This paper uses a socialist feminist literary theory to examine Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood to analyse how the writer brings together the two genders: male and female. It seeks to answer the following two questions: How are masculinities and femininities represented and what effect does this way of portraying them has on men? What kind of women’s images does Ousmane promulgate in this novel? The author of the novel is a male and yet the novel develops an element of feminism. The paper traces the changing role of women during the struggle and assesses their influence on the struggle’s outcome. The significance of being aware of women’s sufferings and problems under a patriarchal domination organized in the context of capitalism is consciousness-raising. As a result, shared problems and oppressions come to the surface and planning to make a ‘change’ becomes possible. It is making a ‘change’ that stands as the ultimate aim of socialist feminists as well as others who are related to feminism (s) in one way or another, as it is observed in Ousmane’s novel under analysis.    

A Brief Overview of the Novel

The novel is an imaginative reconstruction, by Ousmane, of the workers’ strike which brought the French West African railway services to a hold. Ousmane chronicles the great struggle of black railroad unionists in Senegal, highlighting their courageous fight against colonial powers as well as their demand for equal treatment to whites, including pay and benefits.

The novel is both anti-colonial and anti-capitalist. Capitalism treats human beings as units of labour and measures their usefulness on the basis of their output. It divides workers for easy exploitation. The expression ‘God’s bits of wood’ is taken from a West African language and implies that human beings are God’s creatures and therefore are too dignified to be counted; alternatively, that they are so intricately woven into their community that they should not be viewed as separated entities. This is reinforced by superstition that counting heads may attract misfortune or death’s attention. There are many instances where this expression is used to refer to the collectivity and the oneness of the workers’ community in the novel (GBW, 40, 51, 131, 186,194).

During the strike, the common suffering creates an awareness of a new identity that has been forged in the struggle against the exploitation. This new awareness gives birth to a new solidarity and realization that when workers are united, they can become a formidable force. In order to unite, they need a strong organization and this is provided by the trade union and its leadership Bakayoko. But they are strongly supported and even urged by women to hold on their position of striking until they get positive outcomes. For instance, Mame Sofi gives an account of how she has threatened her husband that she shares with another woman called Bineta to punish him if he goes back to work before the outcome of the strike: “if you go back to work before others, I’ll cut off the only thing that makes you a man.” (GBW, 47)

The narrative develops around the search for unity and the search for ways to overcome obstacles which are placed in their way. There are numerous cleavages which make it difficult for workers to adopt a common programme of action. First there are generational (age) differences. At the opening we see conflicting attitudes represented by the old woman Niakoro, her daughter-in-law Assistan and her grandchild Ad’jibid’ji. The old women believe in keeping tradition and keeping their girls into house as a way of protecting them from being contaminated by the whites’ ways. But Ad’jibid’ji, her grandchild, speaks French, likes reading and is comfortable in the company of men. Her mother Assistant is tolerant and a submissive Muslim woman. Second there are gender differences. In the novel, it is the men who work for the railway line. Women stay at home and look after the household and the children. But during the strike, the roles are flexible. Women become breadwinner and participate in the public space. Third, there is difference of race. The whites who work for the rail line are treated differently and they have no sympathy for the exploitation inflicted to Africans. Fourth, the workers belong to different tribes and there are ancient rivalry and prejudices between the rural, the Bambara and other tribes. Fifth, there are class and business interests. Business men try to make profit from the misery of workers and some of the workers become traitors because of selfish interests. Last but not least, there is difference with religion. Religious leaders such as the Imams and priests of other religions are co-opted by French authorities to act against the interests of their own people in the name of Allah or God.

All these differences dissolve steadily during the struggle against the oppression. During the strike, some traditionalists turn revolutionalists; women become bread winners and some of the passive people become activists. What unites them becomes stronger than their differences.

The final march to Dakar initiated by women is the climax when all the workers “flow like a river” towards a new future, creating a new destiny for themselves (GBW, 211). The previous strike staged by African workers in Senegalp was disastrously settled by deaths and no positive outcomes were realised yet still lives in the mind of aged Africans like Niakoro who lost her husband. Now under the leadership of Ibrahim Bakayoko, Niakoro’s son, the workers at the railway have staged another strike against their white employers. They are protesting unfair salaries, racial discrimination at work, lack of old age pensions and family allowances. The railway services from Dakar and beyond have come to a standstill due to the strike but some Africans still connive with the whites against their brothers. Consequently, food and water supplies to the Africans are cut off by the whites, life for the blacks becomes extremely hard, the women take on the role for men, many strikers get arrested and bitterly tortured, lives are lost including Niakoro’s and unless the workers give up the strike, the whites promise no change. Bakayoko gives the only hope to the strikers to fight on.

However, education of the workers about their rights has turned them into knowledgeable people who can stand for their rights and who cannot be intimidated by their oppressors. Ousmane views trade unions as an important force in the social transformation of the African continent. He sees the workers’ organizations as vehicles for education and changes from old superstitions to new political and social awareness (GBW, 144). He also sees them as vanguard for political liberation. This novel therefore represents a projection of the author’s political ideals rather than a faithful representation of what actually happened in history.

The Setting of God’s Bits of Wood

The events take place into 3 railways towns, that is, Theis, Dakar and Bamako. Between these railway towns lie numerous settlements across West Africa through provisional services to the railway line. These townships represent a new Africa that was immerging around the middle of the 20th century. This was the Africa of industrial and urban workers who were expected to provide cheap labor in order to make the colonial enterprise profitable. These are the people whom Ousmane refers to as ‘God’s bits of wood’ not only as a way of asserting their dignity as human beings but also their communal life. 

In this setting, they neither own the railway nor the land. Unlike in traditional Africa where people depended on land, this new class of urban workers is completely dependent on their railway train (GBW, 32) but they are not owners of it. The setting is ideal for Ousmane to deconstruct the patriarchal ideology of property ownership, bread winner, family protector and spokesperson. He is hitting to the fact that ideally men and women are all equal. Ousmane is questioning the whole concept of ownership. He is implicitly raising the issue of property ownership which is put in the hands of men according to patriarchal ideology. In this new setting, even men do not own property; they depend on railway train which is owned by the French capitalists.

Socialist Realism Philosophy

As James Adera Ogude [1], surveys it in his dissertation, Maxim Gorky is the father of socialist realism. Socialist realism philosophy emerged to take the leading role of the critical realism because the latter could not show the way out of captivity. In Gorky’s view, only the realism of a new type the socialist realism could answer the question “who was responsible for the suffering of humanity?” While the proletarian will say that the instigator of his suffering is the capitalist bourgeois, women will say that the root for their suffering is patriarchy. 

When socialist realist art emerged, it aimed at comprehending and analyzing the phenomena of the world around us and transforming this world in the interests of mankind. In the works of Maxim Gorky, life is seen for the first time through the eyes of the class to which the future belongs the proletariat. For Gorky, socialist realism is guided by the present and strives towards the future. He writes: “What we need to know is not only two realities the past and the present in which we participate to a certain extent. We also need to know a third reality, that of the future. We must somehow include this reality in our everyday life and we should depict it” [1]. 

Socialist realism therefore demands from the writer a true and historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, this true and historically concrete depiction of reality must be combined with the task of educating the workers in the spirit of socialism. This education involves women as well.

Although socialist realism does not present a set of mechanical rules for application in any work of art, it does give an indication of the general line that is to be encouraged in a given circumstance. In fact, it is characterized by basic features that easily distinguish it from all other forms of realism. These features were brought out by Maxim Gorky and are summarized in Ogude [1]. They are mainly four:

• Historicism and socialist education

• Historical optimism

• Collectivism

• Ideological clarity or content

Historicism And Socialist Education

Historicism is central to socialist realism. In fact, it is the methodological principle underlying socialist realism. It reposes on the principle that all things including social phenomena are socially conditioned and interconnected.

In socialist realist art, we not only see the collective endeavors of a people in the process of change, but the social experience also serves to shape the socialist individuality. This is the crux of historical materialism, namely, that a man’s social being shapes his consciousness and not vice versa. Social being encompasses the material life of society and, above all, people’s productive activity, the economic relations between them in the process of production. Social consciousness is the spiritual life of the people, the ideas, theories and views which guide them in what they do.

Art does not only reflect reality; it creates and shapes it. Thus, a perception of each individual element must be seen in the wider context of the whole, to show its social background and historical significance. In this sense the task of the writer operating within the socialist realist method is to reveal the historical meaning and social interconnections of phenomena. 

It is the capacity of art to elevate progressive elements in reality which gives it great importance in socialist education and the revolutionary transformation of society. That art criticizes what is bad and affirms what is progressive is due to the dialectics of reality itself which maintains that the world is an endless process of movement. So, the reflection of reality and ideological education of the masses are aspects of the same thing. Socialist realist art portrays reality objectively and assists the masses to understand the historical processes and their own role in them. Socialist realist art is therefore, a very powerful tool for developing the social awareness of the people.

Historical Optimism

Historical optimism is closely tied up with historicism since it is a socialist world outlook. It is not just an affirmation of new and better elements in society, but also an inexorable faith in future. The socialist worldview is termed optimistic because every step in the ascent of society is related to the preceding one as a solution of its contradictions and collisions that is, each step is more perfect than its antecedent. This kind of optimism is necessary because it is believed that optimism is an organic element of the socialist realist literature as it is part and parcel of the socialist perspective. Society for the socialist realist will always be seen in a state of movement, from lowest to highest stages of human development. The socialist feminist will make sure that the woman is actively involved in this movement for change.

For socialist realism, life is action, creativity for the development of man’s and woman’s most valuable individual abilities for their victory over the forces of nature, for their health and a longevity and for the great happiness of living on this Earth.

Collectivism

Collectivism is a feature of socialist relations and is regarded as the main factor in shaping humankind. It reveals the essence of the relationship between the individual and the society as a whole, the personality and the collective. It is the opposite of individualism. Collectivism, as a moral principle originates under the conditions of bourgeois society, within the working-class milieu, in the united actions of proletarians against the power of capital.

For Gorky, as mentions Ogude [1], “collectivism presupposes relations between society and the individual such that the development of society as a whole creates favorable conditions for the all-round development of the individual. And this development of the individual is the precondition of the progress of all the society” (32). It is collective experience and the collective endeavors of a community, class or nation in a given historical period that are crucial in shaping the socialist individuality. The objective aim of socialist realist art is to free the workers from the dehumanizing power of capitalism. This collectivism involves the action of men, women and children for the progress of the society.

Ideological Clarity or Content

Ideology implies the evaluation of reality from a particular point of view or in terms of a certain system of values, in short, from the standpoint of the ideal. The ideal is that norm or model in which people’s ideas of society and man converge. This ideal is not constant. For the writer, he has to show life in such a way that the reader is clearly conscious of the goal and trend of efforts to reshape the world.

The way the ideological content emerges in works of art will vary from writer to writer. But the socialist perspective must be seen to be guiding and informing the analysis of issues, ideas and conflicts. The concrete reflection of reality must be seen to be absorbing people’s movements from the point of lower awareness to greater and higher levels of human consciousness. The ideological meaning of a work of art is mainly given through a positive main character. It emerges from the way the main character relates to and views the ongoing struggle or change. His attitude towards the struggle and various institutions in the social system clearly shows the ideological position of the writer and ideological content of the work.

In nutshell, a meaningful study of literature should begin from the fact that it is the material conditions that shape all superstructures. Aesthetics is no exception. According to the dialectical materialism, the world is an endless process of movement, regeneration, the demise of the old and the birth of the new. Nothing is immutable and eternal. And this is what strengthens the optimism of proletariat’s struggle against capitalist oppression and is what has inspired socialist feminism to shake the patriarchal exploitative face.

Theoretical Framework: Socialist Feminist Literary Theory

The socialist feminism philosophy draws from socialist realism. By exploring the dialects of human society, with its conflicts and contradictions, feminists saw the inevitable change that attends to it.

Therefore, socialist feminist literary theory is a method of interpreting texts that attends to the complex intersection of race, class and gender oppressions in the production of social structure and human subjectivity. The term “Text” here is broadly construed, including literary texts, popular cultural texts (televised narratives, for example), political discourses, social practices and social structure itself. Socialist feminism believes that the oppression of women is not only based on gender but also on class. Socialist feminist theory became prominent in the 1970s and combines Marxist, radical and psychoanalysis notions. It locates women’s oppression in their dual oppression by class and patriarchy. It sees capitalism and patriarchy as Siamese twins that oppress women. 

The history of representation of women in texts is rooted in the hierarchies that generally place the men as superior to women, bourgeois as superior to proletariat and employer as superior to employee. It is the points of convergence and divergence that are constant, leading to conflicts and settlements that inspire socialist feminist toward challenging patriarchy the same way workers or proletariat challenge capitalist system. But socialist feminists are guided by the spirit of collectivism for the progress of society as a whole because they do not want a ‘women’s club’ only.

Socialist Feminist Principles

The most prominent socialist feminist thinkers are Juliet Mitchell (Women’s Estate, 1971), Sheila Rowbotham (Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World, 1973) and Zillah Eisenstein (Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, 1979). The primary theoretical concepts explored in this perspective include the nature of power relationships; the concept of ‘woman’ as a political category; the collectivity of oppression; and ‘the resisting reader’.

According to Deborah L. Madsen [2], Socialist feminism focuses on power relationships, especially the intersection of capitalism, racism and patriarchy and the production of a politicised personal (subjective) life. Socialist feminism is concerned with the roles allocated to women that are independent of class status (mother, sister, housewife, mistress, consumer and reproducer).

The power relationships between men and women within the family reproduce the power relationships that exist in society; so, women find job opportunities primarily in the caring professions like teaching and nursing and the clerical posts that require the same kinds of organizational skills that a woman needs to run a household. Consequently, ‘socialist feminists claim that the labor of women in the domestic realm serves not only the interests of specific families but also the interests of capitalism in that the family reproduces the attitudes and capabilities needed to enter into the wage labor force’ [3]. So, the family is a powerful instrument of socialization, where one learns to adopt particular postures in relation to the patriarchal power structure; that is, where one learns positions of subordination and domination.

Socialist feminism treats the concept of ‘woman’ not as a matter of individual gender consciousness but as a political category. ‘Femaleness’ is a cultural construction created to counter oppressive male images of women; this concept functions as the basis for the social, economic and political betterment of women. 

Socialist feminists’ literary preferences in terms of the kinds of literature read and promoted are realist texts with a clear sociological context. Socialist feminists address texts that stress characters and relationships. Fragmentation is interpreted by socialists as neither liberating nor exciting: division is what must be overcome the division of the personal from the political, sex from society so that the processes of gender socialization become visible. 

Collectivity of oppression is a fundamental assumption of socialist feminism. The social class structure is seen to be inseparable from gender divisions: just as the rich oppress the poor, so men oppress women and this is not something that can easily be blamed on individual men who oppress individual women. This collective oppression of all women by men is the effect of culture or the social relations which define our existence as gendered individuals. Consequently, a change in society is needed before any significant change in gender relations can be brought about. As Nancy Hartsock quoted by Deborah L. Madsen explains, “since we do not act to produce and reproduce our lives in a vacuum, changed consciousness and changed definitions of the self can only occur in conjunction with a restructuring of the social (both societal and personal) relations in which each of us is involved” [2]. 

How is this change to be brought about? By convincing individual women to change their lives; by producing structural alterations in the economy that change men’s lives; by producing a generation of ‘resisting’ readers who are skeptical of all the cultural messages that are offered to them; most of all by transcending subjectivism (the debilitating emphasis on the individual that keeps women blaming their own individual inadequacies for what are social problems) and formulating an effective concept of collective oppression. Socialist feminism represents not only female oppression but also the entire oppressive patriarchal power structure by exposing (as unnatural) relationships of male domination, especially in their relation to capitalist modes of production.

The term ‘resisting reader’ was made famous by Judith Fetterley in her 1978 book of that name. The ‘resisting reader’ is diametrically opposed to the ‘male-identified woman’ who identifies against her own gender interests and with the interests of patriarchal authority. The resisting reader refuses to adopt the perspective of male interest because the resisting reader asks, ‘Whose interests are served by this way of seeing the world?’ What the reader resists is the pressure placed upon people by culture to view all issues and all situations from the point of view of the capitalist and the male interests. 

For example, Fetterley finds that repeatedly the personal fulfilment of literary heroes depends upon the suffering and death of literary heroines; men mature and develop, but at the expense of the women around them and this fact is seen as a normal pattern of behaviour. It is natural, within the terms of reference of these texts, for women to sacrifice themselves so that their men may benefit. The resisting reader refuses to give unconscious assent to this view of ‘the natural’ and ‘the normal’ and resists such conventional gender roles. The concept of the resisting reader enables us to translate the socialist feminist analysis of power into literary terms and to perceive how literature functions within the context of patriarchal power relationships. Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood fits well within this framework as it is demonstrated in the lines ahead.

A Socialist Feminist Interpretation of Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood

The novel has a clear political message. The oppressors are always a minority and the oppressed are more numerous. The novel sets out to defend the thesis that if the oppressed are united they will succeed to defend their rights. The expected results are achieved fully after the necessary sacrifices have been made such as the death of many persons: the old woman Niakoro, the woman Houdia M’baye, the leading girl Penda, one of the twins of the blind woman Maïmouna, the man Samba and many others.

Historicism and Socialist Education in God’s Bits of Wood

In this novel, Ousmane demonstrates how individual people and the society in general respond to historical forces and how the same historical forces shape them. By exploring the changing history of Senegal, Ousmane has been able to capture the essence of whatever era he has been dealing with, through an artistic recreation of a railway workers’ strike which occurred between October 1947 and March 1948 on the Dakar-Niger railway line. The writer relates the events during the strike from the point of view of the workers; and in the exercise he raises fundamental questions; he examines the role of various institutions, classes, people and individuals in a people’s struggle. 

In fact, when colonialism came to this part of Africa, it upset the very basis of feudal society and feudal social relations. The advent of commodity production and the introduction of money economy changed the nature of production and social relations. It promoted and accelerated change bringing with it new technology. But above all, it created labour for the capitalist economy. Capitalism thus created a new class of people the workers, the class destined to destroy the capitalist system and carry out socialist transformation.

In this novel, capitalist is symbolised in the rail owned and managed by the French capitalists who have engaged the services of the African workers. As James Adera Ogude [1], mentions, “the railway is also a clear manifestation of colonial penetration into this part of Africa. But what is in the dispute is the value of the railway workers’ labour in-put” (53). The workers want better working conditions and better terms of services. They want family allowances, pension, pay rise and better living conditions. The result is a strike which is an expression of existing antagonistic and contradictory relationships between the exploited African workers on the one hand and the exploiter French capitalists on the other hand. Implicitly, this strike impacts on the existing antagonistic and contradictory relationships between the oppressing patriarchy and the subordinated women. The strike is an economic form of class struggle and the simplest form most accessible to the workers because, historically, this is the first form of the proletariat’s class struggle and it plays a big part in the development of the revolutionary movement. 

One sees workers and women who have otherwise been very passive, become active and organise themselves to confront capital which for so long has dominated their lives. Workers’ ability to organise themselves and engage in an active struggle transforms them from mere robots at the hands of capital into human beings who can shape their destiny. It is workers’ realisation that capital is useless without labour that gives them their real human-worth. This historical event also is an occasion to prove that patriarchy is nothing without the contribution of women. Ousmane deconstructs patriarchy to organise a complementarity of gender in society. He deconstructs the stereotypes of masculinity as property owner and decision maker as it appears below through the words of the woman Mame Sofi:

Then, turning back to the girl, she said, ‘you’ll see the men will consult us before they go out on another strike. Before this, they thought they owned the earth just because they fed us and now it is the women who are feeding them’.... ‘I told ours the other night, “if you go back to work before others, I’ll cut off the only thing that makes you a man” (GBW, 47)

Mame Sofi is convinced that men will consider women’s contributions as their equals because their husbands now notice that change cannot take place without supports from women.

In the process of their struggle, the workers discover their international role as a class. They learn that they have a fundamental interest which is common to them as the exploited class. We are therefore able to see workers like Alioune and Deune moving from narrow nationalism to a progressive understanding of the international significance of their strike. Deune is transformed and he is able to recognise the international significance of their struggle when he did not understand it at the beginning.

One of the most important social transformations that takes place in that story about the strike is that of women. The women are seen abandoning their usual attitude of docility and indifference to political issues and joining forces with men. It is they who support their families in spite of the difficulties of obtaining water and food. They even strike a blow for the men by organising a march from Thiès to Dakar and from what the girl Penda says it is clear they recognise what the strike means to them:

I speak in the name of all the women, but I am just the voice they have chosen to tell you what they have decided to do. Yesterday we laughed together, men and women and today we weep together, but for us women this strike still means the possibility of a better life tomorrow. (GBW, 185)

Women already know what the strike means to them. It is an opportunity for them to be empowered and they already see in the strike a door to the liberation of the class of women. Commenting on the general transformation of women during the strike the narrator says:

When a man came back from a meeting, with a bowed head and empty pockets, the first things he saw were always the unfired stove, the useless cooking vessels, the bowls and gourds ranged in a corner, empty. Then he would seek the arms of his wife, without thinking, or caring whether she was the first or the third. And seeing the burdened shoulders, the listless walk, the women became conscious that a change was coming for them as well. (GBW, 33)

During the strike, sex relations begin to be subordinated to economic relations. Throughout the novel, we see women abandoning the traditional role of total subservience to men epitomized in the character of Assistan and vehemently withheld and vocalised by the Old Niakoro. Women are no longer regarded as objects of sexual gratification for the men like in feudal society.

There is a sense of female empowerment and a shifting of gender roles, as the women become the soldiers and the physical enforcers of the movement. As Mame Sofi leads her group of women toward the house of El Hadji Mabigué, she is filled with the leadership of a general or a leader. When approached by the servant at Mabigue’s home and referred to as a “good wife,” Mame Sofi boldly confronts the man and refers to him as a “slave” asserting her aggressive nature and will to proceed with her cause. As Mame Sofi surpasses the feeble male servants at the entrance, she boldly cries: “Mabigué! Come out! Come out if you are a man! You only have courage when you’re hiding behind the toubabs! You made them close down the fountains, now come out here and see if you are a man enough to make me close my mouth!” (GBW, 110). Though she is a woman, Mame Sofi has become a leader; she leads not only her group of women, but the oppressed in Senegal. As the women remain gathered in N’Diayène house, the strike against the French management has evolved into a struggle for rights, not just for men, but for society as a whole. It is the women who become the activists and effectively cause change. This particular passage exemplifies the women’s influence not only in the struggle for equality but an uprising for women.

It is apparent though that the relationship between Old Niakoro and Ad’jibid’ji is antagonistic and contradictory. Old Niakoro cannot understand why Ad’jibid’ji should attend men’s meetings. Niakoro stands for tradition, the past with all its feudal relics while Ad’jibid’ji is the prototype of the new woman. She stands for what is new and progressive. However, in response to the historical change brought by the rail, even Niakoro is forced out of her passive nature when she is confronted by policemen and militiamen. She defiantly calls them “sons of dogs” (GBW, 102). But the change comes rather too late, for in the process she is killed by the guardians of the new system. According to Ogude [1], Niakoro’s “death is symbolic of the negation of the old with its customs, while the survival of Ad’jibid’ji is the symbolic of the thriving of the new and progressive tendencies in the society” (59).

Women can now take part in the struggle alongside men. The women confront the police and fight them. They go roaming the countryside in search of food and, for the first time, one sees women addressing the gathering of men, both during Diara’s trial and at Thiès. The narrator observes:

As they crossed the square, through the gradually scattering crowd, they passed dozens discussing this new development. It was the first time in living memory that a woman had spoken in public in Thiès and even the onslaught of night could not still the arguments. (GBW, 185)

Change from feudal social relations to new commodity relations brings a new breed of women much freer and more progressive than in the preceding social order. Therefore, from a socialist feminist perspective, the liberation of women is only possible and meaningful within the wider context of the transformation of the whole society and, the subsequent liberation of the exploited class. It is a function of the struggle against oppression and exploitation by the working majority. In other words, the role played by women in the liberation progress is determined by the fact that they are oppressed and exploited workers, as women. In fact, the bulk of women in neo-colonial societies find themselves in the army of the unemployed. In addition, women are bearers and nurturers of the exploited men workers. Women’s struggle is therefore a workers’ struggle.

There is also transformation of the individual characters, both men and women in the course of the struggle. One could name educational transformation of several personalities in this story endlessly. But the transformations of some people whom this strike serves to change deserve mentioning. We are told of the woman Ramatoulaye: “they scarcely recognized the woman beside them as the Ramatoulaye they had always known and they asked themselves where she had found this new strength...” (GBW, 74). This transformation had been born beside a cold fireplace, in an empty kitchen. Because of necessity, the women have abandoned the timid, obedient behavior that had previously characterized them. Their fighting against the police and badgering of men on the streets shows their courage to stand up to men and authority, a mindset previously unheard of before the strike. When the policemen come to seize Ramatoulaye for having butchered El Hadji Mabingué’s ram Vendredi, women who are gathered at N’Diayène resist by throwing stones at the police and by hurling insults at them. But at last, Ramatoulaye decides to go by her own. When at the police station, Ramatoulaye continues her resistance and demonstrates her strength through the way she reacts: “Ramatoulaye hurled herself at the police angrily trying to free N’Deye Touti. “ ‘I don’t understand’, she shouted. I can’t understand what you’re saying, but let the child alone. You wanted me and here I am, but let her alone’…” (GBW, 122)

Tiémoko also experiences change: “For the first time in his life an idea of his was going to play a part in the lives of thousands of others. It was not pride or vanity he was experiencing, but the astonishing discovery of his worth as a human being” (GBW, 89-90). In his opinion, this strike served like a school for all. Even an old man like Fa Keita by responding to the historical moment regains his human worth in the process of the struggle. Fa Keita does not understand the complexities of the struggle, but he is prepared to learn and change with the changing times. He tells the wife in acknowledgement of the young people’s initiative to strike, that ‘knowledge is not hereditary and it is not the reserve of the old’.

We could not end our list of educational transformed personalities without mentioning the transformation of Awa the stubborn woman and above all, that of N’Deye Touti whom this strike serves to change. 

Ogude [1], argues that “by showing the Wolof society rejecting and abandoning feudal relations and assuming bourgeois social relations, indeed, by showing the workers confronting capital, the author makes it clear that change is an inherent force in society itself”. After, the essence of socialist education lies in the revolutionary world view and the revolutionary transformation of society. The rejection of what is bad and affirmation of what is progressive is due to the dialectics of reality itself. “And the men began to understand that if the times were bringing forth a new breed of men, they were also bringing forth a new breed of women.” (GBW, 34)

Historical Optimism in God’s Bits of Wood

It is said that a work of art that takes as its central theme a historic event such as a people’s struggle for their rights is necessarily optimistic in its worldview. God’s Bits of Wood is permeated with the forces of historical optimism. It is characterized by the outright affirmation of life, the new and progressive and the total negation of the outmoded feudal tendencies and retrogressive human relations. The strike has created a new community of men, women and children. The value of their work has been accelerated by this historic event.

The workers are shown to be moving from a point of passivity to active participation in the making and shaping of history. Their faith in the triumph of their struggle is demonstrated when in the fact of artificial food shortages created by the exploiter French capitalist class, they continue to manifest courage and hope for bliss in future. Women support and encourage the movement with songs of hope. Workers have an objective historical optimism. It reposes on what they consider as the inevitable victory of the ongoing struggle. And not even death can drive them into resignation: Penda’s and Samba’s deaths do not shake them. Even the blind woman Maïmouna does not fear to join the parade of strikers to Dakar after she has lost one of her twins during the previous turmoil. 

Bakayoko himself demonstrates a lot of faith in the triumph of the workers: “Man, we are going to win”. “Man, we are going to win!” he (Bakayoko) answered (GBW, 211). At one point in Dakar, when Alioune is pessimistic and worried about a possible wrapping up of their efforts by Gaye (the sly secretary of the Metal Workers’ Union), Bakayoko’s optimism still reigns. He resorts painstakingly: “...But we can still hold onto our faith in the future; this is just a temporary halting place and we will get what we are asking for yet” (GBW, 206). There is historical optimism despite discouragement from the opposite camp or from traitors from their own camp. Bakayoko is the embodiment of optimism.

There is also the symbolic significance of Maïmouna’s remaining twin little Adama and the full orphan child Strike whose father Badiane and mother Houdia M’Baye had been killed during the fighting of the strike. Athough M’Baye was killed in the struggle, her child lived on, the same for one of the blind woman’s twins. The blind Maïmouna sees Strike as a potential fighter in the tomorrow’s struggle. These two children are a symbol that there is hope in the future. As Ogude [1], observes, “these two children symbolise the affirmation of the new and faith in the youth who will carry the struggle forward: maybe political and ideological class-struggle which will lead to the total overthrow of the capitalist social order”.

The men now know that the machine is the source of their strength and that a new kind of man has been created in them. The women also realize their worth and begin to abandon their traditional role characterized by docility. They are henceforth a force to reckon with. Men cannot successfully face the future without women’s contribution. The children become producers and active participants in the making of their history as well. They learn to be independent. There is an affirmation of the new and progressive, that is, historical optimism.

If the workers’ demands are granted, they are sure that even obstacles to women’s advancement such as polygamy, discrimination in labor, lack of freedom and so on will be sorted out, as expressed through the girl Ad’jibid’ji’s quotation of Bakayoko that “men and women will be equal someday” (GBW, 97). This hope is also expressed in the voice of Penda. It is this hope in a better future for the new generations that lead these women and men to sacrifice.

Collectivism in God’s Bits of Wood

Collectivism is the very opposite of individualism. In all the major events in this novel, there are women and men. Ousmane demonstrates his faith in the workers as a class. There is in the novel this constant image of the formidable collective force of men, women and even children against capital.

The novel is crowded with characters. Many of them appear only in one scene or in a couple of scenes and then disappear. This is deliberate because the author wants to focus the reader’s attention on the collective interest of the workers’ movement rather than on the personalities of individual participants. Only one character can be considered to be the major character. That one is Ibrahim Bakayoko. He is endowed with intelligence, charisma and dedication to beauty. But he is rarely met in the novel. His personality is revealed to the reader through what other characters say about him (GBW, 80). He provides the intellectual, the moral and ideological inspiration to the workers’ movement. And he is often quoted by minor characters to justify their actions. In fact, he often comes across as over a more legend than a human being. The reader cannot meet Bakayoko until very late in the novel when he comes to negotiate with management about the improvement of workers’ conditions. His behavior at the meeting suggests that he is impatient, non-compromising and militant. He is an orator who is much better at instigating crowds than he is at negotiations. During the negotiations, he gets involved in a scaffold against one of the white men.

Ousmane makes a very important point in recreating the collective experience of the group; namely that is, the people as a group and not individuals, who make history [4]. It is this history that has conditioned their response and in turn shaped them to be useful instruments in the strike. Ousmane portrays the workers struggling in a collective spirit, all the time submerging their individual feelings for the benefit of the whole group. At one point the narrator captures this unity very vividly: “The faces seemed to have lost all trace of personality. As if some giant eraser had rubbed out their individual traits, they had taken a common mask, the anonymous mask of a crowd.” (GBW, 7)

Ousmane makes effective use of flat characters when he merges them into a dynamic crowd. In the crowd, the characters complement one another and thus lend dynamism and vitality to the workers’ movement. There is emphasis on this collectivism by an excessive use of the words ‘masses and ‘crowd’. For instance, on the single page 172 of the novel, the word root ‘crowd’ appears five times.

The workers themselves demonstrate their faith in the collective resistance when they come together to form a workers’ union. They further resolve to take a collective action and they strike to demand their rights. Traitors in the struggle are disciplined by group action. Tiémoko’s “commando” group plays a major role in disciplining the traitors.

The women folk and children alike join the workers and help to sustain the strike, each one from their own capacity. They both fight the police and take part in the collective search for food. For instance, the woman Dieynaba is in the public place, a place traditionally occupied by only men and helps strikers and women by giving them food on credit, until her supplies are over. She is a woman of strong personality whom other women rely on for comfort in this crisis. Children rise up to the occasion and participate not only in catching chicken for food, but also in fighting the police with stones. Children help to establish a kind of balance in the struggle by making the burden of the strike be shared between workers and the white. By responding to the demands of their situation, the children cease to be mere consumers, but become also producers and makers of their history.

At Dakar, Bakayoko calls all the workers to join hands in the struggle he sees their triumph in the collective majority effort. He says:

Now it is up to the rest of you masons, carpenters, fitters, fishermen, dockers, policemen and militiamen, civil servants and office workers to understand that this strike is yours, too, just as the workers in Dahomey, in Guinea and even in France have already understood it. It depends on you, workers of Dakar, whether our wives and our children will ever see a better life. There is a great rock poised across our path, but together we can move it. As for us the trainmen will never go back to work until our demands are met. (GBW, 218)

The strike “is connected with the worldwide historical role of workers as an international force poised against the bourgeois social order wherever it may exist”, as says Ogude [1]. There is a reason to believe that these character flaws are socially derived. N’Deye Touti’s personality, for example has a lot to do with her education and it is her participation in the process of the struggle during the workers’ strike that transforms her. Several people like Tiémoko, Bakayoko and Penda are transformed by responding and participating in the heroic struggle. Bakayoko’s family relations change. Some people like N’deye Touti think that Bakayoko “has no heart” (GBW, 223). Penda also ceases to be an object of sex and becomes a vessel of leadership and struggle. In the narrative, women are given voice not to be isolated but to work side by side with men. The participation of the blind woman Maïmouna in the public space and in the journey to Dakar with a baby on her back is a way to the author to say that reproductive work does not prevent one from participating in public work. Dieynaba is also a woman who is in the public space and helps men by giving them food on credit to pay her later when they have got their salary. Both men and women are sharing space. Women leave town and go in village at the search of food and men are fed. We do not see female subordination and male supremacy in this text.

Even the plan of the table of contents of this novel emphasizes that the author gives space to both female and male characters. That is a symbolic allocation of space to both males and females. The way he divides his book chapters is a proof of this balance: there is almost an alternation of a female and male turn. It is a kind of collectivism: men, women and children are all involved. 

The heroic elements and deeds in the society repose in the collective struggle rather than in the selfish individual pursuits or in the so-called extraordinary qualities of an individual. The frequent use of the phrase “men, women and children” indicates the solidarity of all in the fight for freedom. Personal interests are subordinated to the collective will and its collective experience that propels the society forward. The words of the title are explained in this indivisible unity during resistance.

Ousmane’s story offers a good model of the resisting reader. His women characters are oppressed by patriarchy but are characterized by a strong solidarity and strength to challenge and resist the capitalist exploiters together with their men. Women are conscious that they are exploited and dominated by patriarchy and capitalism, but for the time being, they are identified with the perspective of workers’ conditions, in the hope that once these are granted, the conditions of women will change as well [4].

The Ideological Content in God’s Bits of Wood

In examining ideological content, we are basically concerned with how a writer brings out the socialist perspective in his work. For a socialist writer, class analysis becomes central. After all, history, according to Marx can be summarized in a phrase class struggle.

In a colonial situation such as the one Ousmane is recreating in God’s Bits of Wood, the race issue often coincides with class issue. The blacks represent a class of the oppressed workers while the French bureaucrats represent the capitalist class of exploiters.

Bakayoko, the intellectual architect of the strike is presented as a well-read, educated and rational individual who takes the time to study every situation critically before carrying out his actions. He provides the drive and the militant fuel that propel the struggle forward. His ideological clarity shakes the confidence of the exploitative class. That he believes in the power of education for the shaping of ideology is evident in the fact that he possesses a well-stocked personal library, managed by her adopted daughter Ad’jibid’ji, a library from which he lends books to his friends for their inspiration. He is quite a knowledgeable person. His words and his ideas are everywhere and even his name fills the air like the echo: the expression “if Bakayoko were here...” in the mouth of Tiémoko and other strikers recurs on several instances as a leitmotif that urges his friends to carry out the struggle every time, they realise the vacuum created by his absence. By the use of such words of wisdom, Bakayoko is influential even when he is physically absent. 

Bakayoko makes it clear that it is not “a question of France or of her people [but] a question of employees and their employer” (GBW, 182). He is a bit unreal as a character; inhuman the way he responds to his mother’s death. But that is where the socialist perspective of the ideological content is seen: putting down all personal interests for the common of the community. Bakayoko is so dedicated to his work as a trade union leader that he has no time for personal relationship. Even his marriage is an arrangement of convenience because he has inherited his brother’s wife to whom he shows little emotional attachment. He only comes to his house when the public duties permit him. He sleeps with different women in the different rail towns which he visits but he makes sure that he does not develop serious emotional attachments. He is regarded by many of the strikers in the story as a remote and cold person. 

The author idealises him as a revolutionary leader who puts the struggle for social justice above everything else. In this sense he can be viewed as the mouthpiece of the author. He represents some narrow ideals that the author wants to hold up for admiration. The rest of the characters are even more limited. They are sketches that represent certain attitudes and values.

Through some characters, Ousmane exposes the historical role of religion in shaping, justifying and perpetuating exploitation as it can be read in the following excerpt where the religious leader El Haji Mabingué tries to pacify the strikers. He tells her sister Ramatoulaye:

It is not our part in life to resist the will of heaven. I know that life is often hard, but that should not cause us to turn our backs on God. He has assigned a rank, a place and a certain role to every man and it is blasphemous to think of changing His design. The toubabs are here because that is the will of God. Strength is a gift of God and Allah has given it to them. (GBW, 44)

Mabingué discourages strikers by projecting the people’s enemy as an invincible force and calls upon the workers to give up the struggle. The woman Ramatoulaye interrupts Mabingué brutally and tells her religious brother that he is a “fornicator” because he sides with the toubabs. She can no longer believe blindly in her brother’s religion. Ramatoulaye is an example of a socialist feminist. 

Another institution that the writer exposes is colonial education. It serves to alienate the colonised from their own interest and the interest of their people. N’Deye Touti is the classic example of the product of colonial education.

All in all, Bakayoko is the ideology of workers; strikers read books from his library where his adopted girl is librarian in order to have an ideological education.

From a socialist feminism perspective, it is observed in God’s Bits of Wood that men and women share space in recreating their history and shaping their destiny, contrary to the traditional public-domestic divide. A woman’s liberation is liberation of class and it shows that women participate in their own liberation. In this text, women are active and powerful. The setting is also well chosen to critique the property ownership of patriarchy. We are presented with a liberation that brings people both men and women together and not to isolate women. Women are companions of men in the struggle rather than mere wives. This author affirms the socialist feminism and the latter has been represented because of three main reasons. First, class, gender and communal resistance are brought together by Ousmane through his use of the different incidences. The power relations are deeply imbedded in the network of class and gender relations and women expect change after this struggle. Second, the masses win in the end. In the text, we are given the impression that the problem has been resolved in favour of the masses. Last but not least, Ousmane is bringing the two genders female and male together during the revolutionary development. The way masculinities and femininities are presented has effect on the men. Men are no longer in dominant position but work side by side with women for the advancement of their society. Power relations are neutralized.

1. Ogude, J.A. (1982). The emergence of socialist realism in African literature: A study of Sembene Ousmane, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Alex La Guma (Master's thesis). University of Nairobi.

2. Madsen, D.L. (2000). Feminist theory and literary practice. London: Pluto Press.

3. Tuana, N. and Tong, R. (2009). Feminist thought: A more comprehensive introduction (3rd ed.). Westview Press.

4. Ousmane, S. (1982). God’s bits of wood (Trans. 1962). Nairobi: East Africa Educational Publishers.