Home » Senegal » Mariama Bâ » Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter)
Mariama Bâ: Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter)
As the title tells us, this novel is in the form of a letter from Ramatoulaye Fall to her dear friend Aissatou. Both have had marital problems but, in this letter, it is Ramatoulaye telling her friend about the sudden death of her husband Modou Fall from a heart attack.
While she is devastated and, as we shall see, not just because of the loss of a husband, we also learn that she has had twelve children with him. Then suddenly, he took a second much younger wife, who was still at school and, indeed, a friend of their daughter. Despite polygamy being legal and still practised, she was, not surprisingly not happy with his decision. It got worse as she stayed in the marital home while he built a fancy home for himself and his new wife and the woman Ramatoulaye calls Lady Mother-in-Law. As he has a very good job, he can easily afford the mortgage but the mortgage is secured by a lien on the house where Ramatoulaye lives.
There seem quite a few complex traditions associated with the death and funeral. The first one she does not like is that her co-wife, Binetou, has to come and stay with her during the drawn out ceremonies. However there are ceremonies at the time over a few days and then on the eighth and fortieth days. A lot of money changes hand as money is given and money taken away. This is the moment dreaded by every Senegalese woman, the moment when she sacrifices her possessions as gifts to her family-in-law.
Ramatoulaye goes back to when they met and Aissatou also met his friend (they married but are now divorced). He went to France but missed Senegal and Senegalese women and returned with a law degree. They married, though her mother warned her against him: she found you too handsome, to polished, too perfect for a man. She now realises that her mother was rught. He did well in his career. You preferred obscure work, less well paid but constructive for your country, to the showiness of the lawyer.
Back in the present, one of the traditional ceremonies is that the deceased’s intimate secrets are exposed to the group and, of course, Ramatoulaye has a field day about his abandonment of her and his twelve children. He mapped out his future without taking our existence into account.
The children had all encouraged her to leave him when he married Binetou but she declined. She is now, obviously not as well-off as she was and while Binetou and her mother go around in a fancy car, spending freely, she has to take the crowded bus.
however we also learn about the changing role of women in Senegal. Ramatoulaye receives two proposals after the various funeral ceremonies. The first is from Modou’s brother who virtually considers it as his divine right. She quickly declines. She also receives a proposal from a suitor before she married Modou. He is a doctor and also a member of parliament. Hr wants to show her how women have progressed by saying that there are now women members of parliament she points out that of the one hundred MPs, only four are women.
However women do seem to have progressed. Polygamy, of course still exists and this is not the first book on this site where a woman criticises polygamy. However though Bâ does criticise it, she also focusses on other issues such as women’s education. However it has niot been easy. Because, being the first pioneers of the promotion of African women, there were very few of us. Men would call us
scatter-brained. Others labelled us devils.
We see the issues with her own daughters. The husband of Daba, her eldest daughter helps with the housework. Daba is my wife. She is not my slave, nor my servant. She catches three of her daughters smoking and is really tested when one of them, still at school, is pregnant.
This was a ground-breaking feminist novel in Senegal and Bâ clearly makes the case for women to be equal with men and condemns not only sexist men but the women who support such male systems as polygamy.
Publishing history
First published in 1979 by Nouvelles Editions Africanes
First English translation in 1981 by Heinemann
Translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas