Mourning a marriage: The Chosen & So Long a Letter

These two novels depict a character’s reflections on their life following the sudden death of their spouse. Both the male writer in the first novel and the female teacher in the second are mourning not only the loss of a partner but of the promise of their original romance.

The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry

When his wife dies suddenly in her bedroom, Tom is perplexed. Should he have seen this coming? While both are elderly, Emma has been in pain for a while. And not only physically: as he is to discover through her diaries, she felt diminished by their marriage for twenty years.
 
Yet Tom was oblivious. A writer engrossed in his work, he failed to notice her discontent. Although they lived separately within the same house, he thought things were fine. After all, they had to be: in the early years of the twentieth century, despite his closeness to another woman, divorce was out of the question. Especially for a man in the public eye.
 
You’ve probably read some of Tom’s novels. I certainly have. But knowing very little about his life, I enjoyed learning about him here. However I’ve kept him anonymous until now – it’s Thomas Hardy – as this is not only a story of celebrity but a beautifully written meditation on grief. Thanks to publishers riverrun for my review copy.

So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ translated by
Modupé Bodé-Thomas

Ramatoulaye, a school teacher and mother of twelve, processes her thoughts about her life and the position of women in general in Senegal twenty years after independence through a letter to her childhood friend, now settled in America. She has the time and ‘leisure’ to do so during the ritual period of mourning and segregation from society following the death of her estranged husband.
 
Although, through her education and her trade unionist husband’s previously liberal attitudes, she has had more freedom than many of her female compatriots, her choices are constrained by patriarchy. She was powerless when her husband took their eldest daughter’s school friend as a second wife, leaving her struggling to pay the bills. Then – although it’s possible I didn’t understand this properly – tradition dictated that she lose her possessions on his death.

The author’s rage screams through the pages but, while I sympathise deeply, I didn’t feel fully engaged with the story. Perhaps that’s because of the gaps in my pre-existing knowledge. Nevertheless, I’m glad I finally got around to reading this African classic that has sat on my bookshelf for a couple of years and to add another country to my reading the world web page.

With this reading in mind, it was inevitable I would construe this week’s flash fiction challenge prompt water falls in terms of our expressions of grief. My 99-word story is about societal expectations and how being unable to stop crying isn’t as problematic as not being able to cry at all.

The wrong way to grieve?

When she didn’t cry at the hospital, they said it hadn’t hit her yet. When she didn’t cry at the funeral, they decided she was still in shock. But when they called in to check up on her and she remained dry eyed, they wondered if she really missed him, if their marriage had died before he did. Feeling redundant around her, they saw her less and less. So it was a while before they discovered she was on a psych ward. There, as her tears spilled how water falls, they said she should be over it by now.

Meanwhile, across on planet TikTok, I’ve made some spoof snippets of therapy with fictional characters. Click on image to see what you think, each is under a minute long.