A boundary is defined as “something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent” (Merriam-Webster). There are many types of boundaries. Some are based on commonly accepted factors such as geography, politics, and laws, while others are drawn from more controversial factors, such as gender, age, and race. Gender is an especially problematic and widely used determinant of boundaries. In traditional societies, women are confined to the home while men are constrained to economically productive activities. Even public space is controlled by men; women have no say in how the community functions. All of these examples are explored in Sembéne Ousmane’s novel God’s Bits of Wood, which portrays a highly structured community of railroad workers in 1940s French occupied West Africa. These workers and their families are bound by socially sanctioned ideas of space until a railroad strike leads to the breakdown of traditional borders established by gender. Although the changes are not universal or immediate, the strike has a demonstrable effect on previously accepted notions of boundaries and space within this fictional community.
In order to understand how boundaries are broken in the novel, one must first understand how they were created. In his book The Gendered Society, Michael Kimmel provides several explanations for the existence of gender inequality, including division of labor and family size, which are helpful in understanding the situation of women in Ousmane’s novel. He writes that higher levels of “sexual egalitarianism” are the result of “women and men shar[ing] access to the productive elements of the society” (by which he means the “market economy”) (52). Thus, the division of labor (which is based on cultural norms rather than “physical constitution”) contributes to women’s inferiority because their work is not seen as economically productive (50). The railroad is the main source of income for this community; since the women don’t work there they are understood to be less important than the men. However, women are not able to engage in so-called “productive” activities because they are too busy taking care of the family: “It also seems to be the case that the larger the family group the larger the differences between women and men” (53). In the novel Ramatoulaye is responsible for “no less than twenty of ‘God’s bits of wood’” (40) and therefore her role as caretaker is inescapable. If her family only consisted of her, a husband and two kids there would be more room for overlap into traditionally male areas; she would have the time and energy to find herself a role outside of the home. Kimmel asserts that “gender difference is the result of gender inequality—not the other way around” (47) and by that logic, these inherent inequalities within the society can be seen as the source of the rigid notions about women’s and men’s space in the novel (before the strike). Ultimately what these women are doing when they break the boundaries of socially sanctioned space is challenging and disproving old notions of gender difference as a biological fact.
In the time before the strike, women and men were confined to certain spheres of influence, or spaces, which were the result of social ideas regarding gender difference. As one might expect, women’s lives centered on the home and its related duties. On the first page of the novel Ousmane provides an example of this segregated space: “It was an afternoon in mid-October, at the end of the season of rains, and as was the custom at this time of day the women of the Bakayoko house were gathered in the courtyard. Only the women. As they went about their household tasks they chattered constantly…” (1, emphasis added). Already the author has provided the key to the operation of this society: custom. There are only women working in the courtyard because that’s the way it has always been. Using Kimmel’s research it becomes clear that the women have been limited to this space because their primary role in society is caring for the family. The family exists in the home, and thus it is the women’s sphere of influence. Kimmel writes that “All forms of spatial segregation between males and females are associated with gender inequality” (54). Because women are not equal to men, the home is not equal to the men’s place of work (in this case the railroad) and household duties become a symbol of weakness and femininity. In order for women to break the boundaries of gender they must transcend the space of the home. Even after the strike starts, the men are resistant to leaving the railroad: “Like rejected lovers returning to a trysting place, they kept coming back to the areas surrounding the stations…they would just stand there…their eyes fixed on the two endless parallels, following them out until they joined and lost themselves in the brush” (76). As men, their whole lives have been defined by the railroad and they don’t know what they are without it. Kimmel would say that they are unable to cope with the fact that they are no longer economically productive elements of society. Although the strike has clearly upset the patterns of their society, they are so indoctrinated by the ideas of space that they initially cannot leave the railroad, even though there is nothing for them to do there. Just as the home is a symbol of femininity, the railroad represents masculinity, an ideal which they are reluctant to give up. As the strike goes on the men will be forced to enter female space and take on traditionally female roles in order to survive, and women will have to do the same.
Much like the men, the women of the novel are at first hesitant to break social boundaries. The catalyst for the women of Dakar is the invasion of Mabigué’s ram into the home of Ramatoulaye. For these women the ram symbolizes their oppressors, both in the form of the toubabs (French colonists) and the traitors like Mabigué, who have done nothing but profit at their expense. Upon discovering that the ram had entered her home and eaten the little food she had managed to scrounge up, Ramatoulaye takes a knife and kills the animal for its meat, much to the shock and chagrin of the other women. However, “There was neither pride nor arrogance in [Ramatoulaye’s] attitude, but just a kind of satisfaction, as if what she had done had been only a duty she could not avoid” (68). With the men out of work, it falls to the women to provide for their families. Before the strike, meals were women’s main responsibility; however, their husbands’ work provided the money that made them possible. In this instance, Ramatoulaye is literally taking matters into her own hands and undermining the gendered division of labor outlined by Kimmel. In this community, women and men both play an integral part in providing for their families, yet the male role is more removed and impersonal. Although she hasn’t escaped the space of the home, Ramatoulaye has put a considerable dent in the borders defining gender. To explain her actions to the other women Ramatoulaye says, “’It was because we were hungry—we were all too hungry for it to go on. The men know it too, but they go away in the morning and don’t come back until the night has come and they do not see…Being the head of a family is a heavy burden—too heavy for a woman. We must have help’” (69). In this quote she is directly condemning the segregation of the sexes as an impractical practice in light of the strike. The entire burden of caring for the family is put on the women’s shoulders, while the men loaf around the station and the union office, waiting for something to do. She is pleading for the men to leave their comfort zone and help the women cope. The men of this community are used to not taking any direct responsibility for the daily life of the family; they must start to integrate themselves into the space of the home, just as the women must leave it. Ramatoulaye’s incident with the ram leads to further invasion of her home, this time in the form of police. In reaction to this affront the women finally go on the offensive and break the boundaries that hold them. After an altercation with the police, “Some of the women…formed into little groups and began patrolling the streets of the neighborhood, armed with bottles filled with sand…they accosted every man who appeared in their path” (109). By patrolling the streets, these women have asserted their control over a space outside the home, even going so far as to challenge traditional male control by questioning each one they see. This is one of the first acts in the novel of women trying to desegregate their gendered society. It takes a desperate situation to create radical change among the men and women of the Dakar-Niger railway.
The next step for the women of God’s Bits of Wood is to make their presence felt in male-controlled public space as a means of challenging the inequalities that permeate this society. Traditionally the women are in the home and the men are on the railroad, but by breaking the boundaries of custom the women are able to put themselves on an equal level with men. One way in which women insert themselves into public space is through speech. At least twice in the novel there is a direct mention of a woman asserting herself in public. During Diara’s trial in Bamako a woman testifies about his treachery before an audience in the union building: “It was the first time she had ever spoken at a meeting of the men, and she was filled with pride…The idea of a woman addressing a meeting as important as this was still unfamiliar and disturbing” (92). In addition, when Penda tells the people of Thiès about the march of the women, “It was the first time in living memory that a woman had spoken in public in Thiès” (187). The act of speaking in front of the community is important because it forces the men to pay attention to the women and consider their opinions and ideas. Like the women patrolling the streets in Dakar, this is a way for women to overcome the boundaries that confine and limit their abilities. Because the task of caring for the household is so devalued in this society, the men are disturbed by this unforeseen evidence that the women have something worthwhile to contribute. The women of Thiès, led by Penda, perform the most striking act of breaking out of the home when they march for several days to the city of Dakar. Some of the men, like Beaugosse, resist this deliberate attack on the status quo, complaining that “all the…men were scouring the city for a cask or even a bottle of water—which is what the women should be doing. Instead of that, they have been battling troops in the streets and starting fires” (188). Beaugosse rejects the actions of the women as inappropriate given the community’s standards for women, but that is why the march is significant. The women are leaving their home and familial obligations far behind, forcing the men to compensate for their absence by taking the female role. In a complete role reversal, the women are furthering the goals of the community while the men are left to deal with the day-to-day necessities of survival. In Kimmel’s terms, the women have become the productive elements of society. The effect of the march is clear: “Since their triumphal return from Dakar, the women had organized their lives in a manner which made them almost a separate community. Distances no longer inspired any fear in them, and each morning they left the city very early and walked the few miles out to the lake” (242). These women have finally transcended the boundaries of the home and the end of the strike does nothing to diminish this. Without the complete overthrow of social customs caused by the strike, the women would not have had an opportunity to reinvent themselves in this way. In order for them to be more equal with men they had to separate themselves, so as to not fall into old patterns of dominance. Philosopher Hannah Arendt stated that “Power is never the property of an individual”; instead it belongs to and is exercised by a group (qtd. in Kimmel 93). Thus it took the efforts of a group of women acting together to counteract the dominant male power within the society. The insertion of women into the public sphere is an important development which leads to the first signs of gender equality, spatial and otherwise.
And yet, truly radical change cannot simply happen overnight. Although there are many challenges to rigid ideas of gendered space within the novel, this society is so used to segregating itself this way that its people easily fall into old patterns. As a part of their household duties, going to the well or the fountain for water was a woman’s job: “In the days before the strike the trip to the fountain had been an occasion for the exchange of all kinds of gossip, for the spreading of news, and even for arguments; but now there was only a gloomy silence, a stillness that was a reflection of impatience worn down by fatigue” (65). Much like the courtyard at the beginning of the novel (see paragraph 3), the fountain is symbolic of women’s space, and is therefore avoided by the men. After the strike, the water supply is cut off by the toubabs and the fountain becomes a constant reminder of colonial rule, just like their empty kitchens. As the women become more involved in the strike, they abandon traditional spaces like the fountain in search of ways to prove themselves and deconstruct gender roles (such as the march to Dakar). As Beaugosse notes (see previous paragraph), the men are forced to fill the void and perform the duties necessary for the survival of the family and the community. In Dakar, the men have so thoroughly extended themselves into women’s space that they claim it as their own. When N’Deye Touti voices her intent to get water from the well, she is criticized for doing what is now a man’s job: “’You’re not going to tell me that you’re going to the well for some, like the men?’ …And she left, pushing an old barrel before her, watched with amusement by the other women, who lost no opportunity to make fun of her” (227). This situation is problematic because it suggests that, with the exception of one person, this society is still segregated along gender lines. The fact that men have embraced a woman’s role should be a cause for celebration, but not if they’ve done so by pushing the women out. This scene also reveals that women are involved in enforcing notions of space, as they tease N’Deye for her actions. The situation surrounding the fountain reveals the complexity of this issue. Gender difference and inequality are not easy constructs to escape. Anthropologist Margaret Mead offers a reason why: "I have suggested that certain human traits have been socially specialized as the appropriate attitudes and behavior of only one sex, while other human traits have been specialized for the opposite sex. This social specialization is then rationalized into a theory that the socially decreed behavior is natural for one sex and unnatural for the other… "(qtd. in Kimmel 48). In this case, the men have taken on a specialized trait of the women, thereby making it unnatural for the women to get water from the fountain. Mead’s theory seems to suggest that there can be no sharing of traits (or of space) between men and women; difference and segregation are ingrained aspects of human society.
In the end, the issue of the fountain in Dakar is only one troubling instance in a novel that has an otherwise optimistic view of the future of this railroad community. There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that men and women have learned to view each other differently because of the experiences of the strike. Boundaries between men’s and women’s spaces are broken, and in doing so are proven to be less rigid than previously supposed. Women are able to become the breadwinners and voice their opinions in public forum, while men are able to put aside their pride and engage in household tasks. Ideas about gender are malleable because, as Kimmel says, “gender is not a ‘thing’ that one possesses, but a set of activities that one does…[we] constantly define and redefine what it means to be men or women in our daily encounters with one another” (106). Gender is frequently a means of separation or segregation, but it doesn’t have to be. Sembéne Ousmane’s novel shows us how, under the right circumstances, there is the possibility for radical change.
Works Cited
“Boundary.” Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. 7th ed. 1972. Print.
Kimmel, Michael S. The Gendered Society. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000. Print.
Ousmane, Sembène. God’s Bits of Wood. Essex: Heineman. 1962. Print.
