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Elliot Ziwira @The Bookstore
THERE is nothing as fascinating as love as its birth and growth seem to be juxtaposed with its demise. The more one has of it, the more it seems inadequate and the more pain and hurt that lay in wait. Its lack of permanence makes it a cursory illusion; a rainbow which is only as beautiful as the momentary sunshine and drizzle last — following a tempest. Love, as Ambrose Biera reasons, is “a temporary insanity curable by marriage”.
Love is such a wonderful thing; God’s gift to mankind, capable of building everlasting pillars — monuments and yet at the same time leaving eternal scars; remaining an enigma, so difficult to fathom.
But what really is its purpose if it leaves a trail of heartbreaks, suffering and regrets in its wake? Does it die because of the reasons for its growth in the first place? If it leads to marriage why then does its momentary allure die if God sanctions it, as the Bible clearly outlines that: “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives a mark of favour from the Lord,” (Proverbs 18v22)? The institution of marriage should maintain its sanctity as ordained by the Lord, and bring a man and his wife so much happiness, so much content and hope. Can there be marriage without love or does love always leads to marriage?
Award-winning Senegalese novelist Mariama Ba looks at the paradoxical nature of love by examining how the family structure, the community and the nation contribute to the choices one makes on love, in her harrowing yet touching repertoire of love, “Scarlet Song” (1981). She explores the void that society creates through its imposition of norms and values on the individual psyche.
Societal expectations on love and marriage rob the individual of options as what is usually expected is not what is usually desired. Society fosters the existence of stereotypes leading to normlessness and internal turmoil manifesting in identity crisis and the desire to belong.
Through her use of an inter-racial relationship in post independent Senegal, between the protagonist, Ousmane Gueye, a highly educated teacher and Mireille de La Vallee, a white daughter and only child of a French diplomat, who is also equally educated, Ba is able to tackle love from an intriguing platform.
Ousmane’s story resonates with poverty, hard work, perseverance and determination. Growing up under the armpit of his domineering mother, Yaye Khady who is 20 years younger than her husband, Ousmane becomes “mummy’s boy” much to the chagrin of his father Djibril Gueye who fears that she would “turn the lad into a sissy”.
Always at his mother’s beck and call, Ousmane fails to attract Oleymatou whose brother Ousseynou points out to him that his sister can not fall for a “sissy”. As a result of this rebuff, Ousmane resolves never to set his sights on women “whom he categorised as flighty and irresponsible, ready to lie and deceive”.
However, his stereotyping of women as a result of an earlier rebuff spurred on by societal beliefs thaws at the sight of Mireille, his classmate at university.
Because love is such an irresistible feeling, a tornado that cannot be stopped by mere mountains, the protagonist, “who had mistrusted all women, threw himself at the mercy of a woman, and a white woman at that”. It is against this choice that Ousmane’s love is tested.
Society has its own way with people. Culture and religion are vehicles that are used to regulate behaviour and ferry the individual to a platform where he is able to examine himself in relation to societal expectations. Religion and culture mould the individual to become a better man, but he should be able to remain himself. Society is made up of individuals who are in agreement as to what is norm or value; but when individuals are made up of society, then the whole thing becomes a farce.
Individuals have a deplorable tendency of justifying their own weaknesses through culture or by simply manipulating it to suit their purposes.
Ba takes a swipe at characters like Oleymatou, Jean de La Vallee, Ousmane and Yaye Khady who use societal norms and values to justify their folly. In the African traditional milieu, a mother plays a role in determining her son’s choices or in sanctioning them.
Fathers also have a voice in their daughters’ choices as is evident in Yaye khady and Djibril Gueye’s marriage. However, they should not always have the final say — it remains or should remain with the individual as Djibril reminds Yaye Khady that she was not forced to marry him, although her father played a part in the union. Ironically she also believes that “Ousmane should make his own choice”.
Realising that her son has fallen for a white woman, she changes tact and shifts to societal norms and values, telling Ousmane that Mireille as a Moslem should “know that he has a right to four wives”, and yet she never entertained any idea in Djibril to take three other wives. It is now a right because it involves her son and not a right to her husband who is also a Moslem.
Jean de La Vallee is also a product of a society that is prejudiced against blacks calling blacks “primitives” branding Ousmane “that object” and her daughter” a snake-in-the-grass slut!” Sealing “off his heart against reason and love”, he subsequently disowns her, despite her pleas for tolerance and declarations of love for Ousmane.
The protagonist is not the only one married to a white woman; most of his friends are, yet they castigate him for his choice arguing that they did it before independence when black people were banking on such marriages to take them up the social echelons; and that there was no reason why he could do it after independence, because” he was the black woman’s hope”, and that when “a black man marries a white woman, he is lost to his country”. It is such hypocrisy and betrayal that exposes the individual and creates a sense of inadequacy and normlessness.
Ousmane’s marriage fails, not only because of the scheming Oleymatou’s rebounder, but because of his nature as an individual. He is intolerant to any other voice besides his own. In spite of having grown up doing household chores, he refuses to help his wife in any way because he is now a man. Yes Mireille could have been “inflexible, indignantly condemning” with her “all-or-nothing-attitude”, as he says of her, but exposing her weaknesses to his friends and family, especially to his mother, would only make them side with him and alienate her, thus exerting a lot of pressure on their marriage. Love protects and defends.
Driven by infatuation and lust, Ousmane escapes from the claustrophobia of his home which ironically is of his own creation, to seek solace in Oleymatou, declaring that “I never stopped loving her”, because “she knows the legend of Samba Gueladio”. His subsequent marriage to her does not only make his mother happy, but it exacerbate his problems as in the end he is brutally stabbed by Mireille who could not hang on to the strands of sanity which have now become her norm.
Notwithstanding all her sacrifices, she loses everything; sanity and her son Gorgui whom she stabs in her deranged state because his existence society and her husband seem to be blind to, as “he is neither black nor white”, so he doesn’t belong to either side of the colour bar.
Mariama Ba lambasts human folly in this poignant story of love, deception and marriage. Love is about two people whose choices should be respected. Love should not die because of marriage, no; instead it should grow. It is like a fire that needs to be kindled over and over again by poking the logs.
If marriage is determined by our own whims or those of others close to us and our desires devoid of compromise and humility, then God distances Himself from the union and as a result it falters under the weight of societal forces.
When that happens, we assume that our spouses are not from the Lord; therefore they are bound to bring us, sorrow. Marriage is about giving and taking, listening and sacrificing. “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person”, implores one philosopher.
Lamine, Ousmane’s cousin, who is also married to a white woman aptly, sums it up when he declares: “If to respect my wife and let her live happily in the way she chooses means that I am colonised. . . I admit. I want peace”.
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