Hopelessness for a woman in Senegal
The novel doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to its horrific elements. After wallowing in depression and loneliness, Mireille goes insane after finding out her husband has a second wife and kills her own child and attempts to kill Ousmane. Her escape from Senegal is one of deportation when sanity does not return to her. The outlandish and rampant misogyny of polygamists is mentally disturbing to Mireille, and her abandonment of hope is not unique. Many women in Senegal are left with the same fate as Mireille.
Misogynistic polygamy
The novel provides an interesting world perspective to the question of Sengalese polyamory. Sengalese men are allowed in their custom to take multiple wives, to leave wives behind, and essentially, to treat their women like dogs that the men can just kick out of the house whenever they're tired of them. It's important to note that the main characters success in life is largely attributed to his parent’s monogamous relationship. It is also a point of note that, the victim in this story is a European outsider, because the novelist wants to show that objectively, the legal acceptance of polygamy is simply a tool for misogynists and traitors, and the European, because of her outsider's perspective, becomes the moral judge of the culture.
The horror of the truth about misogyny
Ousmane was able to convince Mireille that he loved her, causing Mireille to abandon her luxurious lifestyle in Europe for a life in rural Africa. That's how convinced she was that he loved her for real. So when she found out that his view of women was so low that he felt he could take another wife and abandon her, because after all, she's just a woman, right? This misogyny is so denigrating toward women that Mireille literally could never have imagined it, so when it happens, the effect is traumatic and life-shattering. She is literally so disturbed that she cannot tolerate the thought of her child in such a world, so she murders the baby before taking her own life.
