Ba's Scarlet Song is one thing on the surface and a totally different thing underneath the surface. On the surface, it's simply the love story between two star-crossed lovers from different backgrounds, but in reality, it's a horrifying warning to the women of the world—don't come to Senegal, because the customs of this nation are literally the stuff of nightmares. The fate of the European girl? Suicidal hopelessness in a world where women are treated as subhuman, as animals and objects, and where men can freely abandon their homes without fear of any consequence. Women are depicted by the novelist to be truly powerless in that society. On the surface, it seems like a love song, but really, it's a terrifying ghost story.
The plot twist of the novel is similar in kind to the plot twist of each Sengalese woman who falls in love. The novel depicts Sengalese men as masters of disguise, able to fool women into marriages with persuasive wooing, and then when they finally get the women they want, they quickly lose interest and go back out to hunt a new bride. This is the experience that Mireille has of Senegal, no doubt.
It isn't clear whether Mariama Ba is criticizing the entire nation of Senegal, or simply those men who use the legal allowance for polygamy as an excuse to mistreat women, but one thing is for sure—she definitely casts a pretty grim picture of what life is like for women in a world where men sometimes do these horrifying things. For those women, it's dehumanizing, paranoia inducing, and ultimately, hopeless.
