The Role Of Women In 'The Scarlet Song'

Beyond losing self to the whims or caprices of men is the role other women play as victimizers and oppressors. There is a difference between women helping culture to suppress other women, and women being wicked and victimizing other women. Mireille’s madness is a buildup of partly her husband’s infidelity and partly the betrayal of women who are supposed to stand with her. These women knew firsthand what it means to be discriminated against both culturally and racially, based on their experience with colonialism and their own culture, still they were the biggest opposition she faced in her sane life. Mireille, Yaye Khadi, and Oulematou are all oppressed women, and their races, and social class, are a big barrier to their bonding. The point of the novel then becomes a plea at understanding and appropriating the differences that we might have.

Women need to challenge the internalized sexist or patriarchal value with the same energy they confront patriarchy or hegemony irrespective of class or ethnicity if anything tangible is going to be achieved. When women internalize patriarchal patterns of behavior, they act it out, albeit unconsciously and this makes both cross-racial and interracial hostility pervasive and difficult to confront. Nobody condemned or sees what Yaye Khadi or Ouleymatou put Mireille through because these patterns of behavior have been so internalized that they feel normal and the right things to do. The women forget that in spite of the differences in the injustice they suffer, they all suffer from the same patriarchal oppression either as white, black, middle class or peasants. Women victimize other women because the overshadowed feeling of hatred for the patriarchal system is replaced with jealousy and hatred for other women who are vulnerable to the