Ah! les femmes...

Isaïe Biton Koulibaly

2 ideas

1. Seduction sometimes read as market negotiation

   In several of the stories, love, courtship and marriage in Abidjan involve bargaining in which affection is weighed against money, gifts, housing or status. Reading for that exchange makes some characters' choices legible as attempts to get better terms, though not all: Aïcha refuses to trade fidelity for wealth.

2. Ironic reversals often carry the moral

   In some of these stories an ironic twist at the end punishes greed, vanity or deceit, so the lesson arrives through the plot rather than through preaching. The pattern is not uniform: L'amour d'une femme ends with the faithful couple's house burning, a reversal that does not punish vice.

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