Abstract
So Long a letter had its centre on the romantic pull of erotic impulses on the psyche. It seemed there that romantic love is the central human impulse. So Long a Letter therefore celebrates the pull between eros and psyche limiting the domain of human endeavour. In Scarlet Song Mariama Ba redeems the limitations of romantic enquiry by anchoring it as part of social forces. It is in the second novel that Ba situates love as part of a larger human endeavour subject to social forces. Scarlet Song therefore provides a needed counterpoint to the monologue of self and one dimension a view of So Long A Letter. An omniscient view point on many lives giving a greater density to the novel as a form is the added dimension on narrative continuity in the exploration of the pull of eros and psychic response to it as part of social action. The compelling voice of the 1st person narrator ensuring our sympathy as we travel alongside Ramatoulaye ensures that we share Rama's vision in So Long A Letter. Scarlet Song provides narrative counterpoint. To the monologue effect of So Long a letter, Scarlet Song brings the narrative diversity and variety of exposition of the 3rd person omniscient narrator that is able to do a greater justice to the variety of lives and contrary opinions that people Ba's second novel.
Introduction
The singularity of vision and narrowness of Ramatoulaye's viewpoint in the first novel is countered by the greater variety of lived and larger sympathetic exploration of the second novel. Scarlet Song does not tell as in the letter; it shows many lives and allows the reader to arrive at his own conclusions. Where Ramatoulaye had compelled us to share her vision and values in the letter, Scarlet Song is more catholic in its method allowing no one dominant view; it gives scope for the proper narrative multiplicity of vision that is the novels method as a genre.
Content
Where the letter was a sustained and intense monologue of woman as experiencing self, often a victim in patriarchy suffering from woman's powerlessness, Scarlet Song brings the needed counterpoint. It is a novel from the male viewpoint telling of a man's experience from maternal to erotic love. It is the tension in the growth of Ousmane, male sensitive, loving and devoted son trying to balance the claim of maternal love and the pull of egoistic self.
Ba's narrative retains the sensitivity of female exploration but questions woman's willingness to remain powerless and negate herself in love. The unifying motif in both novels is the exploration of love, which Ramatoulaye described as the spice of life. "The flavour of life is love. The salt of life is also love (Letter 3). In the first novel Ba establishes the important emotive quality of romantic love as sharing a unified vision in confronting the world. It is the break down of this romantic vision that gives pathos to Ramatoulaye's long letter recounting the breakdown of an ideal love. It is therefore essentially a woman's story full of illusion and male betrayal. It is from one dimensional but it is a story of self that woman needed to tell her past history of voiceless and self enforcement.
Ba's narrative retains the sensitivity of female exploration but questions woman's willingness to remain powerless and negate herself in love. The unifying motif in both novels is the exploration of love, which Ramatoulaye described as the spice of life. "The flavour of life is love. The salt of life is also love (Letter 3). In the first novel Ba establishes the important emotive quality of romantic love as sharing a unified vision in confronting the world. It is the break down of this romantic vision that gives pathos to Ramatoulaye's long letter recounting the breakdown of an ideal love. It is therefore essentially a woman's story full of illusion and male betrayal. It is from one dimensional but it is a story of self that woman needed to tell her past history of voiceless and self enforcement.
Conclusion
"The street! It was life and light" p.4. The road helps him and review his life, a life of hardship, and handwork "work is the only path to self advancement". give the The road and the poor quarters challenge reality of the making of Ousmane, man who faces the of creating himself in striving. It is a story of man as achieving self, mastering and reconciling himself with his environment. The romantic love for Mireille was therefore not the ideal meeting of two independent selves. It was the annexation of Mireille the eternal woman by Ousmane, the achieving male. The pattern of annexation of an entity by another stronger psyche was to repeat itself. Mireille as woman did not enter matrimony with the integrity of herself as independent. She formally renounced her religion, her country and her home. Like dependent woman she is happy to be annexed in love, as if love is an all consuming preoccupation. Ousmane's male realism shows the fallacy of female fixation in eroticism. Love is an aspect of man's many endeavour and he naturally moves to gratify other appetites. The road and its eternal winding promise is the proper metaphor introducing and elaborating male endeavour as legitimate human endeavour
References
Ba, mariama So Long a Letter. Trans. Modupe Bode - Thomas. New Horn: Ibadan, 1987. Scarlet Song. Trans. Dorothy Blair, London: Essex, 1981. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Trans. H.M. Parshley. Middlesex: Penguin, 1976..