Lutz is an instructor at New York University and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay she discusses the differences among the polygamous marriages in So Long a Letter.
Two of the plot lines in Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter center around the effect of polygamy. In a letter written to her friend Aissatou Bâ, Ramatoulaye Fall describes how her husband, Moudou Fall, fell in love with a young woman. Moudou eventually takes this woman, Binetou, as his second wife. In the course of this very long letter, Ramatoulaye also remembers the circumstances surrounding Aissatou's divorce of her husband, Mawdo Bâ. Mawdo, obeying the commands of his mother, had married Young Nabou, a woman who shared his noble heritage. Refusing to be relegated to the status of "co-wife," Aissatou.....
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