r younger couples that are actually in love. She is trapped in a marriage for a man that she does not love. Her contempt for Modou is evident in the way that she “daringly” describes her new love to Daba by calling him “sugar daddy” and “pot belly”. She is a victim of tradition and her own family’s greed. Daba is a good representative of her mother’s daughter. She holds the same liberal attitude and is thoroughly disgusted when her father takes on a second wife. It is through her, where Ramatoulaye can vicariously seek silent revenge (although she might not outright approve of Daba’s actions). Daba goes to the club where her father and new wife go and looks at them haughtily and with disgust. When she becomes the heir of father’s villa, she tells Binetou and her family to move out without any pity, unmerciless at the fact that they were the family that broke her parents up. She finds a relationship that her mother yearns for. When Ramatoulaye tells Daba’s husband that “he spoils her wife”, Daba’s husband replies, “Daba is my wife not my servant”. It is through her first daughter, where Ramatoulaye’s hopes as young girl will go on, for she has the same idealist beliefs as her mother and tries to stay true to them. She represents another generation of woman who is strong willed and independent, revoking any traditions that they feel depreciate their own value. Throughout this novel, there is such a battle of the old and the new. This story is about how women affect each other’s life and how some are hindered to move forward because they are inherently bound by traditions that devalue women. Ramatoulaye’s writing best sums up the conflicting scenario, “ Now our society is shaken to its foundations, torn between the attraction of important vices and fierce resistance of old virtues”.In the novel Fantasi...
