Despite civilisations it's still men's world as it's said. Women still have to muster guts or radiance to overcome bias. What's the difference and similarity of man and woman? Two different sides of the same thing. One thinks it's greater. Either way, one is the essence of the other. Anyway, both walk uprightly or fool around. To most people especially the westernised, it's a closed book that Africanism is mean to women. The westerners have gone farther in the fight for equality and the rights of woman, but not far enough to forget they were in it and it's still on. Only few women in Africa and fewer round the world really know the meanness of their place. Is this a passionate tale of a girl? Can one also ask if it's Gothic? It's a common, but gripping blend of these genres. The story is fiction as names of most characters and incidences are the author's imagination yet it's an epic with reoccurrences that are characteristics in women's life -real and convincing. This is a fascinating tale of rural life as lived by Africans far away from the city engulfed in western civilisation that signifies the triumph of modernism over traditionalism. Mary, the main character, is exposed to the devaluing impact the rural way of life has on women. The tradition as practised in the village makes women abscond to the city where they find room to exert rights and equality with men. However, the right to freedom and equality goes on to give women the power and the mind to ex-press vile, villainy and viciousness. Mary and her cousin are carried away by the new phase of a friend, who like many women run to the city for what they crave unaware of the fact that unlike her cousin she cannot indulge in the vile that are common with women. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Man, a woman who comes across Mary in her travails to survive after she runs away a second time, this time from a practise common with women which she abhors, the professor she marries, her cousin and new friends are characters who indicate that impiousness or goodwill is either way; from man or wom-an. The story is impressively real. It's what goes on day in day out in humanity; traditionalism or modernism. It's highly recommended for both sexes to realise their equality as far existentialism is concerned. By the end of the book you realise that women are as equal as men. Distorted concepts are what make up the woes of man.