27 pages • 54 minutes read
Bessie HeadThe Prisoner Who Wore Glasses
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Bessie Head
Bessie Head (1937-86) was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to a white mother and Black father during a time when interracial union was illegal in South Africa. Head was an active protestor of South African apartheid. The political environment eventually became so dangerous for her that she fled the country and moved to Botswana, where she lived for the rest of her life. Despite her personal history, Head chose not to focus exclusively on the politics of apartheid in her writing; her work mainly centers around women’s experiences of patriarchy, paying special attention to the intersections of sexist and racist oppression. “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” is one of her only stories centered around a male protagonist. Although the story is outside of her usual setting and narrative structure, she does explore the psychological effects of racism and discrimination through Brille’s internal conflict.
Head’s novels and short stories are situated in a period of transitional African literature. Before the 1960s, African literature largely centered around domestic narratives. However, in the 1970s and onward, the literary themes shifted toward narratives surrounding political and social structures. Head’s novels and short stories are a mixture of these domestic and political genres. In the biographical essay entitled “Bessie Head: The Face of Africa” (1983), Cherry Wilhelm writes that Head’s stories, “painful though [they] often [are] in [their] probing of cruelty, oppression, and other evils, [are] also a vote of confidence in, and an active contribution towards, the future of Africa” (Wilhelm, Cherry. “Bessie Head: The Face of Africa.” English in Africa, vol. 10, no. 1, 1983, pp. 1-13). Head’s work points to the hope of a future South Africa free from apartheid, an emancipation she did not live to see.
Historical Context: South African Apartheid
Apartheid was a government-sanctioned system of racial segregation in South Africa active from 1948 to 1994. Although racial tensions were high in South Africa before this time, the election of the Nationalist Party in 1948 allowed for racism and discrimination to be legalized in the country, which quickly resulted in the formation of the Population Registration Act and Group Areas Act of 1950. Legal discriminatory practices included mass evictions, restricted employment opportunities, and “anti-miscegenation” laws, among other harmful policies. These practices sought to uphold a racial hierarchy that privileged white citizens first, descendants of indentured laborers from India second, so-called “colored” citizens of multiple ethnicities third, and Black South Africans—who were discriminated against the most—fourth. Even though white South Africans were the minority of the population, they occupied many political positions, which allowed them to enforce apartheid despite the population’s Black majority. The white supremacist system that upheld apartheid was called “Baasskap,” which is an Afrikaans word that refers to the supremacy of the white race (or their inherent “boss-ship”). In “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses,” Warder Hannetjie tells Brille that he must refer to him as “Baas,” which signifies Hannetjie trying to pressure Brille into submitting to white supremacy. The fact that Hannetjie uses a racist slur against Brille amplifies the racism and extreme discrimination that Brille faces.
The individuals of Span One are described as political prisoners, and, although Head does not elaborate further, they have clearly been imprisoned due to their political activism against apartheid. Throughout apartheid, there were uprisings, protests, and resistance to the racist legislature. In almost all cases, these uprisings were met with imprisonment of the activists involved, such as Nelson Mandela, who was arrested for his anti-apartheid activism in 1956. The discrimination against anyone who was not white was so oppressive that thousands of people fled South Africa to neighboring countries in search of freedom, including Bessie Head. After decades of resistance, protest, and domestic and international action, apartheid legislation was repealed in 1991. However, the systematic inequality and adverse effects of apartheid persist into the present day.
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