Guatemalan Social Norms

Societal Norms and their Effect on Marginalized Groups in Society In most cultures, societal norms are what drives a society, even setting up their laws and acceptabilities. These norms are guidelines that a society is expected to follow, whether they wish to or not. The breaking of societal norms is seen by societies as unusual, even in some cases as unacceptable. Norms because of their nature are usually set in stone in the sense that they are unchangeable or atleast immensely difficult to change, this is due to the fact that they have been around for centuries. Norms are also difficult to adjust because change comes across as alarming. The 20th century Senegalese society created in So Long a Letter is no exception. Mariama Bâ promotes her

Ramatoulaye illustrates that in Senegalese, when the husband has perished or is no longer around all of his possessions go to the family in law, which is a norm in Senegalese society. She shows how scary and detrimental this is for women in this culture when Ramatoulaye states this is the “moment dreaded by every senegalese women” promoting the effect by stating ¨all¨ women and even goes on to use the word “sacrifices” to describe the loss of possessions, which further creates a negative connotation on how detrimental this is to women in this society. Ramatoulaye states that these possessions given to the family in law are “gifts” promoting the idea that these items are not need by the family but they are happy to accept them. Ramatoulaye later goes on to say that it doesn't end there she refers to women in general and states that women also give up their “personality” and their “dignity”, showing the bias towards to man’s family in the relationship, along with showing a punishment that women receive in Senegalese culture and even all over the world that they are not deserving of. Furthermore Ramatoulaye delves deeper and states that all these things that are taken from women are not just gone they are stolen in a sense and given to the man’s family. Ramatoulaye also says that women are even more degraded from there, by stating that a woman

She makes specific reference to the “bog of tradition” in the sense that culture needs to escape from it. She later goes on to talk about the fact that if there is ever going to be equality between men in women they need “raise the vision” meaning that they could not keep these ideas that men are above women and that they deserve of the right of excuses when they make mistakes, meaning that universally men and women need to be held accountable to their mistakes and should be punished in the same way not in a way that is more bias towards women. Ramatoulaye refers back to her head mistress and remembers that she always used the word “love”, and how she loved her students without patransing them she, refers back to society as a whole and noticies that if everyone in society could love each other without being patronising like her head mistress was to her she believes that the society would have inequality between men and women and if this does not happen then the morals and common beliefs in society will remain and men will always be held on a pedestal and been seen as more important, she lastly relates back to the French occupation and states that in that time there was significantly less inequality between men and women because of their conjoined efforts together