If Aïssatou symbolizes female intransigence, Ramatoulaye represents compromise, or so it would appear. She is abandoned after twenty-five years of marriage. Her eldest daughter, the intrepid, revolutionary type named Daba, is totally in favour of divorce from her inhuman father. But Ramatoulaye hesitates, then decides against divorce. She stays in the family home with her children, while Modou moves to the new house with Binetou. A case of the victim accepting her situation? Not so, insists the heroine, because the 'letter' that constitutes the novel being studied, a 'point of support in [her] anguish', is a form of vengeance. The text is written after Modou's death; it therefore also represents, as the narrator affirms, 'confidential information that drowns distress'. Not for Modou the sweet memories of his widow, nor the valediction based on the departed soul's.....
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