This essay will focus on the presentation on the Happily ever after notion and marriage in the Columbian culture in Gabriel Marquezs Chronicle of a Death Foretold in comparison to Mariam Bs Senegalese one in So Long a Letter.

Mariama Bâ on the other hand brings out the speciality of marriage as a personal, sentimental celebration of true love disregarding the constraints of society. She illustrates this view of marriage by using conflict in the social class system to describe Aissatou’s controversial marriage to Mawdo Bâ.  Society did not permit the son of a “Guelewar”(Princess of the Sine) to marry a “goldsmiths daughter” yet ironically, Mawdo and Aissatou get married. Mariam Bâ emphasizes her view on marriage by stressing on the rumours surrounding this marriage and the shame and slur Mawdo’s mother would experience as a result of it. No son would bring this upon their mother without any good reason and to sum it up Mawdo stays firm and sticks to his personal opinions when he says “marriage is a personal thing”. This is a perfect reflection of pathos as the reader tends to favour and sympathise with this marriage allowing the author to effectively inflict her point of view on marriage onto the reader; that personal resolve and resolute character are necessary for marriage to succeed albeit, not always.

The two authors seem to agree on the fact that a woman sacrifices her life when tying the holy knot.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes Angela Vicario as “perfect” and “reared to get married” (pg 31) and goes further to suggest that any man will be happy with her and her sisters because “they’ve been raised to suffer”. Gabriel Marquez uses first person narration to his convenience here as these statements are derived from the narrator’s mother giving the sentimental and motherly conviction needed to project what men expected after marriage. This is ironic as the novel is written by a man who noticeably admits the dominance of the male society and the sacrifice women have to give in marriage. The male chauvinism is constantly brought about in the text. In particular, when women are not virgins at the time of marriage it is regarded as a taboo as in the case of Angela Vicario (pg37) however men could be sexually active before marriage. This is brought out as in the case of Santiago Nasar where he constantly visits the brothel of Maria Alejandrina Cervantes (pg78). The author uses magical realism here by describing the whore house in a manner that makes it appear beautiful and the whore, Maria, as “elegant” and “warm” (pg77). And thus, in my opinion this glamorisation is a tragic oxymoron, with the same society unwittingly dehumanised by its propagation of prostitution and men’s’ sexual freedom.

Ramatoulaye says “I loved him, I compromised with his people. I tolerated his sisters…I tolerated their spitting, the phlegm expertly secreted under my carpets.” The sacrifice and tolerance, parallel to Marquez’s views, is another reality behind the happiness and glamour of marriage. The author gives a female perspective of the sacrifice made by getting married- all in the name of blinding love for careless men. She uses pregnant words of antipathy such as “spitting” and “phlegm” to signify the dark excretions of mistreatment that a Senegalese woman would have to endure as sacrifice towards the institution of marriage. The first person narration also allows the reader to see the world from the eyes of Ramatoulaye and thus enforcing empathy from reader to the protagonist.

Love according to Mariam Bâ is the prime necessity to the ideal marriage. She uses hyperbole to describe Modou’s character in detail as “tall”, “athletically built” and even the colour of his skin as “Olive”. Ramatoulaye goes further to add “I knew you were the one I was waiting for.” But later on in the novel she exposes the truth and reality that behind every marriage there does not have to be love. The second marriage of Modou Fall to Binetou is the classic example. Binetou a young girl is   forced into being Modou’s second wife by her mother who uses guilt to make Binetou agree to the marriage in order for her mother’s “life to have a happy end in a proper house.”The author makes this stifling situation look worse by introducing Binetou as Ramatoulaye’s daughter’s close friend and then in the span of a few paragraphs, Binetou has a new title as Ramatoulaye’s “co-wife”.  This acceleration of the plot is very satirical as it assists the author in laying out an attack on second marriages which she strongly disapproves. Thus, the crude reality is brought out aptly that circumstance, in many a case, prevails over love when it comes to marriage.

Marriage without love is thrown at the reader very early on in Chronicle of a Death Foretold by describing the protagonist Santiago Nasar’s existence as being a result of a “marriage of convenience that hadn’t had a single instant of happiness.”  Gabriel Marquez then brings about the forced marriage of Angela Vicario to Bayardo san Roman. Angela’s parents’ argument in favour of the marriage is that “a family dignified by modest means had no right to disdain that prize of destiny”.  Had Angela suggested that she had no love, her mother would have shot down her thoughts with the phrase “love can be learned to.” This event which corresponds with the marriage of Binetou in So Long a Letter shows that for wealth, the daughters are ‘sold’ by their families into marriages without love for the ‘ happiness’ of their families. “Happiness” in marriage in both So Long a Letter and Chronicle of a Death Foretold refers to the wealth and financial stability the respective families will get from marrying their daughters off, thematically emphasizing the varied selfish interests driving the attraction to marriage.

In conclusion one can see the various similarities and differences in the portrayal of marriage in Gabriel Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Mariam Bâ’s So Long a Letter. The two authors show immaculate literary skills such as the use of symbolism and in the case of Gabriel Marques, magical realism, to expose the painful charade and façade behind the 'happily ever after' mask in marriage.