Ramatoulaye’s husband didn’t tell her he was marrying again: he left one morning, saying “I’ll be back late.” He hadn’t even admitted that he was attracted to his daughter’s friend, that he was “courting” her. Yet, it seemed the option of polygamy was a horrible betrayal of the first marriage. It reflects differences in character and capacity for feeling. Their marriage was not easy before the second wife entered the picture.
She is not ignorant of the difficulties that are in marriage. (It could be argued that Aissatou’s husband could have refused to marry the relative, and so he was selfish too.) Although both are betrayals of the intimacy in the marriage, it seems to me that Ramatoulaye’s husband betrayed her far more, for his second wife was taken purely for selfish motives. Ramatoulaye’s husband took for a second wife a teenage girl, the best friend of their oldest daughter. Aissatou’s husband took for a second wife a young woman that they both knew, a distant relative that his mother had raised.
We don’t learn a lot about Aissatou: the story is mostly Ramatoulaye’s, for she is the one who stayed with her husband, dealing with the pain of repeated rejection. Aissatou’s own husband also took a second wife after years of marriage unlike Ramatoulaye, she left her husband and created her own life.
Ramatoulaye’s wound is not related her husband’s recent death, but rather the pain that comes from his rejection of her in the form of taking a second wife after twenty-five years of marriage. Ramatoulaye’s passionate outpourings seem to beg Aissatou to try to understand her decisions, even while she tries to come to terms with them herself. In some ways, Ramatoulaye is every woman. Yet, I related to Ramatoulaye’s pain, her quandary, and her desire for something better. I have never been betrayed by my husband or felt direly alone in the world. I have never had to face the difficult questions of parenting and motherhood that Ramatoulaye faces. Obviously, I have never been a woman in Senegal forced to live in a polygamous situation. Nevertheless, the outcomes, both negative and positive, are evident in the women’s realistic responses to their situations. In an expert way, she doesn’t judge the choices her fictional characters make. Mariama Ba writes of the conflicts these women face in their modern (1970s and 1980s) world with detail, passion, understanding, and sensitivity. So begins So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba (first published 1980, translated from the French by Modupé Bodé-Thomas), the personal (fictional) diary of the Senegalese woman Ramatoulaye, written as an extended letter to her best friend Aissatou, who has long lived in the United States. I may receive compensation for any purchased items. Posts written from review copies are labeled. Note: I occasionally accept review copies from the publisher.
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