So Long a Letter Essay Example

children not having a father stops her from doing so as said: “Leave? Start again at zero, after living twenty-five years with one man, after having borne twelve children” (41). The fact that she does not accept the second marriage and anticipates leaving Modou embraces a modern feminist outlook. Ramatoulaye, who decides that she loves her husband too much to divorce him, tells Aissatou, “I had prepared myself for equal sharing, according to the precepts of Islam concerning polygamic life” (46).

But, she never gets a chance to see if she can endure the “humiliation” of sharing her husband because Modou abandons her and her children altogether. She is outraged of the betrayal Modou did upon their family since now she and her children have no financial support whatsoever all due to Binetou. With Aissatou, because of tradition her husband, Mawdo, is obligated to marry his cousin Young Nabou since both share the same noble heritage. Mawdo obeys the commands of his mother to marry Nabou to save her and his family from humiliation.

Aissatou does not believe in polygamy and divorced as soon as Mawdo married. She also left him a letter explaining her actions of leaving and never returned to Senegal. When Modou takes in his second wife without Ramatoulaye’s knowledge, he began to reject his first marriage of twenty-five years with Ramatoulaye and her children. After being rejected by her husband, she must still carry on the role of being a mother (now as a single mother).

Ramatoulaye devotes her time and effort to her children since she finds, “joy and sadness together: joy in being loved by my

children, the sadness of a mother who does not have the means to change the course of events” (56). She is still getting used to being on her own as a single mother but knows her children come first before anything. As for Aissatou, she thought divorcing was the best idea for herself and her children to provide better lives for them.

She does not want her children to experience the pain of polygamy so she later leaves Senegal with her four sons and moves to the United States to start over. Ramatoulaye and Aissatou’s family in many ways did not work in the way they both wanted to. For the love of their husbands, both had to make tough decisions that affected their children as well. Both women who seeked to marry for love was stumbled upon by tradition, Ramatoulaye because her husband manipulated the laws of Islam to satisfy the lust born of a mid-life crisis, and Aissatou because her husband followed the commands of his mother.