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EN51002C
Student Number: 33574899
Gender in Nervous Conditions
Word count: 2078
“If that is what makes you happy, you can do whatever you want” is a statement that multiple western parents made in order to let their little girls know that there are no gender distinctions between male or female, only happiness and well-being matter. However, this is not the same situation in all over the world, where these little girls have to behave and follow the rules given to them as women, as it is seen in Nervous Conditions, the novel written by Tsitsi Dangarembga in 1988. As Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi suggests it, black women bring to their work a critical self- consciousness about their personal position as defined by race, class, and ideology. 1 The Zimbabwean writer does not renounce using her situation in order to orient her story towards this path of critical criticism: gender studies. This essay aims to explore the theme of gender in terms of education, and then it will focus on the differences between some of the female characters presented in Dangarembga’s novel, that as, Mainini, Lucia, Nyasha and Maiguru, four women whom Tambuzai loved, and who cannot avoid what befalls them.^2 It does not appear any significant male character, except for Babamukuru, uncle of the narrator and prototype of assimilated black. In opposition to what happens with (^1) Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, Gender In African Women's Writing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 2. (^2) Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (Banbury: Ayebia Clarke, 2004), p. 208.
female characters, no male among those who participate in the novel receives a positive characterisation. These female characters, that could be any real person in the social scene in which Nervous Conditions is placed, are there to devote themselves for their family and to have a lower standard than men in society because that is the correct way and the most comfortable thing for the rest of the characters that are presented in this story. That men are superior to women is an accepted belief in the society in which the story is placed. In it, patriarchy exercises its power in different ways and the reader discovers how it affects Tambu's life, mainly through her education. She was ‘not sorry when her brother died.’ 3 This shocking statement made by Tambu opens the novel. His relationship with his brother could have been defined as tormenting, as the injustice of her situation makes her not to like her brother, but also it makes her dislike other relatives of her. 4 Nhamo represents everything that Tambu wishes and has been denied to her from the family structure in which both were born. Nhamo is the hope of his parents, the one in charge of fulfilling all the expectations of the family nucleus since he is a man. However, despite being smarter and having more skills, the only thing that Tambu can do is to support his brother while he triumphs because she cannot cook books and feed them to her future husband. 5 This is why the unexpected death of Nhamo is a great change in the events of Tambu's life. Now, Tambu can attend the mission school, and she can write the novel that begins with the statement cited above. This is a similar scheme (^3) Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, p. 1. (^4) Ibiene Evelyn Iboroma, "Gender Apartheid And Its Effect On Family Relationships In Tsitsi Dangaremgba’s Nervous Conditions", Studies In Literature And Language , 15.3 (2017), 9-13 <https:// doi.org/10.3968/9945> p. 12. (^5) Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions , p. 15.
teacher, but she has no pay and no one knows about the fact that she went to university in England. The situation of her husband, Babamukuru, is entirely different. As well as Maiguru, he was educated and they both have the same level of studies. The difference is that everyone in the village knows and respects him because of that and that he earns money in order to support his family financially. Their daughter Nyasha studied in England too, but both of her parents are worried because in their society ’people were prejudiced against educated women.’ 10 The reason is, again, because of gender prejudices and expectations. What is expected from a woman is to be an illiterate human who does not question the economic and social system that exploits and becomes them nothing but child producers and household keepers. The author is claiming that the deep-roots of gender inequality in the Shona society start to grow in the field of education, and expand to other fields, becoming the existing society in one full of gender rules and roles. In her novel, Tsitsi Dangarembga explores womanhood at the same time that she does it on identity conflicts, as she is writing about women of the same family during the end of the colonial period. Nyasha is a deconstructed human being that question patriarchy and the established norms that surround women in Rhodesia. Nyasha feels like a foreigner in the place where she was born as she was not raised there. So, she is looking at the situation in her country from an objective and outside perspective, but even though she is aware of what is happening, she is also trapped inside. She tries to integrate herself again in the culture of her relatives but she fails, and then, her struggle comes. She realises that the distinction between genders is so vast and the values of their society are so sexist that there is nothing that she (^10) Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions , p. 184.
could do to change or improve the situation. This moment will be the motor of Nyasha’s eating disorder, as this is a way of showing her rejection of the traditional rules of Shona’s culture. As Nyasha is presented, they can be found some similarities with the character of Lucia, the sister of Tambu’s mother, as both of them reject the laws established for Shona girls. The law establishes that there is not a minimum age for women to marry, if they have ‘fully-developed breasts’, they are considered to be prepared to marry. 11 Moreover, it also states that a girl should be a virgin before marriage.^12 Lucia became pregnant with Takesure’s foetus, and in addition to break the Shona law, she would not marry him as ‘he did not like being a husband and Lucia knew that he neither wanted.’ 13 Thus, she is trapped in conflict over her future. To skip it, she will have to use the system of gender roles and ask Babamukuru for a job. Hence, as they choose different methods in order to solve their particular nervous conditions, it is shown the difference between Nyasha and Lucia: ‘Babamukuru wanted to be asked, so I asked. And now we both have what we wanted’, was what Lucia said to Nyasha when the second one was mad because of what she did.^14 This difference is emphasised because of the age gap between them, due to Nyasha is presented as a younger version of Lucia. The youngest of these women will be gaining skills as the oldest one did, in order to fight patriarchy and gender expectations in a different a more useful way for the society in which both of them (^11) J. Frederik Holleman, Shona Customary Law: With Reference to Kinship, Marriage, the Family and the Estate , (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 72. (^12) Holleman, Shona Customary Law , p. 73. (^13) Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions , p. 128. (^14) Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions , p. 162.
the first and standard sex. None of the two cousins is married or have an intimate relationship with a man, so due to this and adding the Europeanised ideology that both of them share, they cannot become a woman, at least not in the scenario of Nervous Conditions. Gender inequalities are present in this novel since the very first page. As it has been seen, these differences start from the in education and go further, expanding and contaminating the lives of Shona women since they are born. The life of the protagonist and all the events that happen to her and to all the female characters that surround her are marked by the assimilated superiority of the male gender. Thus, this is the fact that convert this novel in a gendered reading with multiple feminist characters that question the existence of gender roles and try to fight them in order to achieve the equality that is necessary for them to life full and happy lives.
Bibliography:
Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1990). Dangarembga, Tsitsi, Nervous Conditions (Banbury: Ayebia Clarke, 2004). De Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1973). Holleman, J. Frederik, Shona Customary Law: With Reference To Kinship, Marriage, The Family And The Estate (London: Oxford University Press, 1952).
Iboroma, Ibiene Evelyn, "Gender Apartheid And Its Effect On Family Relationships In Tsitsi Dangaremgba’s Nervous Conditions", Studies In Literature And Language , 15 (2017) https://doi.org/10.3968/9945. Nfah-Abbenyi, Juliana Makuchi, Gender In African Women's Writing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). Rodgers, Randi Jean, "Representations Of Women, Identity And Education In The Novels Of Tsitsi Dangarembga And Kopano Matlwa" (unpublished Master Degree, Stellenbosch University, 2013). Tuwor, Theresa, and Marie‐Antoinette Sossou, "Gender Discrimination And Education In West Africa: Strategies For Maintaining Girls In School", International Journal Of Inclusive Education , 12 (2008), 363-379 <https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13603110601183115>.
