19 Tsitsi Dangarembga: Nervous Conditions

Dr. Rupa S. Deshmukhya

About :

This module will outline the socio-economic and political aspects of Zimbabwe and give an overview of the writer Tsitsi Dangarembga. It will focus on the theme of education, gender inequality and marginalization of women.

Overview of Zimbabwe: 

Zimbabwe was earlier called Rhodesia and it gained independence from the United Kingdom after 41 years in 1964 and became Zimbabwe under black majority rule. It first came into contact with Europeans at the end of 15th century. In the 1830s, Ndebele people migrated from South Africa. The indigenous Shona people were conquered by the Ndebele. Later in the 19th century the missionaries started dominating the area. This encroachment by colonizers impacted the cultural traditions. The predominant language in Zimbabwe is Shona.

About the Author: 

Early Life:

Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean writer and film maker. She was born in Mutoko in colonial Rhodesia. As she spent her early childhood in England, she lost connection with her Shona language and English became her first language. In 1965 she returned to Rhodesia, where she entered a mission school in Mutare and learned Shona again. She went to Cambridge in 1977 to study medicine. For a brief period she also worked in an advertising agency. She has been very active in the creative field and has published plays. She believes in Virginia Woolf’s dictum “A woman needs a room of her own and five hundred pounds”. After receiving the Commonwealth Writers’ Award in August 1989, she went to Berlin to study filmmaking. She has made a film called Everyone’s Child which focuses on the homeless children stricken by AIDS. In 2006, the Independent named Dangarembga one of the fifty greatest artists shaping the African continent. Her book, Chronicle of an Indomitable Daughter was in Zimbabwe in 2013.

Accolades won:

Nervous Conditions is Dangarembga’s first novel published in the year 1988 in England. It was the first novel to be published in English by a black Zimbabwean woman and won the African Section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989. The sequel, The Book of Not, was published in 2006.

2.1.3.Issues in Black Women’s Writings:

Tinh T. Minh-ha in her book Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989), talks about the “triple jeopardy” of the black woman author:

“… that whenever a woman of color takes up the feminist fight, she immediately qualifies for three possible ‘betrayals’: she can be accused of betraying either man (the ‘manhater’) or her community (‘people of color should stay together to fight racism’) or woman herself (‘you should fight on the woman’s side.’)”

Dangarembga has captured the structure of a patriarchal system and the manner in which it has led to oppression of women. Some important features in the modest literary endeavours of Zimbabwean women identified by Flora Veit-Wild are that their writings closely reflect reality; in a very immediate and direct way women react to the social situation around them. It shows a great awareness of the contradictions and problems the new Zimbabwe society has to face and solve.

In her essay Debunking Patriarchy: The Liberational Quality of Voicing in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Nervous Conditions”, Pauline Uwakweh opines that “ Dangarembga engages the problems facing her female characters. By mirroring their lives, she exposes the contradictions in their search for independence.Her primary agenda in Nervous Conditions is to expose the mechanism of male domination in Zimbabwean society. She thus explores the patterns of female subordination arising from patriarchy and its inter- relationship with the experience of colonization. Dangarembga also questions the exploitative nature of imperialism, the value of Western education, and warns against the danger of cultural alienation that it poses to the African”.

3.1. Overview of the novel 

“The condition of native is a nervous condition.”

‘Nervous Condition’ is a term which reflects the dismal plights of the colonized and this term was attributed to victims of colonization by Jean Paul Sartre. The title Nervous Conditions is borrowed from Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and it draws our attention to the psychological impact of colonialism. Sartre evokes the “disassociated self” created by colonialism: “Our enemy betrays his brothers and becomes our accomplice; his brothers do the same thing. The status of ‘native’ is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among colonized people with their consent.”(The Wretched of the Earth, 17)

The novel has some autobiographical elements which elucidate the oppressive structure of society. Race, class and sex are interwoven with colonization to further the oppression faced by individuals. The cultural clash due to the civil war and influence of missionary schools is evident in large part of this novel. The main aim of colonialism is economic benefit of the oppressor and this is achieved by imposing ideas of inferiority among the natives. The natives are under the false impression that they will be civilized by the colonizers.

This novel set in Umtali in the former Southern Rhodesia offers a critique of colonialism and patriarchal ideology. Though the novel has some elements of Bildungsroman with Tambu as its narrative voice, it tells the stories of five women and their men. Pauline Uwakweh describes how Nervous Conditions emphasizes that “Racial and colonial problems are explored as parallel themes to patriarchal dominance because both are doubtless inter-related forms of dominance over a subordinate social group”(83). Dangarembga has analyzed the problems plaguing the Shona communities and specifically, marginalization of women due to patriarchal hegemony and colonization. She has also challenged the aspect of coercing women to identify themselves as second class citizens. The trope of silencing women to establish patriarchal ideology has been refuted by Dangarembga.

Mary Kolawole says “Dangarembga reveals a womanist consciousness in relating gender problems to the larger issues of gender and race. Literature to her, is as much a vehicle for collective cultural restoration as it is a channel for gender realization, and both are inseparable”.

The novel which was initially rejected by many publishing houses for its feminist content later received appreciation and critical acclaim for its initiative to project a strong feminist voice.

Plot Summary

The novel is set in the pre-Zimbabwean independence period of 1960s and 70s .The story opens with an arresting statement, “I was happy that my brother had died”. It is a novel of development which takes us through the psyche of the character Tambudzai Sigauke who is called Tambu. However, the novel also represents the experiences of women facing oppression due to patriarchy and colonization. As Tambu says “[M]y story is not after all about death, but about my escape and Lucia’s; about my mother’s and Maiguru’s entrapment and about Nyasa’s rebellion-Nyasa, far-minded and isolated, my uncle’s daughter whose rebellion in the end have been successful”

Tambu is a victim of oppression in her family and then in the society by virtue of being a girl. Tambu’s desire to get educated in a missionary school does not materialize due to poverty. Her brother’s death brings a renewed hope in her life as she would now be able to receive education. The novel highlights contrasting characters and comments on the role of education in generating power.

Tambu’s brother goes to a missionary school but Tambu is not allowed to study because it does not befit a female. Tambu grows maize to meet the requirements of education but her brother steals her produce. Her father also subjugates her and claims her money as he does believe in women’s education. However, Tambu realizes the importance of education at a very early age. Tambu rejoices with the offer she gets from her uncle to get educated in a missionary school. After her brother’s demise she goes to her uncle Babamukuru’s house. Here, she experiences a new culture. She bonds with her cousin Nyasha but, unfortunately Nyasha has fallen prey to western culture and afflicted with an eating disorder.

Nyasha does not succumb to the patriarchal norms of her society. She offends her father by defying the gender norms prescribed for women. The novel is an indictment of the conflict between traditional and western culture, an analysis of power emitting through education and above all, poverty which leads to nervous conditions in the native. It is an excellent account of the impact of cultural change on individuals. It elucidates the effect of racism , sexism and poverty on a group of African community.

It is a powerful portrayal of resilience shown by Tambu to escape poverty and vouch for her right to education. The novel ends on this note: “the story I have told here, is my own story, the story of four women whom I loved, our men, this story is how it all began”.

Themes and concerns in the novel 

Education

Education is one of the important themes in the novel. It is a chief concern in the novel because it is acquired by people who are seemingly in power because of their gender. Tambu’s announcement in the beginning of the novel ‘I was sorry when my brother died’ reflects the deep –rooted gender ideology which puts men on the pedestal at the cost of women’s aspiration. Tambu was deprived of getting proper education as her brother was considered supreme and bestowed with the blessing of being educated. Tambu’s statement is pertinent and candid account of her desire to achieve excellence through education. Tambu parents cannot afford to educate her due to poverty but they make all the ends meet to help them son Nhamo complete his education.

Education ,at times, may also bring about a conflict between traditional and modern beliefs. The alienating effect of Education is experienced by Babamukuru who has completed his education in England .After Nyasha, Chido, and Tambu come back from a school dance Babamukuru is upset by their late arrival and chastises Nyasha for speaking to a boy outside and alone. “You children are up to no good…out so late at night! …”No decent girl would stay out alone, with a boy, at that time of the night” (114-115). Though he is educated he cannot get rid of his biased outlook. His attitudes towards his children are shaped by his notions regarding repressive gender roles. Education for him has not been a weapon of empowerment, it has rather created conflict between his traditional mind set and acquired values.

There are several instances in the novel which reflect this attitude. Education is supposed to liberate a person and break barriers which stifle self-expression but Babamukuru is averse to conditions which may bring power to women. He does not allow Nyasha to read certain types of books. However, he allows Chido to stay with a friend who has a sister. Babamukuru believed that education would give his daughter an edge and she might not abide by the norms laid down by the male in the family. This shows how Babamukuru has fixed ideas about gender and behaviour of girls as per the conditioned gender patterns and this imposition eventually stifles relationships. Nyasha confesses to Tambu that she wants her father Babamukuru to consider her point of view and not exert his authority incessantly.

Janice Hill says “Dangarembga’s novel illustrates how the acquisition of education and the adoption of Western ways can have painful consequences for modern African women.”

Gilian Gorle in Fighting the Good Fight: What Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions says About Language and Power avows, “Many postcolonial texts are set in traditionally patriarchal societies, in which boys are thought more worthy than girls of formal education, any discussion of language and power must include gender politics alongside questions of linguistic and cultural hegemony”.

Colonialism

Colonial cultural domination is also evident in the fatal attraction of “the Englishness” in the lives of the people. This problem is emphasized in Nhamo’s behaviour and death, in Nyasa’s “anorexia,” and in the pathological fear of Tambu’s mother about losing her daughter to the foreign mania. It is significant that Dangarembga explores the dangers of both forms of domination simultaneously to show, perhaps, that even the African male is not free. All the characters suffer, in a variety of ways and to a certain degree, the triple levels of entrapment that the narrator identifies: the entrapment of poverty, the weight of womanhood, and” the Englishness” that Tambu’s mother cautions against. As a veritable source of nervous conditions, it also becomes a leitmotif for the dangers of colonialism.

One of the dangers of Colonialism elucidated in this novel is the conflicting values which pose questions about the identity of black Africans. All the black people are clubbed in one category and considered as ‘other’. It also impacts the way people interact with them. In the novel when she and her family are greeted by a nun, the nun looks upon her as some object in the black community by saying ‘which one is this?

The novel sheds light on question of history and memory. Nyasha often questions her father for deviating from the cause of black people. She wants him to serve the less educated black Africans. She asserts “Its bad enough when a country gets colonised, but when the people do as well! That’s the end…”

Alienation and Identity Crisis:

Tambu goes to a mission school with the belief that it will help her to discover her ‘self’ but she soon realizes that she cannot have a fixed position .Her interaction with Nyasha and her family makes her question her identity and also the notion of ‘Englishness’. Tambu’s narration is that process of recognition which Trinh Min ha explains in Woman Native-Other I is therefore, not an unified subject, a fixed identity, or that solid mass covered with layers of superficialities, one has gradually to peel off before one can gradually see its true face. ‘I’ is itself infinite layers…despite our desperate eternal attempts to separate, contain and mend [such] categories [of self] always leak”.

An instance of Tambu’s identity crisis is when her parents are asked to get married as per Christian rituals. She considers her parents’ wedding a mockery and says “A wedding that made a mockery of the people I belonged to and placed a doubt on my legitimate existence in the world”. (165). She also did not want to reduce her parents to ‘the entertainers’.

Comparing Tambu and Nyasha, the conclusion can be made that Tambu had enough time in Africa to ground her values and establish a clear goal in which she needed education. Nyasha was young enough when she left Zimbabwe, causing her to forget how to speak Shona and thus appear to be more Western than African. Language carries with it the cultural baggage and Nyasha experiences alienation which further inflicts pain and seclusion.

Exile due to language

The question of appropriateness of language is one of the concerns in the novel. It also makes one question the hegemony of English language. Does this language help to cement ties or does it work as a destructive force? In an interview, Dangarembga stated “During independence celebrations, she heard a beautiful Shona poem recited—an oral arts performance, not a written poem—and “it brought back to me that we have an oral language here. It isn’t written, it’s oral, and when it is reproduced in the medium in which it is meant to be, it is absolutely astounding. But it was also a painful experience: to think we’d lost so much of it.” (195)—this “wealth of literature” that hadn’t been written down. “It is good to have people like Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. They were the people I think who really pointed me in the direction of African literature as such as opposed to Afro-American literature”.

Chido and Nyasha have lost connection with their Shona language after returning from London. Nyasha faces alienation in school due to her language. She writes a letter to Tambu and informs her. “They do not like my language, my English, because it is authentic and my Shona,because it is not! They think [. . .] that I think I am superior to them [. . .] becauseI beat the boys at maths! [. . ] I very much would like to belong, Tambu, but I find I do not. [… ] I cannot help thinking that what antagonises is the fact that I am me.”

Nhamo’s mother is distraught to see her son who could no longer speak Shona after being at the Mission for a few weeks or months. This has led to internal exile.In Mukherjee’s account this form of exile is experienced by writers and/or their fictional characters who ‘without being physically away from home remain outsiders in their own country due to certain circumstances in their history, language or education’.

Language carries one’s cultural outlook and therefore, Tambu is surprised at the reflex action and the way one speaks English with British and Shona language with one’s own people. Babamukuru is the headmaster of a school. He is greeted in different ways by different people. Maiguru calls him Baba, Nyasha calls him daddy and Tambu says good evening Babamukuru. This reflects the cultural context and role of language.

Of all the characters, Nyasha is the one who has been most profoundly alienated through the insidious effects of linguistic hegemony. Nyasha, Tambu realizes grimly, is caught in a double bind, trapped by both language and gender. She is exiled not only because her years abroad have taught her to think within English frameworks but because she was born female. She has ostensibly come home, but she can never be at home as long as her society continues its ancient tradition of assuming male superiority and female submissiveness. Her linguistic exile is inextricably bound up with her female exile, for it is her English schooling that has given her the tools with which to challenge the patriarchal assumptions of Shona culture.

Oppression due to Gender

Anthony Easthope has pointed out three bases for considering gender, namely: the biological body; our social roles of male and female; and, thirdly, the way we internalize and live out these roles. These three ways of considering gender interact at different times in the lives of people and that interaction can determine a person’s outlook and treatment of others.

This novel is a scathing attack on gender norms which oppress women. Simone de Beauvoir asserted “One is not born a woman, one becomes one”. Gender therefore, is a construct and societal conditioning is responsible for ascribing different gender roles to men and women.

Nhamo has internalized his gender role. He imposes his ideas on Tambu and makes her believe that she cannot go to school because she is a girl and he deserves education. Chido and Nhamo also turn into arrogant and snobbish individuals finally losing their connection with indigenous roots.

The marginalization experienced by Tambu leads to alienation. This oppression according to Tambu is universal. As she says “Babamukuru condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of her femaleness, just as I had felt victimised at home in the days when Nhamo went to school and I grew my maize. The victimisation, I saw, was universal Men took it with them everywhere”

In this novel, Babamukuru is the father figure who wields ultimate authority and takes decisions regarding the dealings of his own family and extended family. This also reflects that gender discrimination is an inevitable experience regardless of the society one lives in. Though Nyasha has grown in a progressive environment, she is condemned by her father. Tambu who lives in a different set up can identify with that oppression. Gender norms bring inequality in society. Daughters are considered to be liability rather than as assets. Even when they get married their bride price is used to secure her brother’s future.

Dangarembga has debunked many gender stereotypes by projecting a woman like Maiguru who is educated. She asserts herself and demands explanation when her contribution to the family is sidelined.

Female as a ‘victim’ in Nervous Conditions:

Toril Moi has made a pertinent distinction between three terms Feminism, femaleness and femininity.”Feminism” is a political position, “femaleness” is a matter of biology and “femininity” refers to a set of culturally defined characteristics.

Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement “One is not born a woman, one becomes one” draws our attention to gender prejudices and the effect of societal conditioning in oppressing women. H]ooks asserts that “feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression‟. She goes on to describe „the resistance to unjust, authoritarian forms of control and domination as a key feature of feminism‟.

Women in this novel assert their voice after experiencing subjugation. Maiguru decides to leave the house after getting an impression that she is not valued in the family. Tambu analyzes the relationship between Maiguru and Babamukuru and arrives at a conclusion that marriage can stifle identity and encroach on one’s freedom.

The notions of womanhood and motherhood are also shaped as per the gender norms. Women are burdened with this notion of womanhood. In this novel Tambu’s mother and Babamukuru’s wife, Maiguru are victims of falsified notions of womanhood. Tambu’s mother avows “This business of womanhood is a heavy burden. How could it not be? Aren’t we the ones who bear children? When it is like that you can’t just decided (sic) today I want to do this, tomorrow I want to do that, the next day I want to be educated! When there are sacrifices to be made, you are the one who has to make them. … [Y]ou have to start learning them early….The earlier the better so that it is easy later on.

Anorexia as a weapon

Anorexia is an eating disorder which impacts the mental framework of an individual. In this novel Nyasha is plagued with this disease but she reflects her defiance of several norms through her condition. Her anorexia is a weapon to defy the male authority. It is also symbolic of the colonial attitude that has affected her psyche.

In the article Regurgitating Colonialism: The feminist Voice in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, Dangarembga speculates “why girls are so prone to this disease is that if you live an intellectual life you do become divorced from the physical aspects of your self, and it may not be easy to determine what is affecting what”.

Parent-Child relationship

Tambu experiences a cultural shock after witnessing the interaction between Babamukuru and his daughter Nyasha. Tambu comes from a village setting and does not approve of the way Nyasha interacts with her father.

Sibling rivalry

This is one of the themes in the novel as Tambu’s story is conditional upon the injustices prevalent in her relationship with her brother. Nhamo is high-handed and displays his authority and male power. Tambu does not receive education at the right time because Nhamo is considered fit for education, being a boy. Nhamo wields authority by bullying his sisters. Tambu does not give in but Netsai does succumb to his pressures and is ready to comply with Nhamo’s instructions.

Nyasha experiences a conflict of values more than Tambu because she is totally westernized whereas the environment at home forces her to accept conventional gender roles. Her thoughts and behaviour are to be in tandem with her father’s ideas. Her father resents her style of clothing whereas her mother encourages her. This brings about a conflict in values set by the parents.

Techniques used:

The novel seems to be in a Bildungsroman form but it only uses Tambu’s voice as a narrator. It is to a large extent the story of five women. As Gilian Gorle in the article Fighting the Good Fight: What Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’ Says about Language and Power says “Dangarembga leaves her reader in postmodernist suspense, feeling teased by her clever, tongue-in-cheek manipulation of language, and recognizing, perhaps reluctantly, that questions of linguistic hegemony and alienation are fundamentally fluid and must therefore defy neat resolution”.

Gorle illustrates the power of language to upset, uproot, and either shackle or set free. Secondly, the end of the novel provides no sense of closure: although it brings the reader full circle (with the final paragraph neatly echoing the words of the opening paragraph), it resolves nothing and secures no one.

Conclusion:

The novel serves as a guiding light to women writers striving to achieve gender equality.  It lends a voice to those struggling to achieve independence. It critiques the ideals of patriarchy and colonization and lends a strong female voice to the narrative. This voice  delves deep into the psyche of the colonized subject and vouches for human rights. Kwame Anthony Appiah rightly says “what makes the novel available to its readers is not shared values or beliefs or experiences but the human capacity to conjure new worlds in the imagination”.

Reference

• Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions.UK: The Women’s Press, 1988. Print.
• Easthope, Anthony. What a Man Gotta Do? London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1986
• Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin, 2001. Print.
• Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, et al. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. Print
• Woolf , Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Harcourt, 1989.Print.
• Gorle, Gilian. “Fighting the Good Fight: What Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’ Says about Language and Power.” The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 27, 1997, pp. 179– 192., www.jstor.org/stable/3509141.
• Uwakweh, Pauline Ada. “Debunking Patriarchy: The Liberational Quality of Voicing in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions.’” Research in African Literatures, vol. 26, no. 1, 1995, pp. 75–84., www.jstor.org/stable/3820089.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4370007.stm
• New          Directions          in          African          fiction:                    Discussing          anorexia nervosahttp://brickmag.com/interview-tsitsi-dangarembga
• Veit-Wild, Flora. “Creating a New Society: Women’s Writing in Zimbabwe.” The Journal of               Commonwealth               Literature2                2.1               (1987):               171-78. http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Dangar.html