Books by and about Camara Laye

The Dark Child / The Radiance of the King / The Guardian of the World  / Dramouss / A Dream of Africa

The Writings of Camara Laye / Rereading Camara Laye / Camara Laye: Litterature Africaine / The Emergence of African Fiction

*   *   *   *   *

The Projection of  Female Characters in Camara Laye's Novels

By  Arthur Edgar E. Smith

 Senior Lecturer of English, Fourah Bay College’

      University of Sierra Leone

The first generation West African novelists have been largely regarded as allowing very little scope for the projection of female characters engaged in significant roles in their novels. Whenever that is the case, these female characters, as Larson states, ‘play almost no significant part’ being ‘mere objects performing a function’ (The Emergence of African Fiction). This could not however hold true for the two significant novels of the Guinean writer, Camara Laye, one of Africa’s most renowned Francophone writers.

Born in 1928 in Koroussa, Upper Guinea, Camara Laye was the first francophone West African writer to have caught the eye of the international literary scene and thus got translated into English amongst many other international languages.  

Laye’s The African Child [sometimes translated as The Dark Child] published in 1953 continued the accumulation of new and compulsive literature from Africa like Things Fall Apart capturing the attention of the world. It tells the story of Laye’s childhood in his native Kouroussa village in Guinea in accessible language that appeals to a wide variety of readers including children. Its lyricism is enriched by its double perspective. It gives an insider’s account of Camara Laye’s rich and interesting Mande culture, including the secrets of its initiation rites.   According to Adele King in The Writings of Camara Laye [1981], he was, "passionately concerned with preserving a record of traditional homeland." He let his narrative and his gently observed characters speak of the warmth, wholeness, and deep piety of pre-colonial African culture and of the growing sadness of his people as their culture changed under both the curse and the stimulus of French rule and influence.

The book wins its audience through its tender but unsentimental treatment of the older African life and the dignity and beauty of that nostalgically lamented past. Laye expresses his deep anxiety at leaving his homeland, writing, "It was a terrible parting! I do not like to think of it. I can still hear my mother wailing. It was as if I was being torn apart." However, this separation enhanced his appreciation for his home and his culture.  He even brought Marie Lorifo, whom he had known from Conakry, to Paris and married her. Then in the later part during college abroad in France Camara Laye started feeling nostalgic about his past that he has  left behind. He starts speaking from the detached position of one exiled in France with  nostalgic longing, for the world he has left behind in Guinea,. To cure himself of this,  he wrote The African Child based loosely on his own childhood. In 1953, he published it. An autobiographical story, it narrates in the first person a journey from childhood in Kouroussa, through challenges in Conakry, to France. The book won the Prix Charles Veillon in 1954.

Then followed The Radiance of the King, Laye’s second novel which was published a year later in 1954. It is a surreal allegory of  the relations between the West and Africa. In it Clarence, a white man, is shipwrecked and  abandoned as a result of his gambling debts on the African coast leaving him with nothing more than the clothes on his back. Flushed with self-importance, he demands to see the king.  He was convinced of being engaged as his worldly adviser if he should see him.  But unfortunately the king had just left for the south of his realm. So Clarence is left waiting in vain. To save his time from being further wasted he is then led south by an old beggar and two young but roguish boys. He goes through a grueling quest of discovery during which he undergoes various sexual scrapes, and is gradually stripped of his pretensions. He is sold to the royal harem as a slave and ends up giving up his white identity. His bewildering journey thus brings in revelation as he discovers the shameful  but beautiful image of his own humanity in the alien splendour of the king.

He was born Malinke, a group that traditionally supplied the blacksmiths and goldsmiths of Guinea. His mother was from the village of Tindican, and his immediate childhood surroundings were  predominantly uninfluenced by French culture. He attended both the Koranic and French elementary schools in Kouroussa. At age fourteen he went to Conakry, capital of Guinea, to continue his education. He did vocational studies in motor mechanics. In 1947, he travelled to Paris to continue studies in mechanics. There he worked and took further courses in engineering and worked towards the baccalauréat.

In 1956, Laye returned to Africa, first to Dahomey (now Benin), then Gold Coast (now Ghana) and then to newly independent Guinea, where he held government posts. In 1965, he left Guinea for Dakar, Senegal because of political reasons, never to return, presumably on exile because of his political views expressed in his third book. . He would later become a writer of many essays. In 1966 his third novel, A DREAM OF AFRICA, 1968 was published. The arrest of his wife on her return to Guinea to visit her ailing mother led him to stop his political writings .In 1978 his fourth and final work was published, The Guardian of the World, based on a Malian epic, as told by the griot Babou Condé, about the famous Soundiata Keita,  the thirteenth-century founder of the Mali Empire.

Camara Laye died in Dakar, Senegal of a kidney infection.

Unlike other West African novels in English, in these two novels female characters are given  prominent and active roles in the unfolding plots. In The African Child, though the novel revolves around Camara Laye exploring his growth as a young boy in the Guinean hinterland, it gives much room to Laye’s mother and his girlfriends, Fanta and Marie. The Radiance of the King, though exploring the quest and exploits of Clarence, gives much attention to the dancer-girl, Akissi, the Fish Women and Dioki.  

In The African Child the importance of Laye’s mother is primarily because of her role as the hero’s mother. She becomes even more note-worthy because of her inordinate hold over the hero from the novel’s very start. From that point she is presented as being thrust in a struggle for maintaining her control over the fate of the young Laye. She thus becomes embattled against all other characters who show the slightest sign or intention of controlling the boy’s world. This does not exclude Laye’s father. 

Laye’s mother wields a significant place and role throughout the work thus holding the reader’s attention most of the time. The  narrator therefore goes at great length to draw up an authentic and full portrait of her. She thus comes off as a powerful and authoritative woman, the precursor of the present women’s liberationists. Her powers are mostly magical. We witness with awe her success at  reviving an apparently dying horse. After Laye’s mother’s reciting her magical incantations "the horse got up without any further delay and followed his master" (p59 TAC). She also shows evidence of possessing occult powers  as exemplified when she denounces the witch-doctor for his nocturnal activities which had been revealed to her in her sleep. Laye himself even goes on to confirm the wide recognition of this power in his mother; "we never wakened her, for fear of interrupting the course of the revelations that flowed through her dreams. This power was well known by our neighbours and by the whole  community: no one ever doubted it" (p61).   

She had inherited other powers, we are also told. These include the ability to draw water from the Niger with impunity. Her bravery is seen in the context of Laye’s concern or fear for her:  

The hero’s mother is also presented as authoritative and stern as "she . . . had great authority and kept an eye on everything we did; so that her kindness was not altogether untempered  by severity" (p55).  Evidence of her authoritativeness is in the scrupulous details with which she ensures that things are done. For instance when presiding over meals she forbids the young Laye from gazing at older guests. Laye was also forbidden to talk, for his attention must always be fixed on the food in front of him. Her authority is so pervading that she seems to be keeping a hold not only over the young boys but on Laye’s father as well. In fact. Laye’s father because of such control wielded over him by his wife seems reduced to insignificance in the novel. Comparatively little space is devoted to his portrayal, The mother thus  emerges as the supreme character as important as the narrator himself with whom she is so closely linked. 

Her incessant and largely uncontrollable love for her son often borders on jealousy. After the son’s circumcision we notice her welcoming him possessively: 

Even after his formal induction into manhood on his initiation she still continues to exert great influence over him. She thus used to enter his hut without any warning to check his female friends, swiftly showing the door to any she disliked. If she  "did not make off fast enough or if she did not extract  herself quickly enough from the jumble on the divan, [she ]…would pull her out by the arm and thrust her towards the open door."

Laye’s mother being so powerful and authoritative it is then no wonder that she gets enmeshed in a psychological battle against her husband for control of the boy Laye. The conflict becomes evident from the novel’s very start when she caught the child Laye playing with a snake. She was said to be shouting harder than anyone else. This indicates her effort to assert herself above everyone else, even her husband. We are also told that she disliked the many guests entertained by him who if she hadn’t put aside Laye’s share, would have eaten everything leaving the young boy "everlastingly hungry." It is also significant to note that even though it was his father who in actual fact presided over meals, it was his mother’s presence that made itself felt first of all. She controlled their conduct and etiquette throughout the process. 

At the end of the novel the father has been reduced to virtual impotence. He has to go almost on his knees to his wife to let her see the promise and usefulness of Laye’s journey to Paris. The fear in Laye’s father is seen in his reply to Laye’s question.

Even  when she is found, the fear still has a hold over him. He stood "a long while watching the pestle  rising and falling in the mortar. He hardly knew where to begin. "He stood there watching the pestle and saying nothing, and I dared not lift my eyes." When finally she is faced she is furious, crying against the proposed move to take her son to Paris. 

Laye eventually succeeds in going to Paris but that doesn’t prevent his mother from gaining supremacy over everyone else. She is the one who struggles to shield him from being engulfed and devoured by westernization.  His father on the other hand allows  him to be let loose to Europe. Throughout the novel it is seen that Laye shows great affection for his mother. That might be the reason for her holding the reader’s attention almost all the time. 

Not so much detail is given to portraying the other characters as is devoted to Laye’s mother. In spite of this the reader is still given a vivid picture of what they look like. 

Fanta is one of the friends of Laye’s sister. She is usually amongst the many girls who accompany him and his sister to school. It is during such situations that they developed affection for each other. This gradually grows into love. When he fled from the tyranny of  the older schoolboys, crying, she was the one who came to offer him solace. She brought him some wheat cake and later she could no longer control herself as she burst into crying in empathy with him. But the sooner he promises  revenging his persecutors, "she stops crying, and looks up admiringly" at him. The next time she cried was when he was leaving for Conakry. These instances of crying indicate her great concern for him. However, very little description, less so physical description, is given of her. And all we get of her relationship to the hero is not explicitly stated nor adequately demonstrated, but only implied. In spite of all this we get the feel of an adolescent love affair – in the games they play on their way to school, the resulting shyness and then the sheer emotion displayed especially when he is departing for Conakry. 

Marie on the other hand is more explicitly portrayed. She is said to be a half-caste with a very light skin almost bordering on being white. She is "very beautiful, surely the most beautiful girl of all . . . in the girls’ High School." She also has exceptionally long hair with her tresses hanging down to her waist. To the young Laye her beauty is like that of a fairy. "She was sweet and charming, and with a most wonderfully even temper." She is also portrayed as being helpful, courteous and sociable. These qualities become evident through her conduct during her numerous visits to Laye’s uncle’s: 

She would later help her with her housework. With time she becomes accepted as a part of the family.  At the same time her love for Laye was strengthening. It grew to becoming so strong that she ignored all the other boys who were in love with her. So when Laye sat to his proficiency certificate she was even more anxious about his fate than his aunts, as we are told:  

Such selfless love and the further revelation that she herself had been to see the marabout transforms her to a mother-figure.

In The African Child  it is the warmth and conviction with which the characters are invested that endows them with such strength and credibility. The mother stands out as a forceful and loving woman. Marie is a kindly and motherly girl whose whole soul is devoted to the boy she loves, and Fanta is the young immature girl who falls in love with an equally immature boy.  In The Radiance of the King, the female characters, if they could be so called, show little of such warmth and conviction. They fail to come off as real people. This might be due to the allegorical nature of the work which largely allows men and women to function as symbols and helps to steer  the protagonist’ quest forward along its course rather than as human beings. Because of this they could not have been drawn at such depth as in The African Child. But in spite of this it could still be accepted that Laye makes much use of such female characters to  build a work of art. 

The first female characters to be encountered is the dancing girl from whom Clarence asked direction to the city gates. The first and only glimpse we have of her physical appearance is through a rather seductive description: "She was all the time dreamily stroking her breasts, that were naked and irrepressibly luxuriant." Her gait and movement is equally seductive, swinging her hips and throwing out her chest emphasizing to all the prominence and pointed-ness of her breasts. But what is more important is the ease and vitality with which she helps Clarence to continue his journey, "speeding away with him through the narrow streets" crossing a number of streets and negotiating numerous crossroads and plunging determinedly ahead after breaking free of the grip of the leader of the gang. In the end Clarence arrives safely at her father’s house where her mother mends his previously lost coat and gives it back to him. Thus with her help Clarence’s spiritual quest is thrust one stage forward. From the house he is ushered into the fields leading into the forest. 

One cannot get a definite picture of Akissi as she is not a definable person. She is more of a concept. For she is "Never the same for two days  on end." The truth is that Akissi is indeed a communal name for the Naba’s harem. They have come to be made to produce a new species of mulattoes through Clarence’s effort. But their role is also spiritual. They are  the way to Clarence’s spiritual rebirth. Through his involvement in sensuousness and his uninhibited sexual orgies, sleeping with the whole harem, he loses his original pride and feels disgusted with himself:  

He loses his identity as a white man in the end, and except for his colour, becomes almost like a black man, "crouching in the manner of black men under  the arcade," dressing in a "boubou" and becoming less conscious of his nakedness. This spiritual rebirth is so effectively realized that he is purged of all his racial prejudices.  In the end he becomes aware that difference in pigmentation does not matter and that "It’s the soul that matters."

It is again a female symbol – the fish-women – that is used to redeem Clarence from the depths of promiscuity. Clarence’s initial attraction to the fish-women is later transformed to revulsion, especially ‘at the thought that some unconsidered movement might cause him to brush, in passing against the glittering opulence of those dead "white breasts."

However, it is another woman, Dioki, who completes Clarence’s transformation, thus ridding him completely of his licentiousness. And Dioki is able to accomplish  this because of her supernatural powers. Though she is reputed to be a "frightening creature surrounded by snakes." "She is exercising supernatural powers both over people and as a visionary." When Clarence, bound by a snake, sees the king’s coming, Dioki is both exorcising Clarence’s shame and satisfying his desire. In the end he is rendered spiritually ready for the coming of the king and is therefore qualified to be accepted by him.

Laye also succeeds in giving us visual pictures of these last three female figures. Even Akissi who is never the same is given physical attributes which could be taken as holding good for all the girls who slept with Clarence. Though their faces were unrecognizable it was the  same high, firm buttocks and the same pear-shaped breasts that became her identifiable mark.  In effect she becomes little more than a sex symbol. Almost all his thoughts of her are as sensual as this:        

The other two female figures, the fish-women and Dioki are also seen in sexual terms. But  it is not like the sensual and seductive one of Akissi.  Theirs is all-revolting. Whilst the fish-women’s breasts are those of women, the head are those of fishes. The manner of their movement is also described  in uncomplimentary terms. ‘Dioki was so withered and emaciated that Clarence couldn’t endure the sight of her"- "her buttocks . . .  had collapsed  long ago" and when she closed her eyes "it looked as if her face had become drained of all colour. But it did not turn white but  a dirty and ashen grey."    

However, these descriptions should not blind one to the important role these characters play.  They are all a part of Clarence’s processes of transformation. And indeed they determine their course. One could then conclude that Laye uses women as important vehicles of spiritual rebirth. Without Dioki, for instance, Clarence would not have been rendered completely ready [spiritually] for the king’s coming. When one adds the foregoing to the role played by Laye’s mother in The African Child to prevent her son from getting into the grips of  westernization and her unusual powers drawn from traditional religion, one could state that Laye sees women as capable of holding their own in a man’s world. Laye’s mother for instance was the most authoritative and powerful member of the family, with her husband often deferring to her. Her exposure and threat to the male witchdoctor is also a significant symbol of her power and fearlessness.             

In brief, Laye, unlike other West African novelists like Achebe invests his female characters with leading and challenging roles in his novels. He thus seems to be holding up womanhood as the most dependable custodians of the traditional culture.

*   *   *   *   *       

Bibliography

Brench, A.C., The Novelists' Inheritance in French Africa.  Oxford University Press, 1967.

Brench, A.C., Writing in French from Senegal to Cameroon. 1967

Carroll, David,  ‘Camara Laye’s African Child:: A Reply.’  ALT,  No. 5

Larson, Charles, The Emergence of African Fiction.

Laye, Camara, The African Child.  Fontana/Collins, 1954.

Laye, Camara, The Radiance of the King.

*   *   *   *   *

updated 13 October 2007