Job's Wife
Job’s
Wife is a play by Philip
Begho, written in verse. It was the winner of the Association of
Nigerian Authors (ANA) Drama Prize in 2002. It is an
interpretation of the biblical Book
of Job.
Plot
Job
himself never appears onstage, the crucial character being his wife who is
hardly mentioned in the Bible
except for her spurious advice to Job. We meet her packing to leave him and
dissociate herself from his misfortunes. It is evident that she believes he suffers for his sins
and has become separated from God,
so she is free to start a new life on her own. Her maid Reibah tries to stop
her with the only means she can come up with – the lie that a powerful healer
is coming, only for her conscience to trouble her afterwards. She is soothed by
Nali, who promises to do her own bit to delay Job’s wife; Nali has a vague
belief that Reibah’s lie
has a kernel of truth,
that in one way or another, time will bring healing.
Thus
Nali works at cross-purposes rather than helping her mistress in the way she
wants to be helped, as well as her ridiculous speech about how she will
accompany her.
When
the mysterious Healer actually does appear, the supernatural is dramatically tamed by Job’s wife’s indignation that he
wasn’t announced by a servant, and that he should have knocked; she naturally
presumes he is the one Reibah spoke of. The Healer eases Job’s suffering
offstage, but his real business is with the wife’s hypocrisy, brought out as he questions the reason for her behaviour.
What
he gradually teaches her and the audience is balanced with the mutual incomprehension and comic
exchanges between mistress and Nali, who can’t see the Healer, and yet speaks
the truth about him even as the woman concludes the girl is mad. When the
Healer condemns the harm Job’s friends have done, she defends them, showing
that their error is also hers, in weakening Job and depleting his moral
courage and faith. He explains to her that suffering is purposeful and meant
to teach, but not necessarily the sufferer, who sometimes far from being guilty, is sometimes one “found worthy to bear the suffering that
instructs his fellows and for this service his reward is sure.”
The
Healer gets the wife to turn her attention to what Job’s suffering has taught
her about herself, for rather than deepening in compassion and love,
she became a hypocrite, deceiving herself about her real motives, which have
more to do with the loss of Job’s prosperity. What she must learn is introduced in bits, for Job’s wife
has a positive self-image
and resists seeing her guilt and Job’s innocence.
References
- Begho, Philip. Job’s Wife, Lagos: Monarch Books 2002, ISBN 978-978-32224-5-8
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