Theme of Gender Conflict

El Hadji's tale of corruption and its attendant consequences also sets the stage for a detailed exploration of gender differences and dynamics within the text. Through the characters of his three wives, we see the diversity of women in modern Senegal—there are those who are traditional and religious, those who are more modern and have tastes for the foreign and expensive, and those who are forced into marriage and sexuality as a form of economic opportunity and mobility. Moreover, in the character of Rama, we see a potential way forward for a more independent woman's life—after all, Rama is more educated, witty, and headstrong than any of the women El Hadji takes as a wife. At the same time, however, by examining what these women have in common—as well as by looking at Yay Bineta—we see that women's condition in modern Senegal is still one of oppression. The women mentioned are relentlessly assaulted throughout the text—either by public opinion, by their own husbands or fathers (see the way in which El Hadji physically strikes the women in his life, as well as the way in which Papa John abandons his daughter after her conversion), and by those who oppose the men in their life (e.g., the beggars at the novel's end). By El Hadji's own admission that he could have "ma[d]e something of [Rama] had she been a boy," women in the world of Sembène's novel are inherently limited by their own gender, despite their ambitions and abilities. Men, on the other hand, are venerated to a fault in this world. This is the reason that El Hadjis' xala threatens to destroy his image—after all, if he is not able to act as a man does in the bedroom, how can society see him as a full man? This threat to his masculinity is what El Hadji considers the greatest danger to his security, and this is why he neglects his families and business in order to try and cure his xala.