Genre
Epistolary novel
Setting and Context
The action of the novel takes place in Senegal in the 1970s.
Narrator and Point of View
The narrator is Ramatoulaye, a woman from Senegal, and she recalls the events from a first-person subjective perspective.
Tone and Mood
Tragic, neutral, resentful
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonists are Ramatoulaye and her friend, Aissatou, and the antagonists are their husbands, Modou and Mawdo—who find other wives for themselves after already being married to them—as well as overly traditional Senegalese society.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is whether and how Ramatoulaye will move on after the death of a husband from whom she had already separated, but whose life was still intertwined with hers. On a thematic level, this resonates with a larger conflict is between modernity and tradition in post-colonial Senegal.
Climax
The story reaches its climax when Ramatoulaye reveals why her husband married Binetou.
Foreshadowing
Understatement
Allusions
Imagery
Paradox
Ramatoulaye behaves in a paradoxical way in the sense that while she desires to be free and to have independence, she can’t seem to break away from her husband and from his family.
Parallelism
Ramatoulaye draws a parallel between herself and her good friend, Aissatou. Through the parallelism, Ramatoulaye highlights the idea that the two women are completely different even though they started in the same place. While Ramatoulaye remained in the same place, Aissatou moved on and grew as a person.
