Moudo followed his inner lust, betrayed Ramatoulaye whom age and twelve childbirths had left shapeless, for Binetou.
“I had lost my slim figure, as well as ease and quickness of movement. My stomach protruded from beneath the wrapper that hid the calves…........... Suckling had robbed my breasts of their round firmness. I could not delude myself: youth was deserting my body.”
The above quote, to me, showed why Moudo raced after Binetou. The sheer power of the woman’s looks caused the break up of his family, one which he had kept for twenty five years.
‘A quarter of a century in marriage’, ' a wife unparalleled '.
Once Moudo and Ramatoulaye started living separately we see how difficult life gets for Ramatoulaye. Money becomes a problem, Raising twelve children became difficult, all in all, her life is totally shattered. In the text we see how she as the only parent, encounters numerous difficulties but in the end she gets used to them and combats them appropriately.
In Chekhov’s selection of short stories we see the theme of treachery and suffering in many of his stories. In Agafya, treachery or betrayal is brought about by the same reason, Sexual thirst. In Agafya, Savka is described as a tall, handsome, and as strong as a horse, who women find tremendously attractive. Agafya is young and newly married to Yakov, the railway signalman. In the text we see how desperate Agafya if to quench her sexual thirst due to the fact that she does not return home even after hearing the train go by (The train which brings her husband home). Even after this she stays on determined to accomplish what she came to Savka for. She knows very well the consequence of her not returning immediately she hears the train. She fights with her internal virtue and makes up her mind to stay. She would wait for Savka to return from the bush and then go back to her husband in the morning after satisfying her sexual thirst.
‘Well, where is he?’ she said laughing nervously……… I’m going. I’m not going to wait another minute for him, sir.’
‘I’ll wait another minute,’ Agafya said with a sigh, sitting down determinedly. ‘So be it. I’ll wait.’
The two quotes above really show the dilemma she is going through. She wants to satisfy herself but also hide it from her husband. Thus if we interpret the real meaning for her visit, we see the determination to satisfy her sexual thirst made her commit adultery and in essence betray her husband. Her husband is truly shocked to see her return to him from the direction of the allotments where only Savka lives. Agafya’s one act of sexual satisfaction caused her to betray her husband. To me the mere fact that she is young and newly married shows the eagerness she had to satisfy her thirst and her determinism in waiting for Savka to return shows how sexual relations are a fertility to treachery.
In So Long a Letter we also see Jacqueline the Ivorian. She has disobeyed her parents and married Samba Diak. This to me was the biggest mistake she made in life. As we learn later her husband started multiple affairs and was in no way bothered to hide it. As other men in the novel he was looking for “Adventure”. The clear act of betrayal was too much for Jacqueline to bear and it had and immediate effect on her health and mind. The lump she complained of was a clear show of “A broken heart”.
“Jacqueline lost weight…………He too prescribed tranquillizers, big, effervescent tablets that could not allay poor Jacqueline’s distress.”
The agonising pain she went through was all because of treachery. In the text we see how test after test increased her magnitude of pain and medicine after medicine both traditional and western did not change her condition. Bâ also descriptively describes how her physical complexion changed.
“Her beautiful but neglected black hair, through which no comb had passed ever since she began consulting doctor after doctor…… …mixture of roots we poured on her.”
If we look at Ninochka in Chekhov’s selection of short stories, we see that she too is an “Adventurous” type like Samba Diak. She being married is having a sexual affair with her husband, Vikhlyenev’s friend. And as she has someone else beside her husband, she finds it amusing to torture her husband any time she pleases. I think of her as a cat and her husband as the mouse. As life goes on, Vikhlyenev finds out the truth about the affair. The pain of the betrayal was too much to bear and the descriptive way in which Chekhov puts the torturing and heartbreak, makes one feel the pain.
“And he began to turn from side to side on the sofa in an agonising way….”
After the pain has gone, it is ludicrous as well as pitiful as to what happens to Vikhlyenev. He and his friend decide that he (Vikhlyenev) is to move into the storeroom, a dark and damp room. While his friend
could come and see Ninochka any time he liked. Personally I felt this man has been eternally slaughtered by what his wife had done to him. He loved her so much yet she did this to him. Hence, when he was shifted to the store room, he didn’t complain. Personally after reading his description and understanding the magnitude of love he had for his wife, I felt sorry for him.
In So Long a Letter, Mawdo Bâ, husband to Aissatou also betrays his wife not really on the basis of treachery but on an ethical perspective. From the novel we see that Mawdo loved Aissatou very much by the fact that he was a prince but chose to marry a goldsmith’s daughter. The problems in this marriage were really caused by Mawdos mother, Aunty Nabou. As she was a princess, the introduction of a goldsmith’s daughter was a real embracement to her in front of her former co wives. As her pride was wounded, she planned revenge against Aissatou. She bred a wife for Mawdo and got him ‘forcefully” married to her. I think it was forceful because of the way she made him marry Young Nabou. It was persuasive yet thoroughly saturated with emotional black mail. From these two quotes one can visualise the love Mawdo had for his mother.
‘I will never get over it if you don’t take her as your wife. Shame kills faster than disease.’
As Mawdos mother was a princess he deeply felt the words his mother spoke to him and agreed to marry young Nabou even though Aissatou was still there.
“It was ’so as not to see his mother die of shame and chagrin’ that Mawdo agreed to go to the redez-vous of the wedding night.”
Personally I think he chose mother over wife because ‘blood is thicker than water’,
“And did he really want to fight, to make a gesture of resistance? Young Nabou was so tempting…”
From the above quote, I put myself into question. Why did mawdo do this? Was it to obey his mothers will or was it to get more variety. If it is the latter then he betrayed his wife. But if it was to obey his mother due to authority, then he is justified in what he did. I have assumed that he did not know that the real reason his mother got him married to Nabou is unknown to him. But if he knew about it and he still married Young Nabou, then he has definitely betrayed his wife.
Looking at both these texts, I would conclude that in some ways Sexual Relations are a Fertility of Treachery and a cause to suffering. After analysing the texts, I have come to see that, there are other factors too that can cause dichotomising of couples and suffering. I therefore think it truly depends on the people and the environment a couple lives in; if Binetou was not in the same school as Daba, Ramatoulaye would still have Moudo as her husband.
References
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American Heritage Talking Dictionary. Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
- Bâ Mariama, So Long a Letter, Heinemann African Writers Series, West Africa, 1981
- Chekhov Anton, A selection of Short Stories,
Bâ Mariama,So Long a Letter, Page 35
Bâ Mariama,So Long a Letter, Page 35
Chekhov Anton, A selection of short stories, Page 21
Chekhov Anton, A selection of short stories, Page 27
Bâ Mariama,So Long a Letter, Page 42
Chekhov’s selection of short stories page 49
Bâ Mariama,So Long a Letter, Page 30
Bâ Mariama,So Long a Letter, Page 42