Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters traces how the Falodun women navigate agency within a system that measures women through marriage and male attention. Their choices—seduction, spiritual remedies, and small acts of refusal—grow out of these pressures. Although their efforts often revolve around men, the novel points toward a kind of freedom that does not depend on them.

For the older generation, agency takes shape through the men who control wealth and status. Kemi, Eniiyi’s grandmother, uses her charm and beauty to build relationships with wealthy men, treating romance as a way to stay afloat. When a suitor is expected, she focuses on his finances and says, “So long as his pocket is, that will have to do” (46). Bunmi, her sister, feels unable to move forward after her husband leaves her, so she turns to spiritual solutions that she hopes will bring him home. She visits Mama G in an attempt to regain stability inside a marriage that defines her social place. Their choices reveal a world where a woman must rely on her ability to appeal to or influence a man rather than on her own options.

Monife shows a newer expression of agency, though she remains tethered to the same expectations. She pursues Golden Boy, initiates their kiss, and speaks openly about what she wants. Yet she ties her future to winning his commitment because she sees him as the route to breaking the family curse. As soon as his mother disapproves of the relationship, her confidence fades. She buys a love charm from Mama G, repeating the same pattern her mother followed. Her boldness depends on Golden Boy’s approval, and once that approval weakens, she loses her sense of control.

Ebun’s story shifts this pattern over time. At first, she becomes a single mother because she fears the curse’s promise of abandonment. Later, she builds a steady life for herself without tying her progress to a partner. When Osagie reappears, she does not assume he belongs in her home. She waits to see whether he can fit into the life she has made. Their later marriage happens because she chooses it, not because she needs it for security. By the end of her story, she holds a kind of agency that earlier Falodun women could not reach, one grounded in the life she has shaped for herself.

Eniiyi is the culmination of her female relatives’ struggles and successes. She is ultimately able to choose herself and her own life outside of the Falodun home, and it is only through this choice that the family curse is broken. Because Eniiyi is able to emancipate herself from the self-fulfilling prophecy of loss, abandonment, and tragedy, Ebun and Grandma East are able to leave the Falodun home behind to start a new phase of life with Osagie, and Monife’s spirit is able to finally overcome the curse.