Approaches to text.!
33574899
Commentary on a critical text.
Student number: 33574899.!
Word count: 1005 words.!
In the article In the Bedroom: The Formation of Single Women's Performative Space in
Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, published in 2006, E. Kim Stone analyses how
space affects the plot of the novel. She suggests that this is a crucial feature for the whole
story of Tambu, the heroine of Dangarembga. She will focus on the most intimate space
of the protagonist and, in addition, in the national space and in the social context in which
she lives. !
#This commentary attempts to address the structure of the essay and, moreover, to
expose its strengths and weakness when talking about the different ways in which Tambu
and her cousin, Nyasha, reject the things previously established. !
Being the society where Tambu lives a patriarchal and heteronormative one, she finds a
place where she can develop a subjective feminine intelligence. This place is the room
which she shares with his cousin Nyasha, and that the author of this article relates to
freedom and independence. E. Kim Stone, in addition to highlighting the significance of
space in the bildungsroman and how it works in the resolution of the nervous conditions
that Nyasha and Tambu have, she discusses the role of women in Zimbabwe. They were
treated as reproductive objects who could have no other purpose in life than to be a good
mother and wife. !
#That is why the author also establishes resistance and rejection as new methods of
development and intellectual survival: Tambu, who is free of Western ideals of freedom
and individuality, only wants to become an intellectual subject, so she has to reject her
uncle Babakumuru's ideals first. !
#On the other hand, the author highlights the way in which the protagonist of the
story empowers the Zimbabwean woman since it is Tambu, a girl, who tells her story and
the story of the women in her family, despite the differences that exist between them.!
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