Analysis of Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions

Tambu’s Journey Through the Lenses of the Four Women

In Nervous Conditions, Tambu navigates her culture’s deeply embedded patriarchy to eventually find some measure of liberation after learning from the major female figures in her life. Her journey and expansion of her worldview can be seen through her interactions and learnings from the major female figures in her life: Ma’Shingayi, Maiguru, Nyasha, and Lucia. Of the three possible fates for the female characters, and of females in African society at large, “escape, entrapment and rebellion”, Tambu chooses to escape. In exploring this claim, I will first examine the historical and social context of the novel, then analyze Tambu’s journey through the lenses of the four women.

The novel is set in the colony of Rhodesia in Zimbabwe, which is where the author was born. Throughout Nervous Conditions, the racist and stereotyping attitudes of the white colonists, or “wizards” as she calls them, appear through their interactions with the sometimes naïve Tambu (Dangarembga 21). The colonizer’s influence and effects of increased globalization are weaved throughout the novel by the symbol of loss of language. When characters lose their ability to speak Shona, this represents their adoption of a more Western cultural identity which is always in conflict with their Zimbabwean identity.

On the other side, Tambu is socially conditioned from birth to accept her gender role as the property of men. Tambu observes from an early age that “the needs and sensibilities of the women in [her] family were not considered a priority, or even legitimate” (Dangarembga 13). When she wants to study and go to school, her father laughs at her, commenting that you cannot cook books for a husband, as if that is all that she should ever accomplish. Another instance of female subjugation is when Babamukuru’s family comes to visit and Tambu offers a water dish and towel to all of her male relatives first and then to her grandmothers and aunts....