38 pages • 1 hour read
Maru
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Introduction Summary
Literary critic Stephen Gray places Bessie Head’s work primarily within the context of the author’s life, portraying Maru as semi-autobiographical. Born in South Africa in 1937 to a white mother and a black father, Head was raised in foster homes. She became a teacher, but legal troubles forced her to immigrate to Botswana. Gray contends that Maru displays the evils of prejudice and its successful defeat exemplified by Margaret’s marriage to Maru. Further, he identifies Head’s central theme as the exposure and defeat of prejudice through love. Bessie Head wrote three novels, of which Maru was the second. She died in exile in Botswana at age 48 in 1986.
Introduction Analysis
Gray sees Head’s work idealistically in its depiction of the defeat of prejudice, as exemplified by Maru’s marriage to Margaret Cadmore. However, Gray fails to acknowledge Margaret’s patent unhappiness in the marriage. Though she retains the dignity of understanding and overcoming some of the limitations of her ethnicity, she is not a fighter for social justice, and she ends up married to Maru, rather than the man whom she truly loves, Moleka.
Rather than embodying power and overcoming prejudice, Margaret simply becomes invisible. No one acknowledges her outside of her relationships to powerful figures: first, Margaret lives under the protection of Margaret Cadmore, the missionary’s wife.
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By Bessie Head
