Returning to the issue of narrative intention, the question raised by the ending of The Bride Price then becomes the following: toward what goal has this novel been oriented? Or, more specifically, what direction do Western readers expect this novel to take? Does this expectation help us understand the novel, or does it interfere with understanding? For those of us who were trained to find patterns in literature by Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, I would argue that the tacit assumptions we bring to The Bride Price virtually ensure that we will (try to) read it as New Comedy. This mode, according to Frye, is commonly centered on "an erotic intrigue between a young man and a young woman which is blocked by some kind of opposition, usually paternal, and resolved by a twist in the plot." Although the blocking agents initially govern society, a new society...