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    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "The Lovers"
    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "The Lovers"
    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "The Lovers"
    Ebook44 pages22 minutes

    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "The Lovers"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "The Lovers," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535838139
    A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "The Lovers"

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      A Study Guide for Bessie Head's "The Lovers" - Gale

      11

      The Lovers

      Bessie Head

      1980

      Introduction

      Bessie Head's short story The Lovers is the author's version of an old Botswana folktale, one that warns of dire circumstances should anyone act contrary to old tribal traditions. In this story, a young girl falls in love with a village boy, an act that was forbidden in their time. Girls were not even allowed to look at boys, let alone talk to them, make friends with them, and consummate their relationship. Marriages were arranged for the benefit of the entire village not for the whimsical emotional needs of the couple. Therefore when Tselane, the female protagonist, becomes pregnant and asks her parents’ permission to wed, the members of the tribal village become embroiled in angry arguments. Fear for the safety of the village hurls the young lovers away from their kin and their home and leads to a sad ending. As in many folktales, there is a lesson to be learned.

      Head's short story was first published in a somewhat radical magazine called Wietie in 1980. The publication was produced in South Africa and much of its subject matter was written in protest against the apartheid political system. The magazine was subsequently closed down by the South African censors. The Lovers was later acquired by Penguin Books and republished in a collection of short stories called Book of Southern African Stories in 1985. Though Head's story was not directly in opposition to apartheid, it did question traditional values as well as the lack of freedom that many black South African women experienced in Head's time.

      Author Biography

      Head led a very difficult life that started and ended in tragic circumstances. Head's mother, Toby Emery, was white and was living in South Africa. When she became pregnant with her daughter, she was sent to an asylum because she had an illicit relationship with a black man. Head was born on July 6, 1937, in the asylum, Fort Napier Mental Hospital, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. She would never know her father because her mother never identified him. She would barely even know her mother, who remained in the hospital until she committed suicide when Head was only six years old.

      As a newborn, Head was adopted by a white couple, who shortly afterward gave the baby back when they discovered that she was colored, the term used to identify mixed-race individuals. Later, Nellie and George Heathcote, a mixedrace couple, took Head in. For a long time Head believed them to be her real parents. It was not until she was fourteen years old and living in a boarding school that Head found out the truth about her heritage. A school official broke the news to her that Nellie Heathcote was not her

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