Unchildly

For the rest recourse must be had to what does not belong to human childhood: his brow must be made the seat of unchildly power and wisdom; he must wear the glance of prescience and the gesture of authority, even if he has not to sit on his mother’s knee as on a throne, and hold out his fingers in the solemnity of benediction.

Denis, the narrator in Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba), Mongo Beti’s second novel and the first to appear under his now renowned pen-name, would certainly be considered to be a child even though the novelist indicates that he is already almost fifteen by the time the story begins (Poor Christ, p. 9), and attributes to him the rather unchildly achievement of leaving ‘a big gray stain’ (p. 106) of semen on a bedsheet when he is inveigled into performing the sexual act with a young woman named Catherine.

If it is unwomanly in this situation for Antigone to assert her rights, it is even more unchildly. A child can less easily make a claim upon the laws of society without that society also being willing to hear it.