Language in Feminist Literature: A Study of Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter
Chapter One
Objective of the study
The aim of this is to identify how Mariama Ba uses language to portray feminism – the reaction of females against the oppressive and discriminatory culture experienced by them – in her novel So Long a Letter.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Language and Feminism
The struggle to rejuvenate the wounded dignity of African womanhood has been a dominating theme over the years. The situation still prevails even in this age of modernism. The African women have to fight against an oppressive culture and its attendant discrimination against their sex in order to survive. The oppressive nature of the African culture sparked off the reaction termed feminism, which is one of the prominent ideologies that have continued to attract critical attention all over the world. A number of writers have attempted to analyze the ideology from different perspectives and this has led to the prevalence of many theories of feminism.
This chapter discusses:
- The relationship between language and behavior.
- Characteristic features of male and female language.
- Meaning of feminism.
- Theories of feminism.
The Relationship Between Language and Behaviour
Olajuyigbe (8) defines language as a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures or marks which have understood meaning. It is a system of conventional vocal or graphic symbols by which human beings co-operate. This co-operation cuts across the various domains in which people relate with one another.
Osakwe (128) explains that the language we use is very powerful and loaded. It is usually the only genetically endowed information storage system that humans have. This implies that all our experiences and memories are, to a large extent, encoded in some language system. She highlights that great linguists and psycholinguists have established that language and behavior are related. The language we speak clearly reflects the very way we think and behave. That is to say, our speech exposes our thoughts, feelings, our behavior and our attitude. The following biblical excerpts confirm this assertion: “A man’s words betray what he feels. Speech reflects true feelings” (Sirach 27:4) “… a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart” (Luke 6:45)
In Lindgren’s (318-326) contention, language implements and reflects culturally determined attitude and values and helps to reinforce, sustain and perpetuate them. He adds that the kind of language used by a communicator indicates his identity in terms of culture. In line with the above contention, Okolo (18) argues that language is very fundamental in the understanding of man and his social life. He asserts that language creates sexist attitudes. Quoting Fischer (18), he highlights that language is a very important aspect of our culture and it is acquired through the process socialization. It is the uniquely human attribute which enables us to learn, think creatively and develop socially. In Okolo’s opinion, language, particularly those linguistic forms that discriminate and oppress have crucial implications for all human learning and behavior.
Many studies including Strainchamps (18) have been carried out to investigate the connection between language use sexist attitudes. Strainchamps indicates that sexism and sexist language and attitudes are some of the ways an oppressive society maintains the status quo. Faust (10) specially notes that men have used language effectively to oppress women. Through the power of language, men have controlled not only women’s behavior but their thoughts.
Egbe (14) points out that the question whether women use “different” language has been variously discussed.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHDOLOGY
Linguistic Projection of Female Subjugation in Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter
In Nwachukwu’s (25) contention, the African woman is known to be stoically wedded to toil. From birth, she works tirelessly not to shame her family, her womanhood and later, her motherhood. She gives all to others. She tragically tends to love her very own pains and neither sees nor checks her scars. She is exploited till she is useful no more. Yet, neither society nor her male counterpart appreciates her and her efforts. She, thus, feels aggrieved and groans under the weight of such subjugation and gives vent to her groaning through the use of special linguistic features as illustrated in So Long a Letter. Through the novel, Ba preserves the seriousness of woman’s agony through the use of parallelism, linguistic foregrounding, and semantic compounding.
Parallelism
Ramatoulaye’s reminiscence of the dejection she suffers as a result of her condescension in marrying Modou Fall who turns out to be a chauvinistic billboard cashing in on cultural postulations about womanhood makes her drown in a river of regrets and rage.
CHAPTER FOUR
Female Characteristic Language Use in So Long a Letter
Thoughts and actions are communicated through words. “Words” are the tools of communication. (Semmelmeyer and Bolander, 90):
Ba’s words reflect the pensive mood of the victims of a Social set up. Words like ‘distress’, ‘disappointment’, ‘despair’, ‘bitterness’, ‘sadness’, ‘rancor’, ‘agitation’, and ‘pain’, are preponderantly used in the novel to communicate the psycho-social turbulence of the victims of patriarchy who are women.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The African tradition disapproves criteria, which damage women’s equality with men. In African society and culture, the male is regarded superior, as the central and neutral position from which the female is a departure. This aligns with Simon de Beauvoir’s (16) assertion:
Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him: She is not regarded as an autonomous being… She is defined and differentiated with reference to men and not with reference to her: she is the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the subject, he is the absolute- she is the other.
Women’s sensibility to the needs to rediscover their wounded dignity has, however, been heightened. Such sensitilization has led to the relentless questioning of patriarchy. The case they make is that through men and women show marked biological differences, they are equally talented and as such the issue of sexist socialization should e condemned. The supply of information of feminism not only brought the feeling into the female consciousness but led them to break the shackles of patriarchy through writing. Notwithstanding this shared preoccupation, the language with which each category of writers pursues the female issue highlights an enduring sexist paradigm.
Ba’s language in So Long a Letter indicates that of conversation/ rapport; standard language; polite language achieved through the use of questions; the discursive language style; as well as the language of solidarity. The male-female linguistic dichotomy reflected in So Long a Letter is attributed to patriarchy. Cameron (7), states that gender-specific linguistic differences leads to gender specific conversational strategies. Steinem (60) specifies that conversational pattern between male and females have been found to reflect social inequalities existing between them. Daly (57) states that the language use by females historically stems from oppressive structures whereby women address men as their master. Meunier (1) states that a man could also address his wife as a master his wife as a master his slave and a king his subject, that is, using a clear rhetoric of authority. This implies that language plays a great role in amplifying lines of gender distinctions. This contention is confirmed by Spender (20) who states that:
The semantic rule which has been responsible for the manifestation of Sexism in the language can simply be stated; they are two fundamental categories, male and minus male. To be linked with male is to be linked to a range of meanings which are positive and good. To be linked to minus male is to be linked to the absence of these qualities…
the semantic structure of the English language reveals a great deal about what it means to be female in a patriarchal order.
Webster (79) adds that language is constitutive of knowledge as
Discourse and it is possible to see the privileging of the male position and the establishment of a patriarchal order in broader historical and discursive ways as well as in everyday or literary language.
Women’s lamentation over male subjugation has in recent years filtered into a determination to abnegate sexism. With this stand, their former conciliatory position becomes superseded by a current of revolt against man and tradition as highlighted through semantic compounding and linguistic parallelism in So Long a Letter.
We have a right, just as you have, to education, which we ought to be able to pursue to the farthest limits of our intellectual capacities. We have a right to equal well-paid employment, to equal opportunities. The right to vote is an important weapon. (61)
The linguistic pattern here is:
NP
Education
To + Equal opportunities
Vote
in this pattern, the NPs which are in syntagmatic relationship with the preposition “to” are positionally and naturally equivalent. They are intra-textually cohesive and share in common the semantic feature / privileges /. They, therefore, constitute a semantic compound, a special semantic image which reflects Ba’s view of the desire of women in the world of the novel. For her, women should enjoy equal privileges with their male counterparts. In other words, the running of the African world is not preserved only for males rather there should be absolute equality of both sexes in all spheres of life.
With the present stance of the African, women compromise is replaced by criticism and condemnation of the male victimize as illustrated with Ramatoulaye’s revolt against Tamsir’s offer to marry her:
What of your wives, Tamsir? Your income cannot meet their needs nor those of your numerous children. To help you out with your financial obligations, one of your wives dyes, another sells fruits, the third untiringly turns the handle of her sewing machine. (58)
In this text, the three verb phrases;
VP NP
Dyes (Cloth)
Sells Fruit
(untiringly) turns Sewing machine
are in paradigmatic connected/relationship with one another just as the three noun phrases also belong to the same paradigm. That is, the three VPs are related synonymously under the general semantic feature / petty trade /. Similarly, the three noun phrases share the semantic feature / little value /.
Acting in line either societal dictates and expectation, Tamsir’s three wives fill his home with numerous children. As is usual with African polygamous homes, Tamsir who has married them not out of love or affection, but merely to meet his own selfish desire for variety, cares little to meet their needs. These women, therefore, strive to fend for themselves and their children since their lack of education to find reasonable money-yielding job has left them in engaging in petty trading which scarcely yield enough money for their needs and those of their children. For this reason, they suffer untold hardship. Notwithstanding the embarrassing situation to which Tamsir has exposed his wives, he further seeks Ramatoulaye’s hand in marriage in order to add her to the number of women he has to humiliate. But Ramatoulaye spits her venom to the shameless man.
In further portrayal of women’s reputation of male egotism, with the use of linguistic foregrounding, Ramatoulaye who is shocked into incomprehension by men’s unrestrained exploitation of women questions the former’s right to polygamy.
But to understand what?
The supremacy of instinct?
The right to betray?
The justification for the desire for variety? (34)
The parallel structures are the noun phrases
VP NP
What
The supremacy of instinct
To understand + The right to betray
The justification of the desire for variety
The NPs which are in syntagmatic relationship with the VP “to understand” are paradigmatically associated. They have in common / humiliating /; / selfish / in the human society of the author. The repetition of the noun phrase “what?” would serve the same purpose as the four. It would have depicted the various selfish reasons for polygamous inclination which women vehemently oppose. However, the stylistic significance of the repetition is that it outlines these reasons so as to bring the message that women completely reject the cultural conceptualization of the polygamous nature of man since this is a clear indication of egocentricism.
With women’s determination to transcend the status quo, devotion to marriage is buried by divorce. They consider marriage as an option not a compulsion and loathe polygamy. “Mariama Ba does not give polygamy any chance. Her stance is- polygamy is a bane of marital bliss in the African culture” (Chukwuma, 212). To this, Femi Ojo-Ade (14) adds that polygamy underscores African savagery and men’s dehumanization of women. Aissatou, Ramatoulaye’s school friend demonstrates her contempt for polygamy by putting an end to her life with Mawdo Ba who defies her dignity by marring another woman merely to satisfy the wishes of his ageing mother. This boils Aissatou’s anger.
Princes master their feelings to fulfill their duties. ‘others’ bend their heads and, in silence, accept a destiny that oppresses them. That, briefly put, is the internal ordering of our society, with its absurd divisions. I will not yield to it. I cannot accept what you are offering me today in place of the happiness we once had. You want to draw a line between heartfelt love and physical love. I say that there can be no union of bodies without the hearts acceptance, however, little that may be. If I can procreate without loving, merely to stratify the pride of your declining mother, then I find you despicable… I am stripping myself of your love, your name. Clothed in my dignity, the only worthy garment, I got my way. (31-32).
For the modern woman, therefore, marriage should be a relationship that is based on equal partnership and love between men and women. If not so, it should e brought to an end.
Feminism generally deals with the theme of female subordination and its attendant invisibility. Women over the years have shown a marked resentment of the limitation and circumspection of their traditional roles which included finding mates and thereafter bearing children. Every other thing is secondary: education, a career, material wealth, social alaim. All these are subsumed in marriage and motherhood. The marriage system is not a partnership but unequal alliance where the wife is under pressure to prove her femininity through procreation. So in traditional Africa, procreation is the prime reason for a union of a man and a woman and the woman as the vessel is the core of procreation. Failure of this function is generally thought of as failure of the female, even though it could be traceable to the man. The pressures of procreation on the female do not end with fertility/fecundity but fecundity with the right sex aggregate. She is required to perpetuate her husband’s lineage with at least a male heir. With this, children become a woman’s asset in the home, her means of recognition and power. (Nnolim, 26).
WORKS CITED
BOOKS
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