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Summary
Abayomi Adebayo’s debut novel, Stay With Me, tells the story of the systematic blame placed on women for childlessness because patriarchy normalised that a man's role should never be questioned. Yejide, the protagonist in the novel, is blamed for infertility, while Akin, her husband, is protected from the cause of the problem.
In Nigerian society, women are often blamed for infertility. She is accused without evidence of the couple’s childlessness. Ayobami Adebayo’s debut novel, Stay With Me, explored the often-ignored truth that a man could also be the reason for a couple’s infertility.
Stay With Me follows the story of Yejide and her husband, Akin, who grappled with infertility. Despite her education, smartness, and devotion to her marriage, Yejide is reduced to a reproductive factor, where she is blamed for their childlessness while Akin is deemed innocent.
The novel mirrors the Nigerian society where a woman’s achievements and worth are tied to motherhood. Yejide is subjected to humiliation and even pushed to degrading measures such as attempting to breastfeed a goat, climbing a mountain, and forced medical procedures to fix the childlessness that society believed to be hers, never questioning the man’s role.
Through Yejide’s journey, Abayomi exposed how the patriarchal society in Nigeria degrades women to reproductive factors, and romanticised motherhood such that the woman’s suffering is seen as a necessity to fulfil her duty.
Yejide’s story goes beyond the narrative of a woman grappling with childlessness; it is the systematic stripping of a woman’s right to be seen beyond motherhood parameters.
