The Personal and the Political in the Work of Mariama Bâ

In her two novels, Une si longue lettre and Un Chant ecarlate, Mariama Bâ describes how political as well as domestic problems develop from the tensions between tradition and the modern world. Desire for power and money leads to a post-independence society, in which greed motivates politicians and in which a woman is treated as merchandise to be purchased by the richest man. Adherence to a supposed ideal pre-colonial community, however, can lead to both the subjugation of women and political isolation. Bâ wants a morality based on respect for others, and a willingness to discard those traditions that inhibit such respect. She is critical of any separatism, between man and woman, black and white, European and African. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol18/iss2/4 The Personal and the Political in the Work of Mariama Ba Adele King Ball State University While the slogan "the personal is the political" is a commonplace of contemporary Western feminism, many American and European novels that relate personal to political issues seem thin or unaware of problems beyond a narrow range of middle-class experience. Mariama Ba, however, addresses both women's issues-those she defined as emanating from a "woman's cry" that has a "certain unity" everywhere in the world (Cham 89)-and political concerns in Senegal. Issues include the relations between men and women and the relations ofpost-colonial societies to pre-modern traditions. She describes the tensions felt by women educated in modern schools but expected to accept roles in polygamous extended families. A desire to "return to traditions" after independence leads, she feels, not only to the subjugation of women but also to corruption and a dangerous political conservatism. Raising questions of what is best for both individuals and the state in independent Senegal gives a moral depth to Ba's work. In her two novels-Une si longue lettre and Un Chant ecarlate Ba links the strength ofthe family to the strength ofthe country; each must support the other.' Une si longue lettre addresses the conflicting claims in women's lives of family and profession, of self-sacrifice and selffulfillment, of love and individual dignity. These conflicts are related to the political dilemmas facing contemporary Senegal. In Un Chant ecarlate, the disintegration of an interracial marriage is both a personal tragedy and a political tragedy, since it is caused by a perversion of the ideals of Negritude into a black racism. Although Simone de Beauvoir sees parallels between the situation of women and that of blacks, most Africans, as Mineke Schipper has observed, do not (40). African men seldom sympathize with white female characters in their novels; they seldom see African women as being 1 King: The Personal and the Political in the Work of Mariama Bâ Published by New Prairie Press 178 STCL, Volume 18, No. 2 (Summer, 1994) doubly victims. Since male dominance is considered a colonial importation, women should be content with their traditional, precolonial roles. Feminism is also imported; if African women complain, they are being anti-African. For Femi Ojo-Ade the "true African woman" is always in solidarity with her man, since "male chauvinism" is a "Western way" ("Female Writers" 176). "Femininity is the virtue of the traditionalist; feminism, the veneer of the progressive striving to become a man" ("Victim" 84). Until recently, few African women writers or intellectuals were willing to embrace feminism; even Mariama Ba denied being a feminist. This is partly a result of male intimidation, as Molara Ogundipe-Leslie suggests (11), and also because feminism is too often equated with an aggressive bourgeois individualism on the part of a small elite of women who opt for radical separatism or who denigrate motherhood. In Tigray (northern Ethiopia) "feminism is defined within the context of capitalist power relations. They see it at worst as separatist in the terms of radical feminism; at best ... as actually or potentially divisive of the struggle of women and men against the real enemy" (Hammond 57-58). Yet these are women striving to overcome a traditional culture especially oppressive of women, who have never been encouraged "to trust to class struggle as the sole means of liberating themselves" (Hammond 58). We cannot, of course, compare the situation of working class women activists in Ethiopia with that of Mariama Ba, but the distrust of feminism, seen as primarily a movement in Western capitalist countries, is somewhat similar. We may define feminism as a recognition that women are always in a subordinate position and as a concern for improving the place of women in society. With such a broad definition of feminism, Ba would perhaps have agreed. In any case, it is clear from her work that she does not consider an attack on male domination to be anti-African.' As the narrators of her novels often point out, the unequal relationship man/ woman is both more universal and more essential to the structure of society than any unequal class or race relationship. The third-world woman has a difficult job balancing the need to fight on two fronts at once: against Western racial and cultural discrimination and against male claims of superiority. However, as Susie Tharu, an Indian feminist, has commented: "the question of which victimization takes precedence is only academic" (213). Tharu's analysis of the particular place of women in modern Indian culture has relevance for Africa. The nationalists in India made the mythological figure of Savriti a symbol of the woman who voluntarily chooses suffering and death in order to redeem her people. Thus woman 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 18, Iss. 2 [1994], Art. 4 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol18/iss2/4 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1348