Bereavement is a social fact in any culture but reactions and practices relating to this vary from culture to culture. The Igbo people live in the South Eastern part of Nigeria, covering five states while the Yoruba live in the South Western part of Nigeria covering six states in Nigeria. This article explores the differences and similarities in the issues relating to the death of a woman’s husband among these culturally different people in Nigeria. Among the issues explored are the reporting of the death, the rites and sacrifices involved, the care of the properties left behind including the children and the wife (or wives). The inheritance of the widow(s) and the rites and conditions surrounding these across these two cultural communities are also exhaustively explored.
The loss of a loved one is a source of intense emotional stress, yet the bereaved need to express and deal with their feelings of loss before they can reorganize their lives. Normal grief often follows a fairly predictable pattern. First, a few weeks after the death, survivors react with shock and disbelief. Second, as the fact of the loss sink in, this initial numbness give way to overwhelming sadness. Some people cry almost constantly, many suffer physical symptoms like insomnia, shortness of breath and loss of appetite. Some fear that they will have an emotional brake-down, some drink too much or sedate themselves with tranquilizers. Third, beginning about 3 weeks after the death, continuing for about 1 year, survivors often relive the death in their minds in an obsessive searching for its meaning. They may hallucinate the presence of the death person – seeing the face and hearing the voice. Fourth, at the start of the 2nd year after the death, the survivors become more active socially, getting out more, seeing people, resuming their interest. At this point, survivors feels stronger, knowing that they have come through and ordeal. However, there are other cases in which the survivors find it very difficult to cope and adjust to their new status in life.
Reactions to the death of a man as husband or a woman as wife is culturally determined. Each culture determines the rationality of practices relating to widowhood and mourning rites. The Yoruba and Igbo in Nigeria have differing practices relating to widowhood and widow inheritance.
Statement of Problem
Although widow constitute a large proportion of the adult female population in many African communities, systematic investigation is missing. The result is that much of the scanty pieces of information we have on widowhood practices are mere raw and unprocessed information. Systematic and sponsored sociological and cosmological studies are yet to be made. For the same reason of lack of analytical approach, comparative studies aimed at showing how widowhood practices are also conspicuously absent. There are also absence of diachronic studies aimed at showing how widowhood practices have evolved or changed over time especially as a result of religion (majorly Christianity and Islam) and modernization. It is obvious that the widowhood practices are, no doubt, a product of history intercepted by religious and cultural contacts.
The brief reference to the state of research on widowhood practices is necessitated by the need to call attention to the limitations to this presentation and a need for a large scale study of this subject matter.
Objectives of the Study
Widowhood as could be seen from the fore-going section is a phenomenon plagued with some inherent problems.
This paper examines the cultural practices relating to widowhood and widow inheritance among the Yoruba and Igbo peoples in Nigeria.
In concrete terms the objective of the study include:
1. To examine the cultural practices that relate to the handling of the death of a woman’s husband.
2. To examine how the people in Yoruba and Igbo societies relate to the widows
3. To identify the ways and methods the widows adjusted to their conditions and for future marital life.
Literature Review
Widowhood experiences are generally a trauma but in some African societies, they are considered more as an experience of deprivation, subjugation and humiliation.
Ironically, the disorganization and trauma that follow the death of a spouse seem to be greater on the women than on the men whenever either loses his or her spouse. In the case of the loss of the husband, the wife becomes the primary suspect as the cause of the husband’s death and is thus treated accordingly. On the other hand, where a man loses his wife, the man is almost immediately offered a substitution to comfort him and douse the impact of the grieve of bereavement. The cause of this is not far-fetched. It has been rightfully observed that “ The differentiation between men’s and women’s role in Nigeria as with other societies is one of complementary and superior relationship in favour of men. It involves a hierarchy in which men are given greater leverage over decision making and resources than women. The result is a cultural setting that invariably promotes male domination and female subordination”. As it relates to certain societies in Nigeria therefore, it can be observed that some of the customs relegate women to the background and clear rob women of their rights and privileges.
Causes of Widowhood
Widowhood is caused by death and death on its part is as a result of some factor such as diseases, illness, accidents, old age, afflictions or attacks, all which finally result in death. But the major factor that leads to death among the older people is old age. Age tends to make older people more susceptible to disease and disease tends to make people age faster. The circle is a vicious one, the processes work together and result in the loss of health and finally in death.
Autopsies indicate that 26 percent o individuals past the age of eighty five die from ‘natural causes’. In these “natural” deaths, degenerative disease is present, but its ravages are not severe enough to have caused death in a stronger, more vital person.
The approach of old age posses weighty challenges. Can the individual cope with losses, of work, loved ones who died and eventually a sense of personal competence and authority? Experts have found that many elderly people experience a basic conflict. They want to remain active because that leads to a sense of identity and value. At the same time, they wish to withdraw or disengage from social commitments so that they can pursue a leisurely and contemplative life. Some ruminate over their past achievements and regrets; over those things which they have not been able to accomplish. At this stage in their lives, they look inwards and no longer towards the future.
Conditions that encourage disengagement include:
· Losing contact with previous social roles and activities, as retirement begins and circumstances change.
· Becoming preoccupied with themselves because of illness and reduced physical and mental powers.
· Pushing aside of unimportant matters, even as their own death approaches and time seems more precious to them.
· Withdrawal of younger people in the community as a result of the differences in age. With old age, the body’s ability to withstand any given insult (sickness, side effect of medication, broken hips) deteriorates until even a small stress lead to death. With the death of one’s spouse, the other surviving spouse becomes widowed.
Reaction to Widowhood
A common reaction to widowhood by the widow is the specific stress syndrome of grief. Grief is the complex emotional reaction arising from the loss of a spouse and the attendant difficulties and distress are apt to be very great. Grief consists of a pattern of physiological distress including sighing, shortness of breath, tightness of the throat, fatigue and loss of muscular strength. The griever is occupied with images of the diseased and can be irritable and angry when others try to be soothing. The grief reaction comes in waves, especially when the griever is reminded of the deceased and this grief reaction may last any length from days to years.
When the widow reacts to the loss with an initial sense of well-being and the slow personality changes like generalized hostility or irritability, when they sink into a long-lasting depression or when they develop major physical symptom like asthma or colitis, they can often benefit from some kind of help in managing their grief. This help can come from non-professional organization like Widow-to-widow, compassionate friends, family members or from short term psychotherapies or from even the government or community.
Treatment of Widows
In many district of the indigenous African societies, special attention and care are expected to be given to widows. Under normal circumstances, a widow is entitled to either two types of protection. She can either be remarried to the nearest male relative of her husband, in which case, she enjoys all the protections and care normally enjoyed by his wives. Or if she is not re-married, she can be given collective protection and care by relatives of her deceased husband. In this case, help of a financial and labour nature is rendered to the widow by the relatives of the deceased husband.
Widowers on the other hand do not receive any appreciable care, except that at the early stage following the death of wife, the sympathizers usually render assistance to the widower in respect to the specific duties his wife was fond of performing during her life time. For example, if a man’s wife dies leaving young children behind, sympathizing women may assist the widower in taking care of the young children until they are grown up. Women may also help him by doing farm work, such as weeding and harvesting during the seasons for such which his wife usually performed during her life time.
The reaction and social security given to the widowed in the traditional Chinese family is a bit different. Here, it was found out that even if a woman’s husband died when she was very young, the woman’s in-laws still retained control over her. The remarriage of widows was frowned upon and the deceased husband’s family could actually block a remarriage of which they did not approve as the norm is that a widow was supposed to remain faithful to her dead husband, his family and ancestor for life but in practice however, the remarriage of widows was not uncommon especially among the poor due to their economic needs. The fact is just that whether or not a widow remarried is a question to be decided by her in-laws, who might keep her to sell her to another man to suit their family needs. If she was remarried, she had no right to take any family property nor does she have claims to her children, who belong exclusively by law and custom to the patrilineal family of their father. The only way a widow could retain a position of honour was to stay as the elder mother in the home of her sons. Widowed men however could remarry without restraint and gentry. Men sometimes elevated a concubine to the status of wife on the death of their first wife.
The most painful void left by the death of a spouse is felt after the funeral of the deceased, when relatives have departed and the bereaved is alone. In many instances, the bereaved becomes pre-occupied by memories of the deceased, sometimes even talking to the departed person as though he or she were still alive. The widow or widower is not only isolating him/herself from the living but is making it harder for him/herself to face the reality of the spouse’s death.
Problems Associated with Widowhood
Widowhood present a myriad of problems such as economic, social and psychological particularly in the first year or so after the death of their spouse. A research carried out with more than 1000 widows and widowers. A major problem for both sexes is economic hardship. When the husband was the principal breadwinner, his widow is now deprived of his income and the nucleus of the family is destroyed. The freedom and independence of the nucleus of the family is suddenly lost as a result of the death of the husband. A widowed man on the other hand, now has to buy many services his wife had previously provided. Where both had been employed, the loss of one income is often major.
Grief over the loss of a loved one especially one who had played such a central role in one’s life for so many years, may affect the widow’s or widower’s health making them to have more physical illness and are frequently admitted to hospitals, thus leading to rise in the death rate.
A study carried on 1083 people over 65 years of age in New York, found that the rate of mental disorder was higher among the widowed than among those still married. These higher rate of mental illness was related not only to widowhood but also to advanced age, physical ill-health and other variables.
What does widowhood mean for day-to-day life? Widowhood has led to illness and death of the griever through grief. Men are more likely than women to die from a “broken heart”. Widows on the other hand are more apt to suffer from disabling chronic conditions. Scientific evidence suggests that dying of grief is indeed possible. Either of the widow or widower is more likely to die than a married person, but the death rate among widowers skyrockets.
The extremely high rates among the widowers properly develops for several reasons such as:
· Widowers with good health and financial resources generally remarry and leave the pool of widowers dominated by men with poor health and little money.
· The new tasks that a widower must assume (cooking and other domestic chores) are more closely related to survival than the tasks assumed by a widow (yard work, home repair).
· Wives usually maintain a couple’s social ties with relatives and friend, while on the other hand the widower often finds himself socially isolated and lonely.
With the above report, it shows that women who are widowed still live longer after being widowed unlike their male counterparts who not being used to doing some of the duties performed by the females find themselves grieving for too long leading eventually to their death.
Another of the problem associated with widowhood is loneliness as most widows. Nearly eight out of ten live by themselves and so they suffer the fear of being alone and loss of self-esteem as women in addition to the many practical problems related to living alone. They feel the loss of personal contact and human association therefore they tend to withdraw and become unresponsive. Most are reluctant to move in with their children and only those who are poor and frail live with some relatives, few express any interest in remarrying and so the lack of potential remarriage partners may not distress them.
The greatest problem of all though, is still emotional. Even in a bad marriage, the survivor feels the loss. The role of spouse has been lost, social life has changed from couple-oriented to associations with associations with other single people and the widowed no longer have the day-in, day-out companionship of the other spouse that had become a basic part of their lives.
Effects of Widowhood
In some African societies, a wife is perceived as a stranger among her husband’s family. They are therefore ready to throw her away like a useless appendage the moment her husband is dead. This often makes the widow to wallow in poverty and even sometimes a widow is also devastated by certain cultural practices which makes her to undergo certain degrading rites in the process of mourning the man.
Some women have had to undergo ugly experiences as a result of the demise of their husband. For instance, some women had given account of the bad experiences they had to undergo. Some women had also been accused of killing their husband in order to inherit his property. After the accusation, they could be asked to swear with either the Holy Quran or the Holy Bible to prove their innocence, even the water used for washing the corpse could be given to the widow to drink in order to prove her innocence the more. The process and duration of mourning period, the widow is to wear dull brown to black clothes without having bath for seven days to weeks while the duration for wearing dark clothes ranges from three months to a year.
In some cases, a widow could be asked to marry the junior brother of the late husband and in case a widow refused such an offer, she was disowned by the late husband’s family and banned from inheriting any of the dead man’s property while all the household properties would be carted away by the family members especially where the widow does not come from the same town as the deceased husband. Such women have had to rely on the help and assistance from friends and social organization to which they belonged in order to cater for themselves and children or to fend for themselves or be taken care of by their family of origin.
Theoretical Framework
This article examined widowhood and widow inheritance in two societies in Nigeria. Theories that deal with people and their interaction in the society are relevant for the background to this article. However, the theory of symbolic interaction is here adopted.
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interaction presents three principles as its foundation. These principles and their implications for present presentation are:
· “Human beings act towards things on the basis of the meaning that things have for them”. To convey this, considerable ethnographic detail is usually presented about the range of ways in which people see themselves, others and situations.
· “The meaning of such things is derived from or arises out of the social interaction one has with one’s fellow”. The interaction pattern among the participants in the activity in question is presented in such a way that people’s activity can be seen to support the way they interpret the situation. The focus here is on those aspects of the interaction that promote stability.
· “These meanings are handled in, and modified through an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters”. The focus here are activities that foster change in how people see the situation and themselves. The symbolic interactionist’s rationale for focusing on concrete activities is the view that a person’s behavior “is not a result of such things as environmental pressure, stimuli, motives, attitudes and ideas but arises instead from how he interprets and handles these things in the action which he is constructing.
How people come to see death in a retirement village is a modern interactionist analysis. It shows that death comes to be seen not as desirable, but as appropriate and thus the anxiety of people shift from death itself to the manner of death (slow or quick). For instance, most residents want to live no longer than they expect to and only 12 percent of retirement villages as compared with 53 percent of respondents on a general population survey feel death always comes too soon. How the old people interpret death is an open discussion of death which makes it part of the community’s symbolic universe. Death is approached in a practical manner – for instance, residents make funeral arrangements. The village treats it on routine – these is no obituary, only a notice on the board and list in the village newspaper. Residents in the village are involved in a full round of activities and these in form of informal socialization. This helps to induct people into and to maintain a community in which death is interpreted as appropriate, yet in which a full life can go on until death comes.
An important addition to symbolic interaction is dramaturgical analogist which suggest that any social establishment can be usefully studied from the point of view of impression management (how people create and maintain a certain impression on others). This approach lends itself to a dramaturgical analogy which does not wish totally to assign the ‘self’ to the role player. People are seen as standing to some extent outside situations, calculating both what role they should play and how they should play it (e.g. should they maintain role distance or not). This analogy uses concepts like “front region” – the area where an effect is made to show that an action maintains and embodies certain standards – and ‘backstage’ – the area where for some given performance the illusions of the front region are constructed and may even be openly contradicted. It also talks about terms of performers with solidarity and secrets presenting to an audience and some of the ways in which situations can deviate from this.
Unlike the classic symbolic interactionist approach focusing on the construction and reconstruction of the meanings of activities, situations and symbolic universes, the dramaturgical approach takes this largely for granted. Instead, the focus is on how individuals cope with the ‘conditions and constraints’ that situations impose. Situations are seen as limiting the ways in which a person can pursue his ends and thereby producing a set of ‘patterned adaptations’.
The above and other similar analyses seem cynical because people are presented as constantly selecting among a wide variety of adaption to the situation to extract advantage for themselves. Also contained in this view is what is called a ‘hidden contrivance’. People in the same position appear to have the same competence and grasp of situations. All people are shown to possess similar capacities for acting – it is only their situations that change and with this the appropriate ways of acting.
By examining situations from the point of view of the individual, the dramaturgical approach add another dimension to the symbolic interactionist analysis of how symbolic universes are sustained and changed. A presentation of the ways in which an individual can cope with a situation help one to understand what the situation means to him and thereby adds another layer of meaning to the symbolic interactionist presentation of the symbolic universe.
If the communication between individuals that maintain a symbolic universe is also reciprocal assessment, then our understanding of their interaction is deepened and has a different ‘feel’. The symbolic interactionist accounts attack some major ways of giving a causal understanding of an activity. Arguing that this account is refined an alternative description of the activity in some specified socio-cultural setting is put forward. This account examines the processes through which people produce and change their meaningful activities by showing how the setting shapes these activities.
The central basic concept of symbolic interaction is interaction, according of its proponents points out that interactions consist of at least the following: events, states, phenomena and processes. None of these can be reduced entirely to analysis of symbols. Interactions occur on a variety of levels and thus require an analysis in turns of both causal and meaningful understanding of actions and belief as it holds that the linkages among human activities are both meaningful and causal. Neither causal nor meaningful links are alone sufficient for an understanding of the process whereby activities came to have certain meanings (e.g. a payment being a tip), or people engage in certain actions (e.g. wearing a uniform), or a people acquire a particular awareness of self (e.g. as ill), or people come to hold certain views (e.g. that death is appropriate). The linkages that exist in some particular situation must be understood at both levels and an integrated analysis produced. Another way to state the central claim of this paragraph is to say that symbolic interaction rejects idealist account of human action. It recognizes that people’s processes of creating definitions of the situation, themselves and others exist in the world and cannot be grouped purely on the level of meaning.
Once component of a symbolic interactionist analysis is an analysis of action in terms of meaning – symbolic interaction is concerned with how activities or beliefs are intelligible to or are to be understood by or what meaning they have for some specified group of people. One establishes that action or belief A has meaning X for some specified group of people by placing it in a pattern of other actions done by and belief held by the group. By supplying a large enough description of the context of the action or belief, one endeavours to get to the point where there is only one intelligible way of filling the gap. This way of filling in the gap is the meaning X of the action or belief A.
Symbolic interaction accounts also contain claims about the causal effects of the activities they are discussing. However, these claims are embedded in the analysis and cannot be detached from the situation about which they are made. An embedded causal claim states that some concrete action has a particular effect (another concrete action or belief). These embedded causal linkages are presented as a routine accomplishment that anybody familiar with the situation which is being analysed could make.
The basic concern of symbolic interaction is to present ethnographic description of the range of ways in which interaction between particular groups of people creates, sustained and modifies various particular symbolic inverses. A sustainable programme of symbolic interactionist research is towards more and more ‘esoteric’ subjects. Symbolic interaction is over-concerned with the transient, quaint and exotic features of social life.
Symbolic interaction is not only voluntaristic interpretative description that is necessary to the foundations of causal theories, but it is pregnant with causal theories as well and its concern with people as the creators of their world, though not in circumstances of their choosing; the insistence on people collectively having the freedom to create vast number of forms of life, its concern for the detail and texture of human life all contribute to a humanistic view of people.
Symbolic interaction has been criticized of neglecting the emotions and have too cognitive an image of the acting self. This seems a fair criticism, part of the reason for the stress on cognitive rather than emotional factors is that when a person is presented as acting reasonably, the reader tends to accept the meaningful, voluntaristic nature of the person’s activities. However, symbolic interaction does not have to neglect emotional factors.
Method of Data Collection
This study compares widowhood practices into two culturally distinctive communities in Nigeria, the Yoruba of the South West and the Igbo of the South East.
The People
The Igbo speaking people are located in latitude 5 and 7 degrees and 6 and 8 degrees East, out of the 36 states in Nigeria, they cover wholly 5 – namely Imo, Abia, Ebonyi, Anambra and Enugu and parts of Delta and Rivers States in Nigeria. There was no central political organisation among the Igbos traditionally and the village of clans were the basic political units. The Igbo display cultural traits that are common among them throughout their own society and which are also significantly different from those other surrounding societies although there are minor variations from on specific Igbo community to the other.
The Yoruba speaking people on the other hand live in cities, towns, villages and other forms of settlement in the south western Nigeria where the wholly cover six out of the 36 states in Nigeria namely Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Lagos and Ekiti States and also partly in Kwara and Edo states in Nigeria. The central language spoken is Yoruba although there are considerable variations in dialects and practices. The Yoruba display fairly common cultural practices as they relate to cultural rites on such important area as births, marriages and deaths.
