The Slave Girl was published by Allison & Busby in 1977 and won the Jock Campbell Award from the New Statesman. Ojebeta is a young Igbo girl in the early 1900s. After her parents die in the influenza pandemic of 1918, her brother Okolie sells her to Ma Palagada, a wealthy relative in the market town of Onitsha. The arrangement is common in Igbo society — the sale is understood as a form of fostering, the girl will work as a domestic servant, and in return she will be fed, housed, and eventually married off. But Emecheta makes clear that the distinction between “fostering” and “slavery” is largely rhetorical: Ojebeta works without pay, cannot leave, and has no control over her own life.
The novel traces Ojebeta’s life from childhood servitude through her eventual marriage — arranged by Ma Palagada — to a man from Ibuza. The marriage frees her from one form of bondage and delivers her into another: she is now the property of her husband, subject to his authority in all things. Emecheta’s point is not that traditional Igbo marriage is identical to slavery but that the logic of ownership — the idea that one human being can belong to another — pervades the entire social structure, from the explicit slavery of the market to the implicit slavery of the household.
The British colonial presence hovers at the edges of the narrative. The British abolished slavery in their territories, but Emecheta shows that the abolition was largely formal — the economic and social structures that sustained domestic slavery continued to operate under different names.
Collecting The Slave Girl
First edition (Allison & Busby, London, 1977): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $150–$400
- Very good/very good: $60–$150