political views, the woman/wife/mother is painted into cooking, she is washed down into child-rearing, and her husband’s silence quiets her. Adichie portrayed all of these ways women make themselves smaller but through a man’s eyes. Perhaps, now, they will understand.
Before analyzing The Visit on the Bechdel-Wallace Test and the other tests, I want to review the writing from Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists compared to Adichie’s The Visit. Keep in mind the main difference between the two works is perspective. The Visit is a fictional tale about a house-husband, Obinna, who is visited by his childhood friend, Eze, during a politically charged time when the United States Supreme Court reviewed the Male Masturbatory Act. The Male Masturbatory Act dictates that men cannot masturbate because it is a waste of potential life. Whereas We Should All Be Feminists is a nonfiction book based on Adichie’s TedTalk.
| The Visit | We Should All be Feminists |
| Eze’s father normally spoke like Eze, in bursts of words, full of proclamations, but whenever Eze’s mother was home, his exuberance was quelled. He became almost meek…(page 3) | They have been raised to believe that their being likable is very important and that this likable trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. (Page 24) |
| “You have to learn to talk about emotions, Eze!” His father would blurt out suddenly. “Not machines and politics and gadgets all the time. Otherwise you won’t find a good wife. You think women care about all that?” (Page 5) | Because I am female, I’m expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. (Page 28) |
| “Do you know my father used to be a theater actor when he was in university in Ibadan? Then he married my mother, and she told him he had to quit acting because married men who were actors considered promiscuous.” (Page 5) | When women say ‘I did it for peace in my marriage,’ it is usually because they have given up a job, a career goal, a dream. (Page 31) |
| “Progress is good, we all want progress, but a man should not be in charge of such a sensitive post, it’s too important,” she said. (Page 8) | If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, even if unconsciously, that the class monitor has to be a boy. If we keep seeing only men as the as heads of corporations, it starts to seem ‘natural’ that only men should be heads of corporations. (Page 13) |
| Obinna often read, in men’s magazines that men knew about other men in their wives’ live but chose not to know, as if knowing and not knowing were in fact real choices. (Page 9) | All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. (Page 24) |
| It was the thought of what they used to be and what they still could be that made Obinna afraid when he looked at her, made him so paranoid about those young boys with their chiseled arms and bellies flat as hardcover books. (Page 10) | We raise girls to see each other as competitors— not for jobs or accomplishments, which in my opinion can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. (Page 32) |
| “She was less so, because she had a major promotion exam that year that she couldn’t take because she had to go on maternity leave. She was bitter. She told me not to apply to the poetry workshops. Your poems are okay, they’ll never be great.” (Page 14) | We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. (Page 27) |
| “I can’t just go to a club as a married man without my wife. It won’t look good.” Page 15 | In Lagos, I cannot go alone into many reputable clubs and bars. They just don’t let you in if you are a woman alone. You must be accompanied by a man. (Page 19) |
| The juices from the fruit ran sticking between his fingers, and he licked at them. “Don’t be so uncivilized, Obinna!” It was Eze’s father… “Don’t lick your fingers like a bush boy. How will you find a wife with this kind of behavior?” (Page 5) | We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. Page 24 |
The Visit was published in 2021, and Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. Justice Alito wrote the majority stating: “respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development,” which rings similar to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Male Masturbatory Act (not overturned) in The Visit.
“I applaud the court for this just and moral decision. We must never lose sight of what this is about— a waste of a potential child.”
Page 3, The Visit
In Adichie’s writing, she exposes the sexism within the United States and Nigerian cultures by drawing a comparison between women’s rights to abortion and men’s rights to masturbation. In addition, she points out more harmful effects of sexism, like drug effectiveness solely tested on men.
Initially, scientists avoided testing on women, believing women’s hormones would skew the data. This has been proven untrue and has led to women experiencing severe side effects due to an overdose of medication. In The Visit, genders are reversed. Instead of men being used as the “standard” for drug testing, women are, leading to an under-medication of men. Eze points out this injustice by saying:
“There’s no real treatment for prostate issues. Modern medicine has simply ignored the health problems that affect only men. Did you know that all the major medical research uses women’s bodies as the standards? So the dosage of most medicines we take are based on women’s bodies, which are, of course, smaller than men’s bodies, so that we might be under treating ourselves.”
Page 12, The Visit
Concerning the Bechdel-Wallace test, I measured how often the characters spoke of a woman since the genders are reversed. All other tests are calculated according to the original criteria.
| Number of… | Amount |
| Conversations w. A man | 9 |
| Conversations w. A woman | 5 |
| Conversations w. A man about a woman | 7 |
| Conversations about Obinna’s kids | 3 |
| Comments about Obinna’s appearance | 2 |
All men characters are named and there are discusses between them regarding something more than a woman. Thus, The Visit passes a modified version of the Bechdel-Wallace Test. The POC Bechdel test and the DuVernay Test are both passed because the characters are Igbo, Nigerian based on an excerpt, and the two characters speak of politics, not in reference to white individuals. A revised version of the Mako Mori Test is passed in that Eze has ambitions outside of a relationship; whereas, Obinna, Eze’s foil, has stopped investing in career goals outside of his family. The Raleigh Becket test is not passed by Amara (Obinna’s wife) because she is in a relationship with Obinna; however, she does have her own narrative arc. Both the Vito Russo and the Ritz tests fail because there are no LGBTQ+ or Muslim characters in the story. The Sexy Lamp Test is passed because neither Obinna, nor Eze, can be replaced with a sexy lamp.
| Test | Pass | Fail |
| Bechdel-Wallace | X | |
| POC Bechdel Test | X | |
| Native Bechdel Test | X | |
| DuVernay Test | X | |
| Mako Mori Test | X | |
| Raleigh Becket Test | X | |
| Vito Russo Test | X | |
| Sexy Lamp Test | X |
Take Home Stats and Sources:
The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.
Page 34, We Should All Be Feminists