Modern women writers: Essay on So Long a Letter, by Mariama Bâ

Résumé du document

"Par l'écriture, [les femmes africaines] signent leur premier acte de rébellion contre ces sociétés qui ont toujours fait d'elles de simples spectatrices". In this sentence, the author shows that writing is a form of emancipation for African women. In the context of decolonization of the second part of the 20th century, African women started to talk about problems of women especially with the constraints of religion and the weight of the society. Mariama Bâ, a Senegalese educated author, is in keeping with this wave of what we can call feminism. In her first novel "So Long a Letter? she engages with the theme of cultural conflict especially in her representation of the main character Ramatoulaye. The character is depicted as being born in a society torn between tradition and the modernizing notions that colonialism brought.

Extraits

[...] She sometimes thinks that destiny is a fixed reality, impossible to avoid. On the contrary, Aissatou, who seeks freedom as well, decides to fly to the United States to live her life as she wants. Ramatoulaye is progressive but not radical as her friend. They both have gone through the same experience but they react differently. The main character doesn't believe in happiness outside marriage whereas Aissatou does that may be why one goes but the other one stays. Aissatou's decision to divorce her husband demonstrates a rejection of the polygamous tradition much more strongly than Ramatoulaye's one. [...]

[...] Bibliography Bâ, Mariama So Long a Letter (London: Heinemann, 1989) Boyce Davis, Carole; Adams Graves, Anne. Editors Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1986) D'Almeida, Irène Assibe. Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994) Hitchcott, Nicki. Women Writers in Francophone Africa (Oxford: Berg, 2000) Ibnlfassi, Laila; Hitchcott, Nicki. Editors. African Francophone Writing: a critical introduction (Oxford: Berg, 1994) Stratton, Florence. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender (London: Routledge, 1994) Ouédrago,Angèle Bassolé. [...]

[...] (1979) So Long a Letter, Macmillan Education p16 Op.cit p 88 Op.cit p 41 Op.cit p 32 Stratton, Florence. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender (London: Routledge, 1994) Mariama Bâ. [...]

[...] Indeed, traditional values such as religious ones are almost never questioned by Ramatoulaye. The fundamental precepts of Islam are never brought into question even when she tends to want changes for her society. She often refers to the Koran in her letter and she doesn't believe in medicines that she calls” ridiculous weapons against the divine will”[6]. In this society, education is linked with religion. Consequently, as an educated woman, Ramatoulaye respects the principles of religion. Moreover, Nicki Hitchcott pretends that “Bâ's texts suggest that a woman cannot resist the historically sanctioned practices of patriarchy, for such strength comes from the collective memory of the shared experiences of women”[7].The question of the family is also a great deal in her society. [...]

[...] According to her, the aim of the new African women is appreciate multitude civilization without denying ours” in order to “cultivate personality” and to “develop universal values in This is what she wants to teach her children because it is the way of being happy to her and to get freedom. Thus she could be associated to the feminism wave in the sense. Ramatoulaye really wants to be a modern woman, conscious of her rights, with the strong will to get change and freedom but without renouncing her customs. She represents the African woman torn between modernity and tradition. She belongs to a wave of women who try to understand the reason of submittal of her mothers not to condemn them but not to fall in the same traps. [...]