Robert Arnold
3/26/12
So Long a Letter Microtheme
A Different Kind of Courage
Mawdo and Mawbo both married new young
wives – for completely different reasons. Mawdo married out of duty, Mawbo out
of love. Ramatoulaye and Aissatou are both pressured by custom to stay in their
marriages. Aissatou leaves. Ramatoulaye stays. Although Ramatoulaye is
technically conforming to the cultural norm, it takes a special kind of courage
– and a nose for revenge – to actually stay.
Rama displays
great courage in staying in her marriage. Although she obviously respects Aissatou’s
strength, which causes her to leave and live alone, and knew that in her newly
‘liberated’ society, she would be welcome and even encouraged to follow that
path, she chose to stay. And so she faces the stares in the movie theatre, the
other men in line to pay utilities, all of the little humiliations, not with
her head high because she is a startling example of the ‘new woman,’ but
because she is who she is. She loves her husband. She cares for her kids. She
champions an ideal of marriage. But mostly, she will not be who she is not,
although she is certainly very contradictory!
She dreams of
a traditional marriage, yet rejects a traditional suitor. She refuses to marry
without love (a Western ideal of love, mind you), yet remains in a loveless
marriage. She celebrates the ‘new African woman’ yet reacts in horror to
cigarettes. This is natural to anyone living in ‘betweentimes’, when the world
(or at least our individual world) is undergoing massive changes, and culture
is still not sure what it values. It takes strong character and not a little
courage to not only work through those contradictions but learn to value them
as expressions of who we are – and therefore to live by them. Ramatoulaye has
that kind of courage.
