So Long a Letter

Aissatou is Ramatoulaye’s best friend of many years. She is the daughter of a humble goldsmith and, like Rama, attended a teacher training college before moving on to work in a school. Though Rama remarks how alike the two women are, in many ways, Aissatou acts as a foil to Rama’s choices. Whereas Rama stays with her polygamous husband, accepting his betrayal and abandonment with quiet grace, Aissatou leaves her own husband when he takes a second wife. Whereas Rama stays in her small community, Aissatou embarks to America, where she gets a job at the Senegalese embassy. Where Rama is introspective and keeps her cards close to her chest, Aissatou is direct and outspoken. Above all, Rama praises Aissatou for her kindness and generosity. It is Aissatou who supports Rama emotionally, through their correspondence, and it is Aissatou who buys Rama the “cream-colored Fiat” (57) that enables Rama’s new independence. It is an act of true friendship that Rama never forgets. “You,” she writes, “the goldsmith’s daughter, gave me your help while depriving yourself” (56). 

Modou is Rama’s husband, whose death is the catalyst for Rama’s ritual seclusion and long letter to Aissatou. Rama loves Modou deeply; in his youth he was “Tall and athletically built” (13) with “Moorish blood” (13). Rama describes her husband as “tender” (13) and admires his distaste for white women as he studies for his law degree in France. This kindness and caring is what makes his eventual abandonment of Rama so painful. She recalls that her mother always thought Modou “too honest” (39) and remarked on the gap in his teeth. His pursuit of Binetou, Rama says, is due to his “strong will, his tenacity before an obstacle, the pride he invests in winning…” (40). Binetou is the prize to be won, as Rama once was. 

Mawdo is Aissatou’s husband, a local doctor. He is from a very prominent family, a descendant of royalty, which makes his marriage to Aissatou a true love match, and a source of scandal. “Mawdo remained firm” (17) in his love for Aissatou and defends her at every opportunity. Their happy life is destroyed by the scheming of Mawdo’s mother, who dislikes Aissatou for her low birth. She adopts a child and raises her specifically to be Mawdo’s second wife. Mawdo, though he loves Aissatou and has no special feelings for the young girl, values his family: “My mother is old,” he tells Aissatou. “If I spurn this child, she will die” (31). He has the courage and grace to speak to his wife directly, something Modou does not. When Aissatou leaves him, he grieves her loss, whereas Modou abandons Rama without shame: “His sadness was clearly evident” (34). 

Aunty Nabou is Mawdo’s mother and, for a time, Aissatou’s mother-in-law. She is a dignified but snobbish woman, descended from a line of Senegalese royalty. She “lived in the past, unaware of the changing world” (26). She is deeply angered by her son’s choice of wife, as she considers Aissatou, the daughter of a simple goldsmith, to be beneath her and she conspires to drive the couple apart. She travels to her hometown and adopts a young, distantly related girl, then raises this child for the sole purpose of marrying Mawdo. Aunty Nabou is highly traditional, believing that women need little education. She eventually succeeds in her goal, and Mawdo’s decision to bend to his mother’s whim shows that he values his family more than he values Aissatou and her happiness. 

Young Nabou is the girl Aunty Nabou adopts to raise as Mawdo’s second wife. Her childhood is spent under Aunty’s strict control, and her name is even changed to reflect her relationship to Aunty Nabou. After she marries Mawdo, Rama reports that she is a kind and generous woman, giving food and clothes to visitors. She possesses “softness and generosity, docility and politeness, poise and tact” (49). Rama sees this girl as someone who rose above her own victimhood, becoming “responsible and aware” (50), just as Rama and Aissatou are. 

Binetou is Modou’s second wife, and therefore Rama’s sister-wife. She is much younger than Rama, a contemporary and former friend of Rama’s eldest daughter. Rama describes her as “a bit shy, frail” but notes that “Her beauty shone, pure.” Binetou is under the strict control of her mother, a poor woman who hopes to see her daughter’s status elevated through marriage. She reluctantly enters into a polygamous marriage with Modou and finds married life to an older man difficult. Where once she had been “Beautiful, lively, kindhearted, intelligent” (50), she becomes “bitter”. In the end, she remains a victim, widowed young and without good prospects. She serves to show the reader that all women are victims of polygamy, not only the cast-aside first wives. 

Daouda Dieng is Rama’s two-time suitor. He pursues her once before her marriage to Modou, when they are very young, and once again after Modou’s death. Rama describes him as a charming young man who “knew how to win hearts” (17) with thoughtful, useful gifts. After he calls on Rama during her seclusion, she notes that he has “kept himself well” (62) and that he continues to be thoughtful and interesting, debating feminism and Senegal’s future with Rama. And yet, when rejected, he takes Rama’s refusal of marriage hard. While she writes him a heartfelt, lengthy letter, he scrawls a five-word answer on a piece of scrap paper. For all his good qualities, Daouda is thin skinned.