'So Long a Letter' - Compare and contrast the lives of Ramatoulaye and Aissatou up to the end of Chapter 16, paying particular attention to their friendship, shared idealism and marriages.

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                                                                                                               KARAN SHAH

                                                                                                               NOVEMBER 2004        

ENGLISH ESSAY

Compare and contrast the lives of Ramatoulaye and Aissatou up to the end of Chapter 16, paying particular attention to their friendship, shared idealism and marriages.

The narrator of ‘So Long a Letter’ is Ramatoulaye, who is writing to her friend Aissatou. Both women’s lives are strikingly similar, or as Ramatoulaye says they ‘developed in parallel.’ Ramatoulaye and Aissatou were friends from the time they were children. They both were well educated and both got married. Both their husbands remarried, which caused both pain and unhappiness. At this point their lives diverge, in the way they deal with their unfaithful husbands and how they change the courses of their lives.

The friendship between Ramatoulaye and Aissatou’s families goes back to the time when their grandmothers would ‘exchange messages daily.’ Ramatoulaye and Aissatou were also always best friends. Both women were well educated and both women choose to become teachers and serve society. As Ramatoulaye says, ‘teachers are a noble army accomplishing daily feats, never praised, never decorated.’ Their friendship and common idealism acts like a thread that ties and unites Ramatoulaye and Aissatou together. Throughout chapters one to sixteen, the intimacy between them is evident. After they got married they would meet on the beach and ‘depression and sadness would disappear, suddenly to be replaced by feelings of plentitude and expansiveness.’

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There were harbingers that suggested that both Aissatou’s and Ramatoulaye’s marriages would fail. Ramatoulaye’s mother didn’t want her to marry Modou; she felt he was ‘too handsome, too polished and too perfect’ a man. In Aissatou’s case, Mawdo’s mother didn’t want a ‘Toucouleur to marry a goldsmith’s daughter.’  In spite of these adversities, both marriages were initially successful. Mawdo ignored his mother and claimed that ‘marriage was a personal thing.’ He loved Aissatou. Similarly, Ramatoulaye was initially infatuated with Modou. As she reminisces, ‘But above all, you knew how to be tender. You could fathom every thought, every desire. You knew ...

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