Incestuous relations in Bessie Head and Sindiwe Magona: the perversion of apartheid and the migrant labour system.
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[1] Universidad de Oviedo
Universidad de Oviedo
Oviedo, España
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- Localización: IJES: international journal of English studies, ISSN 1578-7044, ISSN-e 1989-6131, Vol. 24, Nº. 2, 2024, págs. 141-156
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Apartheid and the migrant labour system affected the residential stability of black South African families in terms of wife-husband and father-child relations. The control exerted by apartheid laws made it impossible for generations of fathers for over one and a half centuries to raise their children (Wilson, 2006), affecting their personal and social behaviour. This article contends that in their use of literature as a political tool, writers Sindiwe Magona and Bessie Head offered a similar vision about the father-daughter relationship. Magona’s short story “It was Easter Sunday the day I went to Netreg” (1991) and Head’s short story “The Cardinals” (1995) portray a daughter and a father who do not know each other and who, years later and unknowingly, establish a sexual relation. This article will claim these incestuous relationships can be interpreted as the writers’ representation of the use and abuse the state exerted on its black citizens.
