The relationship between Ramatoulaye and her husband Modou was initially harmonious. She chose to marry for love, overcoming the objections of her parents, and he likewise was not pressured into the type of arranged marriage that was so common in their day. Believing that Modou was a social inferior, her mother wanted her to marry a doctor, but Ramatoulaye believed that the two of them shared a modern outlook. Ramatoulaye was glad to continue teaching and sharing that experience with her friend Aissatou.

Despite some reservations, she shouldered the responsibilities of dutiful homemaker. Increasingly as her sphere was circumscribed by her duties as a mother—ultimately having twelve children—her dissatisfaction grew. Regardless, she was unprepared for the shock of her husband’s choice to add a second, teenage wife. No doubt fearful of her reaction, he did not even tell her himself but sent his brothers to break the news.

The problems in the couple’s marriage in some ways were not personal between them. Rather, Modou remained tighter with his birth family than she had anticipated. His relatives, including his mother, assumed that his wife would play a subservient role. She had not expected to be required to fit into the vision of the extended family as well as that of the man she married, nor did she anticipate that their views would ever diverge so widely.