Power and Gender in "This Earth of Mankind"

There are several aspects of “This Earth of Mankind” worth exploring. Certainly the obvious distinctions between Natives, Mixed-Bloods and Pure-Bloods say a lot about the society in which this story takes place. However, from these first several chapters, I don’t feel the hatred for the foreign power—in this case the Dutch—that was obvious in “Things Fall Apart” and even “Heart of Darkness” to an extent. In fact, I felt that there was a certain respect for the Europeans. After all, in the first chapter, Minke enumerates on several of the inventions coming from Europe, and compares their greatness to the magic of his people. By equating Europe and his nai e land, along with many other comments Minke said that I am not going too enumerate here, I have not yet seen hatred for a foreign country, and it should be interesting to see if, when, and how that comes up.
However, what struck me the most in these first 6 chapters were the gender distinctions and relationships. I was expecting to see the male characters dominate the story, as in the other books we’ve read. And indeed, we get a sense of the oppression that women faced when we read about how ‘Mama’ was sold into being a concubine. But when looking at the picture of the Mellema family as Minke knows them, it is impossible to ignore the fact that ‘Mama’ is the dominant figure in the family. Toer makes a point of not only putting the father out of the picture, but making him mentally ill, weakening his image and status in the eyes of his family, society, and the reader. In fact, ‘Mama’ goes as far as to say that he is “no longer a human being” (Toer, 78), diminishing his character to nothingness.
Alternatively, ‘Mama’ has power on many different levels. Financially and in a business sense, she basically built up the company and is in charge of it when we meet her—everybody answers to her, she has the power to fire whoever she wants etc. Emotionally and spiritually, she has a power over Minke that he can’t explain, sometimes referring to it as ‘Black Magic,’ sometimes explaining that she had the ability to reach into his soul and mind. ‘Mama’ even exerted power over her husband when she yelled at him and literally sent him to his room, like a mother to her son, after he insulted Minke. It is clear that ‘Mama’ wears the pants in this relationship, for lack of a better expression. I found this dominance particularly interesting considering that ‘Mama’ was sold and meant to be a concubine, positions that explicitly call for a male to dominate her, and yet she emerges as the powerful figure.
I am definitely interested to see how the distinctions of gender and power are further explored in this novel.