Senegalese Stereotypes in So Long a Letter Anonymous 11th Grade

Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter depicts the life of a newly widowed Ramatoulaye who writes a letter to her childhood best friend Aissatou, describing her life as a co-wife and an oppressed woman in the Senegalese culture and tradition. By writing the novel in an epistolary form, the author indicates that women are silenced and do not have the right to publically express their outcry against injustice. Bâ’s epistolary novel, with the use of indirect characterization, reinforces the significant negative stereotypes of wives, husbands, and mothers to highlight the inequality in a Senegalese society. In So Long a Letter, female characters are conveyed as victims of the Senegalese societal patriarchy. The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Ramatoulaye Fall, is viewed as a stereotypical Senegalese woman that is silenced and oppressed by her community and society’s accepted norms.

In the novel, which uses an epistolary form, Ramatoulaye evokes her memories of her failed marriage post her husband Modou’s death. Modou Fall married a younger woman as his second wife without the consent of his first wife. Although she does not display it, Ramatoulaye’s constant suffering overwhelms her responsibilities since as well as her “former...