Nervous Conditions
Tsitsi Dangarembga Key Facts
Full title · Nervous
Conditions
Author · Tsitsi Dengarembga
Type of work ·
Novel
Genre · Feminist bildungsroman
Language · English
Time and place written · Early 1980s, Zimbabwe
Date of first publication · 1988
Publisher · The Women’s Press, London
Narrator ·
Tambu
Point of view · The narrator, Tambu, speaks in the first person,
subjectively interpreting and filtering the events and developments that occur
around her through her own thoughts, opinions, and biases.
Tone · The tone, implied by the manner in which Tambu chooses to
tell her story and describe the lives of the people who make up her world, is
biased. The narrator is not wholly unreliable, as she objectively relays events
and simple observations, but her perspectives and interpretations are
frequently flawed.
Tense · Past
Setting (time) · 1960s and 1970s
Setting (place) · Rhodesia
Protagonist ·
Tambu
Major conflict · Tambu struggles against the poverty and lack of
opportunity that mark her world at the homestead. Once at the mission school,
she is impeded by the societal bias against women and the sacrifices she must
make in order to please her uncle and fulfill his expectations of her.
Rising action · After
Nhamo dies, Tambu is offered his place at the mission school. Babamukuru exerts
more and more influence on the family’s actions and decisions, eventually
declaring that Tambu’s parents must be formally married in a Christian
ceremony.
Climax · Tambu resists her uncle in refusing to attend her parents’
wedding. Maiguru leaves her husband after realizing she is not taken seriously
as a viable economic force in the family.
Falling action · Tambu is punished and realizes she must take
control of her own destiny and make her own way, winning a scholarship to the
convent school.
Themes · The pervasiveness of gender inequality; the influence of
colonialism; tradition vs. progress
Motifs ·
Geography; emancipation; dual perspectives
Symbols · Tambu’s garden plot; the mission; the ox
Foreshadowing
Nyasha and Chido returning from
England, having lost most or all of their native tongue, Shona, foreshadows the
same linguistic dislocation that occurs to Nhoma and then to Tambu.
Nhamo’s growing dislike of returning
home for vacations foreshadows the growing gulf that develops for Tambu between
life at the mission school and life at the homestead.
Context
Tsitsi Dangarembga finished
writing Nervous Conditions when she
was in her mid-twenties and, upon its publication in 1988, won widespread
critical acclaim for its complex and nuanced portrayal of the challenges that a
young Shona girl faces in her efforts to break free of her impoverished
background and acquire an education. “Shona” is the name given to various
tribal groupings living mostly in the eastern half of Zimbabwe, north of the
Lundi River. In addition to writing plays and screenplays, Dangarembga became
the first Zimbabwean to direct a featurelength film, releasing Everyone’s Child in 1996. Despite her
varied aesthetic interests and successes, it is her novel that has opened her
voice and her unique vision to the widest audience.
Dangarembga was born in 1959 in a
small town in Zimbabwe that was known as the colony of Rhodesia. She lived in
England from the ages of two to six while her parents attended school there.
Her initial education was conducted in the British school system, and the young
Dangarembga became fluent in English at the expense of Shona, her native
tongue. When she returned to her native land, she continued her education after
relearning Shona at a mission school. Later, she attended a private American
convent school in the city of Mutare.
In 1977, Dangarembga returned to
England to study medicine. No longer a child living in a foreign culture, she
witnessed and fully understood the often racist or racially stereotypical
attitudes held by many members of English society. Returning to Zimbabwe in
1980, just before the nation became self-governing and independent, she began
to develop in earnest as a writer. Despite years of rejection and lack of
acknowledgment, Nervous Conditions
was eventually published in England, four years after Dangarembga had completed
it.
The events that shaped Dangarembga’s early years loosely
inform the life of Tambu, the protagonist in Nervous Conditions. In one sense, the novel is Dangarembga’s
attempt to analyze and better understand her emergence into adulthood through
the lens of fictional creation.
However, Dangarembga’s talents lie
in her ability to take the autobiographical details of her own life and
transform them into a multifaceted and highly realistic novel peopled with
psychologically rich and varied characters. This realism is the hallmark of
Dangarembga’s fiction. While other African novelists directly confront the
effects of colonialism and gender discrimination, Dangarembga allows her
characters to enact and dramatize the pressures these forces inflict on their
lives. In Nervous Conditions, white
characters make only the briefest of appearances. Repressive figures are not
distant or symbolic presences but the individuals found within the same family
unit. Rather than offering an epic sweep or grand historical scale with which
to frame her contemporary investigation, Dangarembga looks instead to the
effects and harm that foreign interference and sexism have on a single African
family.
In Nervous Conditions, Dangarembga focuses in particular on a
small group of women who struggle to be heard and to succeed in a world that often
aggressively seeks to silence and control them. Though in a way these women are
successful in their struggle, their victories are not grand. They do not openly
challenge the status quo, topple repressive systems, or alter prevailing
behaviors and ways of thinking. Instead, their victories lie in the strength
they muster to navigate a world that is unsympathetic to their concerns, and
their success is rooted in their unflinching desire to succeed where others
have readily failed.
Plot Overview
Tambu, the narrator, is unmoved
by the death of her brother, Nhamo. The afternoon he is expected home at the
end of his term at the mission school, he does not arrive. He dislikes taking
the bus and then walking the rest of the way through the countryside to the
family’s homestead. Tambu is relieved at his absence, as she does not have to
kill and prepare a chicken to celebrate his return.
Tambu then reflects on the events
leading up to her brother’s death. Despite the family’s poverty, Tambu’s
parents were able to raise the fees to send Nhamo to school. There was not
enough money to send Tambu as well, so she decided to grow and sell vegetables
and raise the money herself. When she discovered that her brother was stealing
food from her garden patch, she attempted to beat him up while the two were
attending Sunday school. Tambu’s teacher, Mr. Matimba, took her to Umtali, a
local urban center, to sell green ears of corn. A white woman, Doris, and her
husband pitied Tambu and gave Mr. Matimba ten pounds sterling to pay for her
education.
The extended family gathered to
celebrate the return of Babamukuru, his wife, Maiguru, and their two children,
Chido and Nyasha, back from studying abroad in England. Chido and Nyasha,
Tambu’s cousins, had lost the ability to speak their native tongue, Shona.
Maiguru did not want them participating in the dancing and other festive
activities. At the end of the meal, Tambu was ordered to bring a bowl of water
to each member of the extended family so they could wash their hands.
Babamukuru’s three siblings praised his success. He proposed educating a member
of each family, focusing especially on the neediest branch, Tambu’s clan. They
chose Nhamo to go to the mission school, but after his sudden death, Tambu is
selected to replace him.
Tambu, returning her focus to the
present, is excited and awed by her new life in her aunt and uncle’s house on
the mission school grounds. Maiguru warmly welcomes Tambu into her new home.
She serves Tambu tea and pastries and gives her an entirely new wardrobe, all
in preparation for her first day of school. The coldness and emotional distance
that once existed between Nyasha and Tambu quickly disappear. Tambu becomes
absorbed in her studies. She soon learns the rhythms of the household,
witnessing Nyasha and Babamukuru’s frequent fights. She also learns that
Maiguru is highly educated.
To mark the end of the term,
Nyasha, Tambu, and the children of white missionaries attend a dance. Tambu
reluctantly joins the festivities. At the end of the evening, Nyasha resists
coming inside, still trying to master a new dance one of the boys is teaching
her. When the young people finally enter the house, a violent argument erupts
between Babamukuru and Nyasha, in which Babamukuru accuses Nyasha of lewd
behavior. Nyasha strikes her father, who vows to kill her for performing the
taboo act of assaulting her own parent. Nyasha grows more detached in the
following weeks, and Tambu tries to help assuage her guilt.
During the school vacation, Tambu and her relatives head
back to the homestead. Maiguru laments the fact that, as senior wife, she is
expected to cook and clean for the extended family the entire time. Babamukuru
is upset to find Lucia, Tambu’s mother’s sister, and Takesure, a relative of
Tambu’s father, still living at the homestead. To make matters worse, Lucia is
pregnant with Takesure’s child. A family meeting is held to decide what course
of action should be taken. Ultimately the couple is allowed to remain, as
Babamukuru shifts his focus to another moral issue that rankles him: his own
brother’s unsanctified domestic status. Babamukuru declares that Jeremiah and
Ma’Shingayi must be married in a formal Christian ceremony as soon as possible.
Tambu’s mother comes to the
mission hospital and gives birth to a son. Lucia soon follows and asks
Babamukuru to find her a job, which he does. She cooks at the school and begins
taking classes. Preparations are being made for the impending nuptials. When it
comes time to leave, Tambu, who is vehemently opposed to her parents’ wedding,
feigns illness. When Babamukuru tells her to be ready in thirty minutes, she
refuses to attend. When he returns from the wedding, he punishes her by lashing
her and forcing her to perform the maid’s duties for two weeks. Maiguru argues
with Babamukuru over the lack of respect that she gets and the fact that her
economic contribution to the family is not recognized. She leaves the next day
and stays with her son, Chido.
While the girls are preparing for
final exams, nuns arrive at the mission and administer a test. Tambu is offered
a scholarship to study at the esteemed mission school. At first, Babamukuru is
opposed to her accepting the offer, but he eventually relents. Home for the
holiday, Tambu finds her mother ill. Lucia arrives and nurses her sister back
to health. When Tambu returns to the mission and prepares to leave for the
convent school, she cannot find Nyasha anywhere. When she finally finds Nyasha,
Nyasha is cold toward her, upset that her best friend will soon be leaving and
she will be left alone with her unsympathetic father.
Tambu leaves for the convent school, where she shares a
crowded room with other African girls. Busy with her studies, she soon falls
out of touch with Nyasha. Tambu returns to the mission to find Nyasha changed,
frightfully thin and suffering from a severe eating disorder. One night, Nyasha
has what appears to be a psychotic episode. Nyasha sees a psychiatrist and
slowly regains her health. Tambu fears she is succumbing to the negative,
colonial influence that made Nyasha mentally ill. Her other cousin, Chido, has
a white girlfriend, much to Maiguru’s chagrin. Tambu declares her intention to
begin questioning her world and the influences that it exerts on her.
Character List
Babamukuru
- Tambu’s uncle. Babamukuru is the
highly educated and successful headmaster of the mission school. A patriarchal
and authoritarian figure, he uses his power and position to improve the lives
of his extended family, but he does it out of duty, not love. He is a remote,
cold, and distant father and takes no pains to hide his disappointment in and
growing contempt for his daughter, Nyasha.
Chido
- Nyasha’s brother, son of Babamukuru
and Maiguru. Chido is tall, athletic, and handsome, as well as charismatic,
intelligent, and highly educated. He has little interest in his family or in
visiting either the homestead or the mission. Educated mostly among white
colonists, he grows accustomed to a life of luxury and eventually takes a white
girlfriend.
Jeremiah - Tambu’s father and Babamukuru’s brother.
Jeremiah is naïve, ignorant, and superstitious. He seems barely concerned with
the future and success of his children and grows increasingly detached from his
family. In Babamukuru’s presence he is servile and fawning, lauding his
siblings’ accomplishments. With his immediate family, however, he is disdainful
of education and does little to encourage his children’s ambitions.
Lucia
- Ma’Shingayi’s sister. Lucia is a
mysterious, strong-willed woman who is feared by many and said to be a witch.
Shrewd and sexually promiscuous, Lucia is the object of gossip and rumor and is
said to have had many affairs with rich men. She is outspoken and pays no heed
to the social code that requires woman to be silent and obedient. She emerges
as an independent and ambitious woman, eager to educate herself and improve her
lot in life.
Maiguru
- Tambu’s aunt and Babamukuru’s wife.
Maiguru is a strong, educated, and successful professional woman and thus
stands out from the rest of the women in her family. Life in England has
changed her, and she wants her children to act more Western. She later fears
they have become too Anglicized. Gentle, conscientious, and caring, she accepts
her passive role in her marriage and the sacrifices she must make to keep
Babamukuru happy. Though she rebels and leaves him, she returns out of her
sense of duty and her love for her family.
Ma’Shingayi
- Tambu’s mother. Initially, Ma’Shingayi
is portrayed as a hardworking figure who has toiled and sacrificed so that her
son can have an education. After Nhamo’s death, she grows spiteful, angry, and
jealous of those around her. Her hard life also makes her apathetic and
accepting of the limitations with which life has saddled her.
Netsai
- Tambu’s younger sister. Netsai is
obedient and subservient, a kindhearted and hardworking girl who helps Nhamo
and the rest of the family, not solely out of duty, but because she truly loves
them.
Nhamo
- Tambu’s brother. Nhamo takes advantage
of his status as the eldest son in the family. He is spiteful and mean and goes
out of his way to taunt Tambu and lord over her the fact that he is receiving
an education. After he leaves for the mission, he grows superior, lazy, and
condescending, offering no assistance to his family in their daily toils.
Nyasha
- Tambu’s cousin, daughter of Babamukuru
and Maiguru. Nyasha is silently observant with an often unsettling intensity.
Though she can be precocious and charming, she does little to make the other
girls at school like her. At times she is easily provoked, volatile, and
strongwilled, and she likes to argue with and openly resist Babamukuru. She is
a product of two worlds and grows increasingly confused of her identity and the
hybrid influences of life in England and Rhodesia.
Takesure
- A cousin of Babamukuru and Jeremiah.
After Nhamo’s death, Takesure is enlisted to help Jeremiah with the labors on
the homestead. Like Jeremiah, he is lazy, foolish, and superstitious and abuses
his power as a man. He has many wives, whom he cannot support. He impregnates Lucia
and tries to make her his concubine.
Tambu
- The novel’s narrator and protagonist.
An intelligent, hardworking, and curious fourteen-year-old girl, Tambu is
hungry for an education and eager to escape life on the homestead. While she is
sensitive and kind, she is also often harsh and unyielding in her judgments.
Tambu is sympathetic to the powerful pull of tradition, but at the same time,
she wishes to break free of the limitations placed on her sex.
Analysis of Major Characters
Babamukuru
The central male presence in the
novel, Babamukuru is a cold and enigmatic figure who is difficult to penetrate.
While the book’s point of view is decidedly female, Babamukuru enacts the
pressures and duties placed on men attempting to raise their families’ status
and to shake off the specter of poverty. Babamukuru’s intelligence, ambition,
and accomplishments are often taken for granted by others, as it is the others
who reap the benefits of his hard work without attaining a full understanding
of the sacrifices involved. His dual roles as parent and administrator are
often at odds. He uses his job as headmaster to avoid any form of emotional
intimacy with the women who share his home with him. His relationship with
Nyasha is especially fraught, since her general conduct and academic
performance at the mission school reflect his abilities not only as a father
but also as a leader.
From his earliest days,
Babamukuru is the pawn of those who have offered him assistance and
opportunity. He feels he has no choice but to accept the charity that the
administrators at the mission school extend to him. After completing his
education in South Africa, he does not want to pursue a higher degree in
England, and he realizes that the hope of a brighter future for his extended
family rests solely on his shoulders. Babamukuru stoically accepts his duty,
even if he risks being viewed as a haughty authoritarian or unsympathetic bully
by dictating what direction his family will take. He may not wish to be the
leader, stern taskmaster, and voice of moral guidance in his family, but if he
does not accept that role, his relatives will not be able to alter their
circumstances on their own. Partly because of Babamukuru’s story and life
experiences, Tambu realizes there are multiple interpretations to the choices
that individuals make and the motives behind those choices.
Maiguru
Maiguru is a complex, often
contradictory, and multilayered character who grows increasingly concerned
about the development of her children and their responses to the various
cultural traditions, both Western and African, with which they have been
raised. Her fears and anxieties are rooted in her own experience of trying to
reconcile attitudes and behaviors that come from two very different worlds. Her
conflicting attitudes suggest the deep divide that exists in her perception of
herself as a woman and as an African. When the family returns to Rhodesia,
Maiguru wishes her children to retain the mark of distinction and difference
that they have achieved from living in a Western society. She defends the fact
that they have lost their ability to communicate fluently in Shona, their
native tongue. After the family has settled back into life in Rhodesia,
Maiguru’s reactions and attitudes change, and she grows concerned at how
Anglicized her children have become. Only when her daughter is severely ailing
in the final stages of the novel does she realize the dire consequences of
these conflicting cultural pressures that have been placed on her children.
When the family returns to the
homestead for the holidays, Maiguru, highly educated and accustomed to earning
her own living as an educator, is reduced to a traditional role as domestic
drudge. During subsequent holidays, Maiguru refuses to attend the celebrations.
Even more boldly, Maiguru confronts her husband about her lack of respect and
recognition in the family, an action that leads to the even bolder move of her
leaving the house altogether. Although she returns to the family fold, Maiguru
has evolved into a realistic model of modern womanhood for the young girls in
her care. She represents a subtle but emerging voice of feminist dissent, a
woman ahead of her time who attempts to enact change in gradual and realizable
ways.
Nyasha
Highly intelligent, perceptive, and
inquisitive, Nyasha is old beyond her years. Like the other female characters
in Nervous Conditions, she is complex
and multifaceted, and her dual nature reflects her status as the product of two
worlds, Africa and England. On one hand she is emotional, passionate, and
provocative, while on the other she is rational and profound in her thinking.
Nyasha is admired by Tambu for her ability to see conflict and disagreement not
as threats but as opportunities to increase her understanding of herself and the
world. She uses the various experiences life presents her with as a chance to
grow, learn, and improve. Initially, she thrives in her state of unresolved and
often warring emotions and feelings, and she sees any inconsistencies in her
feelings or her world as opportunities for greater self-development.
Nyasha’s precocious nature and
volatile, ungrounded identity eventually take their toll, and isolation and
loneliness are her reward for being unconventional and fiercely independent.
She is unpopular at the mission school, but this unpopularity is due more to
her willfulness than the fact she is the headmaster’s daughter. Her inner
resources and resolve are highly developed, but they can sustain her only so
far. Over the course of the novel, the elements that define her and the aspects
of her personality she most cherishes become the source of her unrest and
ultimate breakdown. Nyasha begins to resent her outspoken nature and the
constant spirit of resistance she displays, particularly to her father. The transformation
leads to self-hatred, a dangerously negative body image that results in an
eating disorder, and mental illness. Nyasha becomes a symbolic victim of the
pressures to embrace modernity, change, enlightenment, and selfimprovement.
Tambu
Throughout Nervous
Conditions, the adult Tambu looks back on her adolescence and her struggle
to emerge into adulthood and formulate the foundation on which her adult life
would be built. There are essentially two Tambus in the novel, and the narrator
Tambu successfully generates tension between them. Tambu is a crafty and feisty
narrator. She explores her own conflicted perceptions not only as a teenager
but as an adult reexamining those years, a dual perspective that gives the
novel richness and complexity. Tambu introduces herself to the reader harshly,
proclaiming the fact that she is not upset that her brother has died. As the
presiding voice in the novel, she can manipulate how she is represented and
perceived, but under the tough exterior is a hardworking girl who is eager to
please and eager to advance herself. Her selfportrayal, with its unflattering
as well as praiseworthy elements, represents the adult Tambu’s effort to convey
the challenges faced by impoverished yet talented women in central Africa in the
1970s. A figure of those tumultuous and ever-changing times, Tambu emerges not
as a flat and one-dimensional symbol but ultimately as a fallible and
triumphant human presence.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
The Pervasiveness of Gender Inequality
Tambu was born a girl and thus faces a fundamental
disadvantage, since traditional African social practice dictates that the
oldest male child is deemed the future head of the family. All of the family’s
resources are poured into developing his abilities and preparing him to lead
and provide for his clan. When Nhamo dies, the tragedy is all the more profound
since no boy exists to take his place. Tambu steps into the role of future
provider, yet she is saddled with the prejudices and limitations that shackled
most African girls of her generation. Her fight for an education and a better
life is compounded by her gender. Gender inequality and sexual discrimination
form the backdrop of all of the female characters’ lives. In the novel,
inequality is as infectious as disease, a crippling attitude that kills
ambition, crushes women’s spirits, and discourages them from supporting and
rallying future generations and other female relatives.
The Influence of Colonialism
The essential action of the novel involves Tambu’s
experiences in a Western-style educational setting, and the mission school both
provides and represents privileged opportunity and enlightenment. Despite
Ma’Shingayi’s strong objections, Tambu knows the only hope she has of lifting
her family out of poverty lies in education. However, the mission school poses
threats, as well: Western institutions and systems of thought may cruelly and
irreversibly alter native Africans who are subjected to them. Nyasha, who has
seen firsthand the effect of being immersed in a foreign culture, grows
suspicious of an unquestioning acceptance of colonialism’s benefits. She fears
that the dominating culture may eventually stifle, limit, or eliminate the
longestablished native culture of Rhodesia—in other words, she fears that
colonialism may force assimilation. The characters’ lives are already
entrenched in a national identity that reflects a synthesis of African and
colonialist elements. The characters’ struggle to confront and integrate the
various social and political influences that shape their lives forms the
backbone and central conflict of Nervous
Conditions.
Tradition vs. Progress
Underpinning Nervous
Conditions are conflicts between those characters who endorse traditional
ways and those who look to Western or so-called “modern” answers to problems
they face. Dangarembga remains noncommittal in her portrayal of the divergent
belief systems of Babamukuru and his brother Jeremiah, and she shows both men
behaving rather irrationally. Jeremiah foolishly endorses a shaman’s ritual
cleansing of the homestead, while Babamukuru’s belief in a Christian ceremony
seems to be rooted in his rigid and unyielding confidence that he is always
right. As Tambu becomes more fixed and established in her life at the mission
school, she begins to embrace attitudes and beliefs different from those of her
parents and her traditional upbringing. Nyasha, ever the voice of reasonable
dissent, warns Tambu that a wholesale acceptance of supposedly progressive
ideas represents a dangerous departure and too radical of a break with the
past.
Motifs
Geography
Physical spaces are at the heart of the tensions Tambu
faces between life at the mission and the world of the homestead. At first,
Tambu is isolated, relegated to toiling in the fields and tending to her
brother’s whims during his infrequent visits. When she attends the local
school, she must walk a long way to her daily lessons, but she undertakes the
journey willingly in order to receive an education. When the family cannot pay
her school fees, Mr. Matimba takes Tambu to the first city she has ever seen,
where she sells green corn. Tambu’s increased awareness and knowledge of the
world coincides with her growing physical distance from the homestead. The
mission school is an important location in the novel, a bastion of possibility
that becomes the centerpiece of Tambu’s world and the source of many of the
changes she undergoes. At the end of Nervous
Conditions, Tambu’s life has taken her even farther away from the
homestead, to the convent school where she is without family or friends and
must rely solely on herself.
Emancipation
Emancipation is a term that appears again and again in Nervous Conditions. Usually, the term is
associated with being released from slavery or with a country finally freeing
itself from the colonial power that once controlled it. These concepts figure
into the broader scope of the novel, as Rhodesia’s citizens struggle to amass
and assert their identity as a people while still under British control. When
the term emancipation is applied to
Tambu and the women in her extended family, it takes on newer and richer
associations. Tambu sees her life as a gradual process of being freed of the
limitations that have previously beset her. When she first leaves for the
mission school, she sees the move as a temporary emancipation. Her growing
knowledge and evolving perceptions are a form of emancipation from her old ways
of thinking. By the end of the novel, emancipation becomes more than simply a
release from poverty or restriction. Emancipation is equated with freedom and
an assertion of personal liberty.
Dual Perspectives
Dual perspectives and multiple interpretations appear
throughout Nervous Conditions. When
Babamukuru finds Lucia a job cooking at the mission, Tambu is in awe of her
uncle’s power and generosity, viewing it as a selfless act of kindness. Nyasha,
however, believes there is nothing heroic in her father’s gesture and that in
assisting his sister-in-law he is merely fulfilling his duty as the head of the
family. In addition to often wildly differing interpretations of behavior,
characters share an unstable and conflicting sense of self. For Tambu, her two
worlds, the homestead and the mission, are often opposed, forcing her to divide
her loyalties and complicating her sense of who she is. When she wishes to
avoid attending her parents’ wedding, however, these dual selves offer her
safety, protection, and an escape from the rigors of reality. As her uncle
chides her, Tambu imagines another version of herself watching the scene safely
from the foot of the bed.
Symbols
Tambu’s Garden Plot
Tambu’s garden plot represents
both tradition and escape from that tradition. On one hand, it is a direct link
to her heritage, and the rich tradition has guided her people, representing the
essential ability to live off the land. It is a direct connection to the legacy
she inherits and the wisdom and skills that are passed down from generation to
generation, and Tambu fondly remembers helping her grandmother work the garden.
At the same time, the garden represents Tambu’s means of escape, since she
hopes to pay her school fees and further her education by growing and selling
vegetables. In this sense, the garden represents the hopes of the future and a
break with the past. With a new form of wisdom acquired at the mission school
and the power and skills that come with it, Tambu will never have to toil and
labor again. Her mother, however, must water the valuable and fertile garden
patch despite being exhausted from a long day of work.
The Mission
For Tambu, the mission stands as a bright and shining
beacon, the repository of all of her hopes and ambitions. It represents a
portal to a new world and a turning away from the enslaving poverty that has
marked Tambu’s past. The mission is an escape and an oasis, a whitewashed world
where refinement and sophistication are the rule. It is also an exciting
retreat for Tambu, where she is exposed to new ideas and new modes of thinking.
The mission sets Tambu on the path to becoming the strong, articulate adult she
is destined to become.
The Ox
In the family’s lengthy holiday celebration, the ox
represents the opulence and status Babamukuru and his family have achieved.
Meat, a rare commodity, is an infrequent treat for most families, and Tambu’s
parents and the rest of the extended clan willingly partake of the ox. At the
same time, they secretly resent such an ostentatious display of wealth, since
the ox is a symbol of the great gulf that exists between the educated branch of
the family and those who have been left behind to struggle. Maiguru closely
regulates the consumption of the ox and parcels out the meat over the several
days of the family’s gathering. Eventually the meat starts to go bad, and the
other women chide Maiguru for her poor judgment and overly strict control of
its distribution. At that point, the ox suggests Maiguru’s shortcomings and
how, in the eyes of the others, her education and comfortable life have made
her an ineffective provider.
Important Quotations Explained
1. I
was not sorry when my brother died.
The novel begins with this
shocking confession from Tambu. Tambu has had a murky, often ambivalent
relationship with her brother, Nhamo. He represents everything she is denied
and the principal failing of the social structure and family hierarchy into which
she has been born. Simply because he is a male and the eldest, he is the sole
repository of the family’s hopes and ambitions. Tambu, regardless of her
intelligence, talents, and abilities, must be satisfied with a secondary role,
an understudy whose sole job it is to support and assist Nhamo as he makes his
way in the world. With his sudden and unexpected death, Tambu’s life takes a
dramatic turn for the better. She is offered his place at the mission school,
and because of his death, she is able to write the story she is beginning in
the novel’s opening paragraphs.
2. And
these days it is worse, with the poverty of blackness on one side and the
weight of womanhood on the other. Aiwa! What will help you, my child, is to
learn to carry your burdens with strength.
These words are spoken by
Ma’Shingayi, Tambu’s mother, in Chapter 2. They underscore the harsh reality
faced by many Africans, particularly African women. Ma’Shingayi is arguing that
being black and female is a double burden and that the two obstacles are too
considerable to surmount. What sets her apart from Tambu, however, is how she
qualifies this statement. Rather than exhort her daughter to be strong and
rally against the prevailing conditions that conspire to keep her down, Tambu’s
mother encourages her to passively accept the forces she feels are too powerful
for her to control. This passage shows the differences not only between the two
women but between the older, more traditional beliefs and the new attitudes
emerging in a more contemporary Africa.
The passage also reveals the conflicting thoughts and
attitudes of many of the novel’s female characters. While Ma’Shingayi presents
herself as the model of humble acquiescence, she rails against the laziness of
men and grows increasingly jealous of her brother- and sister-in-law, whose
educations have afforded them greater economic mobility and a more comfortable
lifestyle. Ma’Shingayi is a prime example of how reality and ideology, or
theory and practice, grow increasingly conflicted in the novel.
3. “What
it is,” she sighed, “to have to choose between self and security.”
Maiguru speaks these words in
Chapter 5, after Tambu has questioned her about her past, her education, and
what happens to the money she earns at the mission. Maiguru’s words succinctly
summarize the sacrifices she has made in order to raise a family and subscribe
to a more traditional notion of a woman’s role in African society. Maiguru goes
on to tell Tambu of the possibilities she witnessed while living in England,
glimpses of the things she could have become had she been free of restrictive
gender roles and the expectation that she would play the part of the
subservient provider. She feels there is no recognition or appreciation of the
compromises she has made and, similar to Tambu’s mother, stoically bears her
burdens in silence. Maiguru’s sacrifices, of putting her husband and her family
before her own needs and ambitions, are viewed by Nyasha as a costly compromise
to her mother’s dignity and honor. Tambu remains undecided and does not take
sides in this debate, as she understands her own compromised and precarious
position in her uncle’s household. Later in the year, when Nyasha and her
father have a violent argument, Tambu realizes firsthand her need to choose
security over self and remains noncommittal. She stifles and censors any
opinion she may have on the issue, hiding comfortably instead in the role of a
“grateful, poor, female relative.”
4. It’s
bad enough . . . when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well!
That’s the end, really, that’s the end.
Nyasha makes this pronouncement
in Chapter 7 as part of her ongoing role in which she challenges and shapes
Tambu’s perceptions and modes of thought. Slowly, Tambu has become seduced by
her exposure to the colonialist-influenced “new ways.” Despite the fact that
Tambu is opposed to the humiliation her parents will suffer by having to endure
a Christian wedding ceremony, she agrees with Babamukuru’s insistence that the
ritual, and not the traditional cleansing rites, be performed. Nyasha quickly
dismisses Babamukuru’s position, warning Tambu of the dangers inherent in
assuming that Christian ways are necessarily progressive ways.
Nyasha’s words gesture to another
preoccupation in Dangarembga’s work. Rhodesia has been placed under British
control, and the life of the nation has been clearly altered by this foreign
influence. Without the opportunities colonialism has created for them,
Babamukuru and his family, as well as Tambu, would not be in their positions of
privilege and power. At the same time, the novel is narrated through the lens
of African lives and the inner workings and struggles of one extended family.
The African and the colonial cannot coexist without eventually influencing,
even colliding, with each other. Slowly, the effects of colonialism has
trickled down, infecting Tambu and Nyasha’s family. Nyasha’s observations
foreshadow the nervous breakdown she will soon suffer as she feels colonialism
infiltrating not only her nation and people but her own identity as well.
5. Quietly,
unobtrusively and extremely fitfully, something in my mind began to assert
itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this
time when I can set down this story. It was a long and painful process for me,
that process of expansion.
Tambu closes her account, in
Chapter 10, with these words. She has actively sought advancement, winning a
scholarship to the convent school, but she begins to question what it has cost
her sense of self and her ailing mother, heartsick at the thought of another of
her children being altered by their desire for a Western education. Her school
and the nuns who run it are no longer the sun on her horizon, as she puts it.
Her use of the word brainwashed is
telling, denoting a radical shift in her thinking. In this passage, Tambu seems
to be speaking for Nyasha, who is also depressed and ailing, saying the words
that Nyasha, in her compromised state, can no longer say for herself. Tambu
exhorts herself to no longer be passively influenced by the people and
institutions around her. She is firm in her resolve to question.
This evolution of perception and
thought, which could be considered an epiphany, allows Tambu to write her own
story. She is freed of the need to be dutiful and grateful and can become her
own person and seize control of her own voice and destiny. Her education has
been more than learning the rudiments of reading, writing, and mathematics—it
has helped her refine her perceptions and recognize and embrace her personal
liberty. This expansion and certitude have finally grounded her and helped her
resolve the often contradictory forces that had buffeted and unsettled Tambu
throughout her life.
Oh, now I want to re-read this classic. Wonderful review. She later released The Book of Not, meant as a follow-up to Nervous Condition. But that one is not as good as this. Nervous Condition is a hard act to follow. All the best.
ReplyDeleteLuzia
Ketterman Rowland & Westlund
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