Fiction remains a veritable source of getting advice, life lessons and even an improvement of vocabulary.
Women’s fiction and feminist minded fiction both have the ability to teach women what to avoid and how to navigate living in a sexist world.
However, it is not only real life women that sometimes need advice. Fictional women can also learn and be advised by the women readers invested in their stories.
Urban Woman Magazine recently asked some women what fictional woman they would advise and what the advice would be.
Read their responses below.
RA
Obinze’s wife in Americanah. I would have told her all that church she was going to pray for her husband and all the self-inflicted punishment she gave herself by keeping her friends away and making herself small was unnecessary.
She knew her husband was seeing someone else and it was not her fault. She was a perfect wife.
Morayo
Although I didn’t finish the book because I was deeply stressed, she’s the first one that came to mind. Nani from Chika Unigwe’a The Middle Daughter. I don’t remember if she fell pregnant after Ephraim raped her.
However this is my advice: Talk to someone, tell someone. Abort that baby. Make sure you organise boys that will beat the living daylight out of that false prophet that he will not even think of sexually assaulting anyone ever in his life.
The first one is the most important. Do not keep shame that doesn’t belong to you.
Talk to someone! Also don’t move in with your abuser.
BO
Tess from Tess of the D’Ubervilles. LIVE ONLY FOR YOURSELF TESS. NOT YOUR FAMILY, NOT ANYONE. only yourself.
Morolayo
If I could speak to a fictional woman it would be Adeline from Haunting Adeline
..
This isn’t love. I know it feels like it, how it moves through your veins like a drug, how his presence rearranges your breath. But obsession isn’t devotion. And power isn’t affection.
You might want to believe he saw you. That he was drawn to your mind, your mystery, maybe even your books. But let’s be honest—he didn’t chase your soul, he hunted your body. He wanted you under him, not beside him.
I don’t doubt you’re strong. I don’t doubt you can survive him. But survival and love are not the same thing.
You don’t have to romanticize pain just because it came wrapped in passion.
Walk away. Before you start calling fear ‘intensity’ and surrender ‘choice’.”
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.