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A Study of Bessie Head's Writings As a Survival Strategy

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A Study of Bessie Head's Writings As a Survival Strategy Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs A living life, a living death: a study of Bessie Head’s writings as a survival strategy Thesis How to cite: Atkinson, Susan D. (1998). A living life, a living death: a study of Bessie Head’s writings as a survival strategy. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 1998 The Author Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.00004970 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk A LIVSXG LIFE, A LXVIlilG DEATH: A STIJDY OF BESSIE HEAD’S WRIT’IBGS AS A SURVIVAL STRATEGY SUSAB I). ATKIBSON, B.A. (HOBS), M.A. THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE OPEN UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, 31 MARCH 1998 LIBRARY AUTHORISATION FOI#M d rd t Please return this form to the The Research Degrees Centre with th; 'Wpb- of your I 2; - - t thesis to be deposited with the University Library. -- All students should complete Part I. Part 2 only applies to PhD students. J , Part 1 Open University Library Authorisation [to be completed by all students] I confirm that I am willing for my thesis to be made available to readers by the Open University Library, and that it may be photocopied, subject to the discretion of the Librarian. Part 2 British Library Authorisation [to be completed by PhD students only] If you want a copy of your PhD thesis to be available on loan to the British Library Thesis Service as and when it is requested, you must sign a British Library Doctoral Thesis Agreement Form. Please return it to the Research Degrees Centre with this form. The British Library will publicise the details of your thesis and may request a copy on loan from the University Library. Information on the presentation of the thesis is given in the Agreement Form. Please note the British Library have requested that theses should be printed on one side only to enable them to produce a clear microfilni. The Open University Library sends the hlly bound copy of theses to the British Library. The University has agreed that your participation in the British Library Thesis Service should be voluntary. Please tick either (a) or (b) to indicate your intentions. [a] 0 I am willing for the Open University to loan the British Library a copy of my thesis. A signed Agreement Form is attached. b] a I do not wish the Open University to loan the British Library a copy of my thesis. ABSTRACT This thesis explores Bessie Head's writing as a survival strategy through which, by transforming her personal experience into imaginative literature, she was able to give meaning and purpose to a life under permanent threat from the dominant groups first in South Africa and later in Botswana. This threat included the destructive effect of the many fixed labels imposed upon her which included: a 'Coloured' woman; the daughter of a woman designated mad; an exile; a psychotic; a tragic black woman, a Third World woman writer. In my view, her endeavours to avoid and defeat such limited and static definitions produced work characterized by contradiction and paradox. In this way she asserted her right to survive and determined, like hkhaya in Men Rain Clouds Gather, to establish a 'living life' in place of the 'living death that a man [sic] could be born into' (136 RC). Her preoccupations include her relationship to her absent mother, her feelings about women's sexuality, and her need for love, articulated throughout her writings in terms not only of the threats against her but also the ways in which she empowered herself, and thus survived. I have drawn on a combination of Bessie Head's unpublished letters and papers, her published writings, and relevant critical works in order to show how her writing was the mediating agent which related her preoccupations to her experiences, while also facilitating her ability to survive and finally to transcend the all-pervasive power structures which influenced her life and her sense of self. As she said in the last years of her life (with bitter understatement) ' I am no failure' (20.2.1986 KMM BHP) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Dennis Walder, for his support and encouragement. I would also like to thank the Botswana Government for giving me a permit allowing me access to Bessie Head's personal papers. Elany thanks also to Ruth and Per Forchhammer for their hospitality in Serowe. Major surgery, serious back injury and bereavement have accompanied the progress of this thesis, which has thus become symbolic of a number of rites of passage. For their practical and emotional support I would particularly like to thank Gary Fearn, Sue McLeod and Lyndsie Prosser. To Harianne, with love and to the memory of my Ban, Pat Tyrrell (1902-1992) and Sue Williams (1946-1997) TABLB OF COBTBBITS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: I WRITE WHAT I AH LIVIBG: BESSIE HEAD'S WRITING AS AUTOBIOGRAPHY 18 CHAPTER TWO: IDENTITY, MEAHIlVG ABD PURPOSE 47 CHAPTER THREE: THE SIGI?IFICABCE OF MATERRAL REPRESElVTATIOB IN BESSIE HEAD'S WORK 79 CHAPTER FOUR: COmFLICT AND SEXUALITY 109 CHAPTER F I VE : ROMANCE AND POWER 146 CHAPTER SIX: POWER PERSONIFIED - THE GOOD Am> EVIL ASPECTS OF BESSIE HEAD'S CHARACTERS 176 CHAPTER SEVEN: 'NO ILLNESS THAT ONE YIIGHT NAHE' 207 CHAPTER EIGHT: WORK Am> SURVIVAL 246 CHAPTER BI BE : WRITING AND RESISTANCE 276 CONCLUSIOl! 305 BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 - ABBREVIATIONS ABD NOTES As Bessie Head notes in her work, Botswana is the name of the country, the Batswana are the Tswana people, and a lvlotswana is an individual member of the Tswana tribe. I have used these terms where relevant. I have used a considerable number of Bessie Head's unpublished letters and papers from the Khama 111 Memorial Iriuseum, Serowe. These are given throughout the text with the date and the following designation: KMM BHP Khama Memorial Huseum Bessie Head Papers Bessie Head's novels, short stories and other writings are abbreviated thus: C The Cardinals RC When Rain Clouds Gather )I Maru QP A Question of Power CT The Collector of Treasures TTP Tales of Tenderness and Power SVRW Serowe, Village of the Rain Wind BC A Bewitched Crossroad ...books rescued me. They were the places where I could bring the broken bits and pieces of myself and put them together again, the places where I could dream about alternative realities, possible futures. They let me know firsthand that if the mind was to be the site of resistance, only the imagination could make it so. To imagine, then, was a way to begin the process of transforming reality. All that we cannot imagine will never come into being (bell hooks, 'Narratives of Struggle' in P. briani 1991, 54-51. then why don't you read what I have written and make up your own mind about what you think, testing it against your own life and experience. Never mind about Professors White and Black (Doris Lessing, The Gulden dbtebouk 1976, 18). Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination, and of the heart (Salman Rushdie, 'Choice between Light and Dark' in P. Mariani 1991, 95). Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality (Gary Zukav, The Dancing Vu Li hsters 1979, 328). IHTBODUCTIOB Much South African literature has understandably been concerned with apartheid. Until recently, this inhumane system dominated all spheres of South African life from the material to the spiritual, and infused them with all the ills that beset a society with its roots in the colonial past. The literary preoccupation with apartheid has, however, been criticized. For example Mphahlele, in The African Image, published as early as 1962, suggested that as long as the white man's politics continue to impose on us a ghetto existence, so long shall the culture and therefore literature of South Africa continue to shrivel up, to sink lower and lower; and for so long shall we in our writing continue to reflect only a minute fraction of life (Mphahlele 1962, 109). Lewis Bkosi later restated this, accusing South African writers of presenting 'journalistic fact parading outrageously as imaginative literature' (1973, 110). Claiming that 'nothing stands behind the fiction of black South Africans' (log), he suggested that writers have renounced tradition without gaining from the accumulated benefits of modern European life. In a paper delivered at the Second African Writers Conference in Stockholm in April 1986 entitled 'Beyond Protest: Bew Directions in South African Literature' (Schipper 19891, Bjabulo Bdebele suggested that South African literature is 'protest literature that merely changed emphasis' and that it is 'still rooted in the emotional and intellectual polarities of South African oppression' 1 (quoted in Schipper 1989, 43).
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