By Peterkins Manyong
Prospére, the protagonist in Francis Nyamnjoh's "A Nose for Money" is a modern day Don Juan (an overcomer of great women) in aesthetic terms.
Though not educated, he has a charm which appeals to society's top women, the likes of Marie Claire. Don Juan only flirts with women and breaks the hearts of some. Not so with Prospére.
After his failed marriage with Rose, he resumes a bachelor's life, but soon finds it intolerable, especially after Jean Claude and Jean-Marie, two money doublers he had stumbled upon while driving from West Mimboland, died in a motor accident leaving behind an incredibly huge amount of money (FCFA 200 million) This sum catapults him to the category of the nouveaux riches.
Romanticism is for the poor. An expensive car or mansion serves the function which is performed by a telling picture in journalism. It tells the story of a thousand words. When Prospére finds Marie-Claire, the Health Minister Matiba's secretary and concubine appetizing in bed, he proposes marriage, the most cherished wish of the average woman.
Marie Claire declares that her hands are full and unlike most egocentric modern women, recommends her close friend, Charlotte. Charlotte, even if she had known, would not refuse to eat a delicious pudding because her friend had tasted of it.
Two years after his wedding with Charlotte, Prospére decides to take in another woman against Charlotte's wish and domestic comfort. But like the real modern hero he would not have a woman dictate to him. "To suggest that he didn't need a second wife because it wasn't modern to be polygamous, as Charlotte had tried to do, was an insult, which Prospére wasn't prepared to stomach, not even from Matiba," his mentor and Godfather (p.142). Prospére's model is the President of Mimboland himself who has four wives and mistresses "scattered throughout the peaceful republic."
Marie Corelli tells us in "The Sorrow of Satan" that the modern women contracts marriage for prestige after early procuring for themselves a true lover or lovers to perform the function of first assistants. Marie-Claire is under the influence of this philosophy when after marriage, maintains Philip as her "spare tyre." It is thus an act of defiance that Prospére makes Chantal his second wife.
The idea is that she should serve to check the excesses of Marie who is already taking him for granted and using his money as if it were their joint property. But far from being rivals, Charlotte who had started by fighting Chantal, forms an alliance with her against Prospére when she finally comes in, confirming the long established principle that whenever three persons are engaged in a conflict, two must be on one side.
This alliance threatens his security and the only way out is to take a third wife. He had expected to play Chantal off against Charlotte. The opposite had happened as the two women had decided to glue themselves together making him feel as if he where married to two sisters.
Prospére erroneously thinks that time would separate what circumstances might have yoked together. On the contrary, the two grow more intimate with each passing day; "teaming, planning and laying out their strategies together; then approaching him in a single voice, ready to argue him out of anything". (p. 155).
Having made much progress in his business, Prospére decides that the only way out of the situation is to marry another woman. His 42nd birthday is the occasion he chooses for this leap forward. Prospére's source of courage and confidence is money. To him, there is no limit to what money can do.
His choice is Monique, "a young juicy fruit" whom he had met during one of his trips to Sawang. His heroism is seen when Charlotte and Chantal gang up against Monique. He stands by Monique till her dying day and resolves to know the truth, however bitter. It is the revelation that he claims to be the father of many children when he is in fact barren which forces him to take his life.
Why Prospére Is A Tragic Hero
A tragic hero in both the Greek and Shakespearean concept of the word is somebody of a high status who falls due to a certain flaw in his character.
Prospére is a tragic hero in the sense that his wealth places him among the great. He is able to marry educated women (university graduates), although incapable of reading and writing properly. He is a hero in the modern sense because he manages his money well and becomes a billionaire.
A great man in the modern sense of the world is a rich man. The Bible, which states that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, interestingly ascribes the adjective "good' only to one rich man who assisted another human being in distress.
Nyamnjoh's Prospére proves that with wealth the semi-illiterate cannot only close the gap between the educated and the illiterate, but can enable him push around even the most lettered and sublime who hold university degrees. Prospére commits suicide therefore, not because women have ganged up against him, but because of the shocking realisation that he is only the foster father of children whom he thought were his biological ones.
His survival amongst such educated women lends credence to the belief that the story of Daniel in the Lion's den is an allegory about polygamists who survive among ferocious women. This is because the daily empowerment of women has transformed them into the stronger and no longer the weaker sex, the description given them by the Bible.
This reversal of roles has reduced men to an endangered species. Husbands of several wives are tragic heroes in the sense that they endure. If like Hamlet, he had resolved to fight against the sea of troubles that threatened to engulf him, he would have been a veritable tragic hero.
By taking away his life, Prospére sinks irredeemably in the opinion of those who perceive suicide as moral cowardice. His literary prototypes are, therefore, only the likes of Shakespeare's Othello, Antonio and Cleopatra.
To conclude, it wouldn't be inappropriate to say that Cyprian Ekwensi's Lajide in "People of the City" would serve as the most appropriate school master to Nyamnjoh's Prospére because he is the stuff of which modern polygamists should be made.
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