Oh Man

An overbearing, aggressive, offensive, misogynistic male character is not new in literature.  However, the dominant male characters in The Poisonwood Bible and Things Fall Apart are uniquely fascinating and really out do themselves as far as brutal misogyny goes.  Both Nathan of The Poisonwood Bible and Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart are intensely misogynistic and brutal in regards to the women that surround them, but each have defining characteristics that set them apart from each other.

Okonkwo is a man who is motivated by success and power.  He believes that women in general and anything that is related to women is inferior and weak.  This in many ways reflects the feelings of Mr. Nathan Price.  Okonkwo feels the need to prove his immense power as a man through physical displays from wrestling to threatening to shoot his wife to actually shooting his adopted son. Okonkwo is motivated to prove his manliness by being violent and aggressive.  He does not let anything go easily and becomes frustrated when events do not play out as he wishes they would. Additionally, Okonkwo has three wives.  By having three wives, he is able to display his raw manliness again because of course only a real man has three females he can control on the daily. When all three of his wives are not being perfect he gets mad and is verbally and physically abusive. This too, although in a different way, reflects the nature of Nathan price.

Unlike Okonkwo who seems to be motivated by this internal duty, Nathan Price is motivated by the idea that it his is job as a good Christian man to spread his 'knowledge' and gifts.  Nathan believes that he can literally say whatever he wants because he is holier than thou and has the most sophisticated opinion and ideas in the room.  Like Okonwko, Nathan is abusive to his wife Orleanna and does not like to have her speak out against him in any way at all.  Unlike Okonkwo, Nathan only has one wife to treat horribly (yay?).  Also in contrast to Okonwko, Nathan likes to display his manly strength with his words and threats instead of extreme physical violence.  Being the father of daughters, Nathan does not have a son to shape into a man like himself so that probably frustrates him to the max.

In regards to why Nathan Price feels so strongly about feminine attributes being "wrong" there are several explanations.  One possibility is that he loves these feminine attributes so strongly so he uses the defense mechanism of reaction formation to hide his feelings.  He is honestly probably jealous of how bomb women are and is mad that he cannot posses some of the qualities.  Another possibility is related to his strong religious beliefs.  I do not know a ton about religion and religious traditions and no I am not pretending to, but I do know that in many Christian religious services men play the leadership roles.  Due to the fact that Nathan is such a supposed devout Christian he may feel that feminine traits are wrong because they should be silent as they are in church.