The Bessie Head I knew

FUNKE ADETUTU

By now, you should be trying to figure out what informs the title of my piece this week. ‘Who is Bessie Head and what is special about her,’ I hear you say? Well, so many things agitate the mind of a creative writer which attracted me to her works as a female South African writer. Head remains one of my favourite African writers because she writes with an extraordinary simplicity and breadth of vision.
Recently, I stumbled on her posthumously published novel, Tales of Tenderness and Power at a book fair. My first encounter with Head was about five or six years ago on the pages of her novel, A Question of Power. In a rather very interesting way, she gives the impression that she is an author who is obsessed with power. The power displayed by the racists; black men and women alike. For her, the love of power transcends colour, race or sex. It has more to do with individuals and their perception of it.
Tales of Tenderness and Power, a compilation of short stories, draws on the writings based on her experience in Botswana. It’s a reflection of her fascination with the country, the history and her people. She identifies with the people and their conflicting emotions. She is an author who enjoys observing, smiling and recording all her experiences, no matter how minute or insubstantial one might think they are. Her tales show her empathy for human goodness, tenderness and fear, plus her resentment for the misuse of power. The fact that power is not concentrated on an individual; is the thematic thrust of Head’s discussion in most of the pieces in the narrative.
Funny enough, she is a bit psychological in her approach to issues. She probes deeply into the inner self and affirms that there is no possible way of fulfilling an inward longing when the fight for survival in life becomes very intense. As humans, she really thinks we do not understand the inward life at all, especially since we are always suppressing it.
Another issue which I honestly find striking about this novel which I think it’s worth sharing is the fact that there are some female experiences that are universal. I’m speaking in terms of the universals and the particulars of some female experiences.
Head thinks the women of Botswana are the only ones faced with a strange dilemma, but she may need to know that this issue is not synonymous with Botswana women alone. It’s common to women the world over. One of such experiences shared by Head is that men do not feel called upon to love one particular woman. They rarely make use of feeling and they drift from woman to woman in a carefree wandering fashion. They dispense a gay, superficial, facile charm in all directions.
Since the depths of human feeling and tenderness are never explored, “let us have a good time,” they seem to say. “I am here today and gone tomorrow. Therefore, you have a choice.”
She also gives some reasons why few women choose to marry. It needs a certain amount of ruthlessness to cajole or force a man into marriage. Thereafter, he has to be fiercely hoarded, not someone to love, but an object to possess, like a stack of money, a piece of furniture. “Most women are repelled at the thought and never marry,” she observes; though they have large families of seven or eight fatherless children and struggle to raise them on a pittance of money they gather here and there. Among the unmarried women are great and strong friendships, free of jealousy and envy. No unmarried woman is ever a friend of married woman. The great gulf is fixed.”
What I find most interesting about all this, is the fixed great gulf between married and unmarried women. Like Kirk Leigh, a colleague said “The gulf may be due to the fact that the married thinks there is nothing to learn from the unmarried.” What Kirk fails to understand is the fact that the unmarried can learn from the married. And the gory tales told by most married women is forcing the unmarried ones to have a rethink about marriage. Unfortunately, most of them these days prefer being single parents to being at the beck and call of some husbands. Perhaps, it may interest you to know that Head herself filed for a divorce when she probably could not cope with the excesses of her man.