jealous of her writing â the only writing I have ever been jealous of. This made it harder to write to her; & I saw in it, perhaps from jealousy, all the qualities I disliked in her . . . I have the feeling that I shall think of her at intervals all through life. Probably we had something in common which I shall never find in anyone else . . .
CLAIRE TOMALIN, KATHERINE MANSFIELD: A SECRET LIFE (1987)
COMFORT FOR A FRIEND ABANDONED
A Senegalese divorced woman comforts her great friend Aissatou, who has been abandoned by her husband. This modern epistolary novel So Long A Letter , written in 1982 by Mariama Bâ displays the same caring and wisdom that Geraldine Jewsbury showed to Jane Carlyle.
Leave! Draw a clean line through the past. Turn over a page on which not everything was bright, certainly, but at least all was clear. What would now be recorded there would hold no love, confidence, grandeur or hope. I had never known the sordid side of marriage. Donât get to know it! Run from it! When one begins to forgive, there is an avalanche of faults that comes crashing down, and the only thing that remains is to forgive again, so keep on forgiving. Leave, escape from betrayal! Sleep without asking myself any questions, without straining my ear at the slightest noise, waiting for a husband I share.
I counted the abandoned or divorced women of my generation whom I knew.
I knew a few whose remaining beauty had been able to capture a worthy man, a man who added fine bearing to a good situation and who was considered âbetter, a hundred times better than his predecessorâ. The misery that was the lot of these women was rolled back with the invasion of the new happiness that changed their lives, filled out their cheeks, brightened their eyes. I knew others who had lost all hope of renewal and whom loneliness had very quickly laid underground.
The play of destiny remains impenetrable. The cowries that a female neighbour throws on a fan in front of me do not fill me with optimism, neither when they remain face upwards, showing the black hollow that signifies laughter, nor when the grouping of their white backs seems to say that âthe man in the double trousersâ is coming towards me, the promise of wealth. âThe only thing that separates you from the man and wealth, is the alms of two white and red cola nuts,â adds Farmata, my neighbour.
She insists: âThere is a saying that discord here may be luck elsewhere. Why are you afraid to make the break? A woman is like a ball; once a ball is thrown, no one can predict where it will bounce. You have no control over where it rolls, and even less over who gets it. Often it is grabbed by an unexpected hand . . .â I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes took in the mirrorâs eloquence. I had lost my slim figure, as well as ease and quickness of movement. My stomach protruded from beneath the wrapper that hid the calves developed by the impressive number of kilometers walked since the beginning of my existence. Suckling had robbed my breasts of their round firmness. I could not delude myself: youth was deserting my body.
Whereas a woman draws from the passing years the force of her devotion, despite the ageing of her companion, a man, on the other hand, restricts his field of tenderness. His egoistic eye looks over his partnerâs shoulder. He compares what he had with what he no longer has, what he has with what he could have.
I had heard of too many misfortunes not to understand my own. There was your own case, Aissatou, the cases of many other women, despised, relegated or exchanged, who were abandoned, worn-out.
To overcome distress when it sits upon you demands strong will. When one thinks that with each passing second oneâs life is shortened, one must profit intensely from this second; it is the sum of all the lost or harvested seconds that makes for a wasted or a successful life. Brace oneself to check despair and get it into
CLAIRE TOMALIN, KATHERINE MANSFIELD: A SECRET LIFE (1987)
COMFORT FOR A FRIEND ABANDONED
A Senegalese divorced woman comforts her great friend Aissatou, who has been abandoned by her husband. This modern epistolary novel So Long A Letter , written in 1982 by Mariama Bâ displays the same caring and wisdom that Geraldine Jewsbury showed to Jane Carlyle.
Leave! Draw a clean line through the past. Turn over a page on which not everything was bright, certainly, but at least all was clear. What would now be recorded there would hold no love, confidence, grandeur or hope. I had never known the sordid side of marriage. Donât get to know it! Run from it! When one begins to forgive, there is an avalanche of faults that comes crashing down, and the only thing that remains is to forgive again, so keep on forgiving. Leave, escape from betrayal! Sleep without asking myself any questions, without straining my ear at the slightest noise, waiting for a husband I share.
I counted the abandoned or divorced women of my generation whom I knew.
I knew a few whose remaining beauty had been able to capture a worthy man, a man who added fine bearing to a good situation and who was considered âbetter, a hundred times better than his predecessorâ. The misery that was the lot of these women was rolled back with the invasion of the new happiness that changed their lives, filled out their cheeks, brightened their eyes. I knew others who had lost all hope of renewal and whom loneliness had very quickly laid underground.
The play of destiny remains impenetrable. The cowries that a female neighbour throws on a fan in front of me do not fill me with optimism, neither when they remain face upwards, showing the black hollow that signifies laughter, nor when the grouping of their white backs seems to say that âthe man in the double trousersâ is coming towards me, the promise of wealth. âThe only thing that separates you from the man and wealth, is the alms of two white and red cola nuts,â adds Farmata, my neighbour.
She insists: âThere is a saying that discord here may be luck elsewhere. Why are you afraid to make the break? A woman is like a ball; once a ball is thrown, no one can predict where it will bounce. You have no control over where it rolls, and even less over who gets it. Often it is grabbed by an unexpected hand . . .â I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes took in the mirrorâs eloquence. I had lost my slim figure, as well as ease and quickness of movement. My stomach protruded from beneath the wrapper that hid the calves developed by the impressive number of kilometers walked since the beginning of my existence. Suckling had robbed my breasts of their round firmness. I could not delude myself: youth was deserting my body.
Whereas a woman draws from the passing years the force of her devotion, despite the ageing of her companion, a man, on the other hand, restricts his field of tenderness. His egoistic eye looks over his partnerâs shoulder. He compares what he had with what he no longer has, what he has with what he could have.
I had heard of too many misfortunes not to understand my own. There was your own case, Aissatou, the cases of many other women, despised, relegated or exchanged, who were abandoned, worn-out.
To overcome distress when it sits upon you demands strong will. When one thinks that with each passing second oneâs life is shortened, one must profit intensely from this second; it is the sum of all the lost or harvested seconds that makes for a wasted or a successful life. Brace oneself to check despair and get it into
Similar Books
