Number 22 July 2000
Reclaiming the Voice of Colonized African Women in Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter
Rachel Brooks
Peter Barry identifies as one of the major aims of Postcolonial criticism the rejection of "the claims to universalism made on behalf of canonical Western literature" and more specifically "to show its limitations of outlook, especially its general inability to empathize across boundaries of cultural and ethnic difference" (198). Although Bâ's intentions are not primarily anti-colonial, her novel So Long a Letter exemplifies how African literature provides a different perspective of their culture, and despite not fitting the model of the English canon, is valuable and significant on its own terms. Bâ is not writing in defence of Africa. She is writing about Africa, and gender and class are much more fundamental to her work than race. It can be argued that rather than writing back to Empire, she is writing back to African male authors on behalf of African women, reclaiming the voice that has been previously denied to them.
Mariama Bâ was born into an influential Senegalese family in 1929. She was one of the first women to receive a Western education in Senegal. Reared by her maternal grandparents in a traditional Muslim household, she attended school only by the grace of her father, who had a strong vision of the future for his daughter. Bâ attended the French School in Dakar and went on to study at the École Normal in Rufisque, entering with the highest exam score in all of French West Africa, graduating in 1947. She experienced life under colonialism, and also witnessed firsthand the events surrounding Senegal's independence from France, which was granted on April 4, 1960.1 Taking the social and political context from which Bâ is writing into consideration, it is not difficult to identify the parallels that exist between her and Ramatoulaye.
African men and women were united in the fight against colonialism under Empire, but with independence achieved, the division between men and women was often broadened through national sentiments. As Elleke Boehmer has stated, "nationalist movements encouraged their members, who were mostly male, to assert themselves as agents of their own history, as self-fashioning and in control. Women were not so encouraged" (224). Women were excluded from participating to any significant degree in the social changes, and were in this way kept to the margins. In So Long a Letter, Bâ addresses the mechanisms by which women are colonized by the men of their own race. Like Bâ, Ramatoulaye is familiar with the excitement of the liberation in Senegal: "it was the privilege of our generation to be the link between two periods in our history, one of domination, the other of independence. We remained young and efficient, for we were the messengers of a new design. With independence achieved, we witnessed the birth of an anthem and the implantation of a flag" (25). But the changes brought about are not translated into equal opportunities for both men and women; Ramatoulaye and Aissatou must contend with the repercussions of colonialism - - neocolonialist and capitalist politics, and in turn the patriarchal order that is strongly promoted through national rhetoric.2 Daouda Dieng echoes this rhetoric in a conversation with Ramatoulaye: "Women are the nation's primary, fundamental root, from which all else grows and blossoms. Women must be encouraged to take a keener interest in the destiny of the country. Even you who are protesting; you preferred your husband, your class, your children to public life" (61-62). As Nahem Yousaf asserts, Daouda bestows the responsibility of the success of Senegal's future to its women, while at the same time equating the future to the public sphere that is dominated by men. Further, he implies that women have chosen to remain in the private sphere of the family, to make it their own, and that they alone must act as the agents of change.3
Although they originally come from different social classes, Ramatoulaye and Aissatou, as colonized women, share the same struggles. Aissatou is the daughter of a goldsmith, and has entered the middle class elite by attaining an education and through her marriage to Mawdo Bâ, a doctor. Ramatoulaye is born into her status, but like Aissatou, elevates her status as a woman through education. In many ways, both women are active participants in social change in that they have both entered into marriage with partners of their own choice, and have received a Western education which was not readily accessible to all women. Ramatoulaye recalls this time when she and Aissatou were "the first pioneers of the promotion of African women, there were very few of us" (14). But they also "suffered the social constraints and heavy burden of custom" (19). As working women, Ramatoulaye and Aissatou are not released from their domestic duties as wives and mothers, and both women are often subjected to the scrutiny of their in-laws. Aissatou is rejected by her mother-in-law, who is outraged by her son's choice to marry a woman of a lower caste. Ramatoulaye is forced to comply with the family hierarchy by dutifully respecting her mother-in-law, who is primarily concerned with flaunting Modou's social success, which includes Ramatoulaye and their home, to her friends. Bâ reveals through her female characters how classism prevents women from forming a collective in the struggle against colonization, in Africa as elsewhere in the world.
Bâ also illustrates the difficulties women face in identifying with two distinct cultures. Like the author, Ramatoulaye and Aissatou are raised in traditional Muslim households and yet educated in French schools and influenced by Western ideas. Ramatoulaye acknowledges that along with the benefits that have come from her dual identity, a certain degree of uncertainty or instability follows:
We all agreed that much dismantling was needed to introduce modernity within our traditions. Torn between the past and the present, we deplored the 'hard sweat' that would be inevitable. We counted the possible losses. But we knew that nothing would be as before. We were full of nostalgia but were resolutely progressive. (18-19)
Ramatoulaye and her friend are at once part of the colonizers' society and function as the colonized within their community. For these women, the institutions that are integral to Islamic culture, particularly polygamy, replicate colonization within marriage, and their Senegalese community. Ramatoulaye and Aissatou are presented with the news of their husbands' second marriages after the fact and are expected to remain loyal and dutiful wives. While Aissatou bitterly rejects the situation she is faced with, and uses it as an opportunity to seek complete economic and personal independence, Ramatoulaye chooses to remain within the polygamous marriage in the hopes that Modou will uphold his responsibilities as husband.
Writing the letter to Aissatou has a cathartic effect for Ramatoulaye. It serves as a memorial to her late husband, who, along with the pain and betrayal, she can bury in the past.4 It takes the death of her husband for Ramatoulaye to realize that she can no longer accept her marginal role under colonization. Through her anger she gains the courage to reject her suitors' proposals for marriage; she knows that Tamsir's interests in her are purely economic, but Daouda Dieng, who genuinely cares for Ramatoulaye, is also unable to persuade her to marry him. In a letter to Daouda, she explains the reason for her refusal: "Abandoned yesterday because of a woman, I cannot lightly bring myself between you and your family" (68). Irène Assiba d'Almeida suggests that "by taking this stand Ramatoulaye implies that a greater solidarity among women is needed to alleviate the agony women go through in polygamous situations" (164).
The writing of African female authors has only gained recognition and acceptance within the past thirty years. This is in part as a result of the women's movement and the awareness it has raised. This is the case for Mariama Bâ, who was a key figure in the feminist movement in Senegal. Although male and female writers often share the same colonial concerns, Bâ points out that a woman's perspective of her culture can be remarkably different from that of her male counterpart. In addition, women share the same concern of what their role will be within a post-colonial society functioning under Western influence, yet still steeped in tradition. In speaking out on behalf of all women against the excesses or abuses of androcentric institutions, such as polygamy, these writers must also be aware that their work can be taken as a challenge to the entire foundation of their culture. They must offer a balanced account, therefore, that expresses their dissidence while remaining complicit with their culture.5 Ramatoulaye and Aissatou realize that their personal happiness will not come from compromise. In closing her letter to Aissatou, Ramatoulaye expresses the difficulty they face in seeking their own identity: "My heart rejoices each time a woman emerges from the shadows. I know that the field of our gains is unstable, the retention of conquests difficult: social constraints are ever-present, and male egoism resists" (88).
Mariama Bâ clearly demonstrates how colonialism is alive and strong in African society via neocolonialist politics and Islamic culture. But more important, she celebrates the diversity and strength of African women, not in relation to African men or Western women, but in their own right. Despite the varying degrees of colonization that women experience under men, the author identifies the ways in which these women are able to overcome oppression and find a means of articulating their self-identity. The author, like other colonized women, sought a voice of her own through literature, and through this medium reclaims the past for African women. Bâ, quoted in A New Reader's Guide to African Literature, explicitly conveys this desire: "The Black woman in African literature must be given the dimension that her role in the liberation struggles next to men has proven to be hers, the dimension which coincides with her proven contribution to the . . . development of our country" (Zell 358).
NOTES
1. "Mariama Bâ," online, Internet, 5 April 2000 Available HTTP: web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/africana/ba.htm, and "Senegal'" online, Internet, 5 April 2000 Available HTTP: www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbooks/sg.html
2. Boehmer, 224.
3. Yousaf, 89.
4. Yousaf, 91-92, and Rueschmann, 7.
5. Davies, and Fido, 317-319.
WORKS CITED
Bâ, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Trans. Modupé Bodé-Thomas. Oxford: Heinemann, 1981.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995.
Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.
d 'Almeida, Irène Assiba. "The Concept of Choice in Mariama Bâ's Fiction." Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Eds. Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves. Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1986. 161-71.
Carole Boyce, and Elaine Savory Fido. "African Women Writers: Toward a Literary History." A History of Twentieth-Century African Literatures. Ed. Oyekan Owomoyela. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska P., 1993. 311-46.
Rueschmann, Eva. "Female Self-Definition and the African Community in Mariama Bâ's Epistolary Novel So Long a Letter." International Women's Writing: New Landscapes of Identity. Eds. Anne E. Brown and Marjanne E. Goozé. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. 3-18.
Yousaf, Nahem, "The 'Public' versus the 'Private' in Mariama Bâ's Novels." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 30.2 (1995): 85-98.
Zell, Hans, et al. A New Reader's Guide to African Literature. New York: Heinemann, 1983.