SOURCE: Gagiano, Annie. “Finding Foundations for Change in Bessie Head's The Cardinals.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 31, no. 2 (fall 1996): 47–60.

In the following essay, Gagiano offers a stylistic and thematic analysis of The Cardinals.

Who is the story-teller? Of whom is the story told? What is there in the darkness to imagine into being? What is there to dream and to relate? What happens when I or anyone exerts the force of language upon the unknown?¹

Three factors—that The Cardinals (1993)² is the only one of Bessie Head's novels set in South Africa (the scene being the Cape Town area during the late 1950s),³ as well as the recognizable autobiographical elements⁴ of this work (her earliest known novel), added to the accident of its very recent “discovery” and belated publication—endow this work with considerable interest for those engaged in South African cultural studies. It would be a mere curiosity...