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Act 1 Summary of Sons and Daughters
Act 1 of Sons and Daughters begins in the sitting room of the Ofosus’ house, a typical urban household, where Aaron Ofosu and his friend Awere are having a conversation. Aaron laments that he has to “give up all his plans”. His father wants him to study engineering, but Aaron desperately wants to paint instead. Awere encourages him to try to persuade his father to see things differently. According to him, “one can take a horse to the water, but one cannot force it to drink.”
Aaron decides to explain his family dynamics in detail to give Awere and, by extension, the audience a clearer picture. His father, James, prizes family prestige and the dignity of the professions. His eldest brother George is already a doctor, and his other brother Kofi is expected home soon as a newly qualified chartered accountant. James wants Aaron to become an engineer and wants Maanan to become “Ghana’s first lady lawyer,” even though there are already several women lawyers. Aaron reveals that Maanan doesn’t want this at all. She wants to become a professional dancer, but their father has arranged for her to work at Lawyer Bonu’s office while they wait for a place to open up at a law school in the UK.
Aaron confides that he plans to trick his father. He’ll pretend to go to London to study engineering, then switch to art once he’s there. Awere strongly objects. He warns that this is “the craziest thing” Aaron could do; that his father could cut off his allowance or even have the Ghana Office in London send him home in disgrace. Awere suggests instead that Aaron try to convince his father that art can also be profitable, so his father might come to respect his choice.
This leads to a passionate outburst from Aaron about how much he suffers in this house for his art. His father is jealous of even his sketchbook, tore up one of his unfinished canvases, and threw his easel out a window because he hates the smell of turpentine. Aaron tells a bitter story about Maanan once bringing home a bunch of fresh frangipani flowers to brighten the room, only for their father to call them “rubbish” and empty them into the dustbin the next morning — after which the house has been decorated with “a permanent bloom of ugly paper flowers” ever since. Aaron nearly got disowned when he later admitted to a family friend that he didn’t like the paper flowers his father had specially ordered.
Aaron rails at length against his father’s (and society’s) obsession with money. He insists that art must “bring in money” or it’s worthless in his father’s eyes, and that this same attitude poisons how his father views medicine and any other calling. He contrasts his own situation with George’s and Kofi’s, who happened to want the professions their father chose for them, and calls himself and Maanan cursed with being “non-conformists.”
Maanan enters at this point. She is clearly returning from work. She looks unhappy rather than cheerful. When Aaron jokingly asks if she’s “lost a boy friend,” she deflects, worried their father might overhear such a joke. Awere congratulates Maanan on missing his art exhibition opening. Maanan says she tried to come but was kept late at work. To make up for her absence, she has brought home a copy of the Daily Clarion with praise for his exhibition. Maanan wistfully tells Awere he’s lucky to be able to pursue what he wants. Awere tells her “nothing prevents you” but she brushes this off, saying he knows very well why that’s not true.
Aaron and Awere leave to collect the mail which Maanan had forgotten to pick up on her way home. Awere leaves his box of oil colours behind for safekeeping.
Once Aaron and Awere exit, Aunt Fosuwa enters and begins interrogating Maanan about “that boy who keeps coming here to see you”. She is implying an improper relationship with Awere which Maanan denies.
Hannah enters and firmly tells Fosuwa to leave Maanan alone. She confronts her sister-in-law directly: she will no longer tolerate Fosuwa’s constant interference in her family’s affairs, even though they live in James’s family house. Fosuwa is offended. She threatens to complain to James when he returns, but Hannah stands her ground as she asserts her right as James’s wife of many years and mother of his children. Fosuwa storms off, shouting after her.
Lawyer Bonu then drops by hoping to see James. But since James isn’t home yet, Fosuwa fusses over him and sends the maidservant to fetch Maanan. Lawyer Bonu seems oddly nervous and uncomfortable about seeing Maanan, mentioning that he’s been “overworking her” at the office lately. When Maanan finally appears, she is visibly cold and aloof towards him. A flustered Lawyer Bonu makes an excuse about a prior appointment and leaves rather than staying to see James.
Once Lawyer Bonu is gone, Maanan tells her mother she intends to quit working at his office and to tell her father about it that very day. She tells her mother that for over two months, Lawyer Bonu has been harassing her constantly at work. He has been standing over her, trying to kiss her, following her with his eyes, and his clerks have begun to notice. He has even had her desk moved into his own private office. Maanan describes how he tried to embrace her that very afternoon, and was only stopped when he knocked over her chair and the noise startled him.
Maanan goes further to reveal that Lawyer Bonu had explicitly used his influence with her father as leverage. He told her he could get her father’s consent for her to study dancing (rather than law) if she would give in to him romantically. She refused, but this has only made him worse, giving her “not a moment’s rest.” Hannah is shaken by this revelation and promises to speak to James as soon as he comes home. She calls it too serious a matter to let go unaddressed. Afterwards, she sends Maanan to change and help prepare supper.
James Ofosu enters, dangling his car keys. He greets Hannah briefly and complains about the usual business troubles with the commercial firms he hauls goods for. He performs a small ritual of pouring out a little water in a libation before drinking the rest himself. This practice establishes him as a man rooted in certain traditional practices despite his Western-style ambitions for his children.
James asks after Aaron and Maanan. Hannah tells him Maanan is upstairs changing, and gently raises the subject that Maanan is unhappy. James is initially dismissive, accusing Hannah of never giving him a “direct answer”. But Hannah persists. She warns him that Maanan hates working for Lawyer Bonu and that he’ll “regret it” if this continues. James cuts her off, defensive of his old friend, and turns the conversation into an accusation that everyone in the family — including now Hannah — doubts his judgment and thinks him a fool. He rants about the ingratitude of his children, who reject the “cow dung” of engineering and law he’s offering them in favour of half-naked dancing and painting nobody will pay for.
Hannah pushes back with her insistence that Maanan is more principled than James gives her credit for, and that she is not James’s own daughter’s problem but Lawyer Bonu’s. James refuses to believe any accusation against Bonu, citing all the ways Bonu has supposedly helped the family which include securing Kofi’s college place, arranging Aaron’s place at Manchester University, and working to get Maanan into a UK law school. He demands to know who has been “putting strange ideas” into Hannah’s head.
James calls Maanan down. She enters, freshly changed but still visibly unhappy. James sternly demands to know why she doesn’t want to continue at Lawyer Bonu’s office. He assumes that she simply wants to become a “dancing girl” and implies this means loose morals and nightclubs. Maanan bravely owns the label “dancing girl”. She clarifies that she wants to seriously study dance and drama, not perform at nightclubs, and that Lawyer Bonu himself knows this from her notes — yet he has been telling James otherwise. When she directly states, “Lawyer Bonu has been telling you all this, then Lawyer Bonu is a liar,” James is enraged and nearly seizes her physically; Hannah throws herself between them to protect her daughter.
Hannah then reveals to James, in full, what Lawyer Bonu has been doing but James finds it hard to believe. He declares this must be part of a deliberate “plot to blackmail” him. At this tense moment, Aaron enters through the street door, whistling, holding a letter. He is startled by the scene. James immediately turns his suspicion on Aaron. He demands to know about “this plot” and why he’s hiding a letter. Aaron hands it over; James tears it open and reads it. It turns out to be a letter confirming Aaron has been offered a place at an art school, which James interprets as further proof of a conspiracy against him, since Aaron had been secretly pursuing art admission “behind his back” while accepting a place at a respected university for engineering.
James is now thoroughly convinced his whole family is scheming against him. He tirades about how he has sacrificed to educate his children into respectable professions, yet they defy him at every turn with “cock-and-bull stories” about Lawyer Bonu and secret applications to art schools. He declares he will not be swayed and storms out of the room through the upstage door.
Act 1 thus ends on a note of unresolved crisis, with Aaron’s art-school letter thrown aside unread as valid, Lawyer Bonu’s betrayal still not fully confronted, and the family fractured by anger and mistrust.
Related:
- Act 2 Summary of Sons and Daughters by J.C. de Graft
- Characterisation in Joe De Graft’s Sons and Daughters
- Plot Summary and Setting of Sons and Daughters by J.C. de Graft
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I recommend son and Daughter