There are basically three characters in John Pepper Clark’s The Wives’ Revolt. They are Okoro, Koko, and Idama.
While Okoro and Idama are archetypes of domineering men in Erhuwaren, Koko typifies a class of cheated, repressed women advocating for gender equality.
Okoro
Okoro is the town crier of Erhuwaren. His primary duty as a town crier is to disseminate information, proclamations, and decisions made by the leadership of the community to the generality of Erhuwaren people.
He is the one who announces at the beginning of the play the ban placed on the possession and ownership of goats in the community because of the witchcraft attached to these domestic animals. As we shall find out later in the play, this law empowers the men to confiscate any goat they lay their hands on. Okoro is one of the many beneficiaries of this law.
Okoro is also a husband and a father. He is the husband of Koko. Apart from his social duty, Okoro is also a cloth-seller by trade.
Okoro is a male chauvinist. He is so much in support of any law that keeps or will keep a close rein on the women. The announcement he is empowered to make at the beginning of the play echoes his own position about women.
He further reinforces his male chauvinistic views in his discussions and perhaps headless arguments with his wife. He holds that a woman should totally submit to her husband.
To him, his wife and others in her league are lacking in this respect. They do not come an inch close to their mothers in submissiveness to their husbands and cutlery skills.
Okoro continually finds fault in the cooking style of the new generation of women, particularly his wife, even when the cooking itself is a reflection of the meagre resources men provide their wives with.
Okoro is a headstrong man who has a lot of ego. When his wife left him, he is reduced to the domestic roles of cooking and babysitting. He is so preoccupied with these duties that he is unable to ply his trade as a cloth-seller. Despite all these inconveniences, he still downplays the role of women in the house. He, in fact, insists that the women should not be placated and brought back. He calls the men who came up with the idea of placating the women cowards.
Okoro however knows when to draw the line between his sentiment and his duty. This is shown when he makes the announcement at the end of the play that, among other things, the goat ban has been revoked and the oil money has been converted into the fund for the education of their children.
Above all, Okoro is a dominant sweet talker, an eloquent speaker who however is a combative listener.
Related:
- Critical Analysis of John Pepper Clark’s “The Wives’ Revolt”
- Themes in John Pepper Clark’s “The Wives’ Revolt”
Koko
Koko is the wife of Okoro and the mother of his children. She is portrayed as a resilient woman and a staunch advocate of gender equality.
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Resource Text
- Clark, J. P. (1991). The Wives’ Revolt. University Press PLC.
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