Nervous conditions by tsitsi dangarembga pdf download

In the end she escapes from poverty and illiteracy to become an emancipated woman in her own way. Right from the beginning of the story, Tambudzai categorizes the women in her story: a story which is not 'about death, but about my escape and Lucia's; about my mother's and Maiguru's entrapment; and 17 Toril Moi, 'Feminist literary criticism', MOYANA 27 about Nyasha's rebellion — Nyasha, far-minded and isolated, my uncle's daughter, whose rebellion may not in the end have been successful' p.

So Tambu and Lucia 'escaped'; her mother and aunt Maiguru got 'entrapped'; and Nyasha, her cousin 'rebelled'. Except for the mother and aunt, these other three women's or girls' life story is not just a narrative of their socialization and submission to social norms.

It is a story in which they have a say in how that life is to be lived and shaped; a story that catapults them beyond the kitchen and into a world of their own. Even though Tambu says Nyasha does not succeed in her 'rebellion', she has at least rebelled as opposed to accepting conditions she feels are entrapping.

It is precisely that struggle against those conditions which causes her mental and nervous breakdown. We shall discuss that entrapping condition later. So clearly the novel cannot just be womanist or female. It goes beyond that because these two young female children and Lucia, the grown-up woman, question and escape or rebel. The next inevitable series of questions which come to mind are: from what or whom do Tambu and Lucia escape; against what or whom does Nyasha rebel and what or who traps Tambu's mother and Maiguru?

To answer these questions we need to go back to the first page of the novel where Tambu says, I was not sorry when my brother died. Nor am I apologizing for my callousness, as you may define it, my lack of feeling Therefore I shall not apologize but begin by recalling the facts as I remember them that led up to my brother's death, the events that put me in a position to write this account, p. I will indeed call it a liberation and explain what I mean below.

Tambu escapes or gets liberated from what her brother, Nhamo, stands for in this novel: patriarchy and sexism. These are the gender issues which concern this novel and as Greene and Kahn assert, The social construction of gender takes place through the workings of ideology.

Ideology is that system of beliefs and assumptions — unconscious, unexamined, invisible — which represents 'the imaginary relationships of individuals to their real conditions of existence. When she debates with Nhamo, her brother, why he cannot help her with her plot so she can also go to school as she desperately wants to, he argues that 'wanting [to go to school] won't help'.

So she asks why not, and for an answer Nhamo says, 'It's the same everywhere. Because you are a girl It is also Nhamo who steals Tambu's maize cobs when they are ripe, just to prove that she could never send herself to school. It is Nhamo who asks Tambu, 'Did you ever hear of a girl being taken away to school?

You are lucky you even managed to go back to Rutivi. With me it's different. I was meant to be educated' p. It is Nhamo who further practises his sexism and male chauvinism on both Tambudzai and Netsai by always asking them to go and fetch some of his luggage from the nearby shops even when he could have carried it all pp.

It is no wonder therefore, that Tambudzai feels relieved when Nhamo leaves for further education at the Mission and does not feel remorseful when he dies. But we should question why a mere boy would display such chauvinistic, sexist tendencies. It is as if Nhamo gets socialized into his gender role even before he is born.

Here we can agree with Easthope who asserts that, Every society assigns new arrivals [i. The little animal born into a human society becomes a socialized individual in a remarkably short time. This process of internalizing is both conscious and unconscious. The process of internalizing his gender role as a male personality who automatically looks down on the female persons has been done consciously and unconsciously 'in a remarkably short time'.

Carol McMillan has also expressed the same view when she says, The thrust of feminist argument has Any differences which may exist are said to be fostered culturally by forcing women to concentrate their activities exclusively in the domestic sphere.

This in turn leads to the development of supposedly feminine traits such as self-sacrifice and passivity, which has the added consequence of inhibiting the development in women of their potential as rational, intellectual and creative beings. MOYANA 29 Having been socialized as early as possible and liking, even enjoying, his gender role thoroughly, Nhamo goes about trying to socialize Tambudzai into her feminine gender role with relish, and of course, with the help of their father.

The two of them are trying to develop the required feminine traits of 'self-sacrifice and passivity' in Tambudzai and the other female children in their home like Netsai. The father goes on to advise Tambudzai to stop worrying that she cannot go to school because, after all, she cannot cook books and feed them to her husband. Instead, she should stay at home with her mother, learn to cook, clean and grow vegetables p.

When she yearns to accompany him and Nhamo to the airport to welcome Babamukuru and family from England, the father once again calls her aside to implore her to curb her unnatural inclinations. For it was natural for her to stay at home and prepare for the home-coming p. This is the attitude to which McMillan refers when she says that women are forced culturally to concentrate their activities exclusively in the domestic sphere, thereby inhibiting their development into creative and intellectual people.

Indeed, Tambudzai's father gets agitated when he sees her reading a piece of newspaper used to wrap bread by the grocery shop people, thinking that she was emulating her brother and that the things she read would fill her mind with impractical ideas, making her quite useless for the real tasks of feminine living.

In order for him to get enough cattle for her bride price at the time of her marriage, her conformity is absolutely mandatory pp.

What the father is doing here then, is to socialize Tambudzai into her gender role using the ideology he knows best as described by Greene and Kahn. But it is generally true that gender is con- structed in patriarchy to serve the interests of male supremacy.

Radical feminists argue that the construction of gender is grounded in male attempts to control female sexuality. Babamukuru does the same to her and sees it as his duty to ensure that she 'develops into a good woman [which is necessary he 25 Greene and Kahn, Making a Difference, 3. Even the education she gets is seen in terms of preparing her for marriage as he says, In time you will be earning money.

You will be in a position to be married by a decent man and set up a decent home. In all that we are doing for you, we are preparing you for this future life of yours and I have observed from my own daughter's behaviour that it is not a good thing for a young girl to associate too much with these white people, to have too much freedom.

I have seen that girls who do that do not develop into decent women p. To emphasize the difference between girls and boys, Chido, his son, associates so much with Whites that he is hardly home and he is totally alienated from his family as a result.

But because he is a boy, it is all right as far as Babamukuru's expounded ideology is concerned! So the radical feminists' view above is pertinent; these are indeed male attempts to control Tambudzal's sexuality, which should be practised and lived out in a particular way prescribed by man. We see also the truth in the above statement that 'gender is constructed in patriarchy to serve the interests of male supremacy'. To put it another way, woman is traditionally a use-value for man, an exchange value among men,.

Women are marked phallicly by their fathers, husbands, procurers 26 Tambudzai is constantly made to feel that 'the chosen standards for "femininity" are natural' and so when she seems to resist conformity she is labelled unfeminine and unnatural27 by Nhamo and her father.

Tambudzai therefore consciously refuses to be compartmentalized into this gender apartheid from an early age, which is why she escapes to use her own expression. The question is how she escapes. She does so first, by questioning things and ideas where every other girl including her sister would conform and take things for granted see pp. For a child of eight to work on her own plot determinedly and successfully, in spite of 26 Luce Irlgaray, This Sex Which is not One trans.

Catherine Porter et al Ithaca, N. MOYANA 31 all the attendant problems and disruptions, to earn enough money to finance her whole primary education is a feat few could achieve. Yet Tambudzai achieves that feat with inspiration from her late grandmother p.

That self-dependence and determination are what enable her to escape from the throttling patriarchal sexism and catapults her into a different world where she achieves her liberation, a liberation marked by the demise of her brother as circumstances in her favour would have it — the author's form emphasizes this point here when she practically eliminates Nhamo from the scene to make way for Tambu's educational advancement and her success in getting Babamukuru's help to go to the Mission school for upper primary education, and Sacred Heart for secondary education; a liberation marked, most importantly, by the ability to tell her own story which is the book itself, Nervous Conditions.

It all started with that maize field as she herself acknowledges p. For as Ann Rosalind Jones argues, What are the sites of resistance or liberation in this phallocentric universe? One is writing. If women have been entrapped in the symbolic order, they will mark their escape 28from it by producing texts that challenge and move beyond the law-of-the Father.

Helene Cixous vehemently endorses this idea of writing as a liberating factor in a woman's life when she writes: [woman] must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of her liberation has come, will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history.

Indeed, Tambudzai ruptures and transforms her world in a painful and halting process to the point where she is able to declare that quietly, unobtrusively and extremely fitfully, something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and to refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story.

It was a long and painful process This is the liberation we are talking about for this girl. She is free to articulate her feelings and even to declare that she did not feel saddened 28 Ann Rosalind Jones, 'Inscribing femininity: French theories of the feminine', in Greene and Kahn, Making a Difference, From this point of view, Dangarembga can be said to be feminist in her approach in this novel.

One would have expected Nyasha to have a better deal; to be better understood at least within her nuclear family environment. Here is Tambudzai who is emulating life of an educated, more enlightened and more civilized girl. She admires Nyasha who lives in the environment of a mission school, whose work is less burdensome than her harsh rural life.

Yet ironically, Nyasha suffers from this very education and life. Before she went to England with her parents she was a different, even if younger, person who had definite roots and a definite identity pp. When she returns from England, she and her brother Chido are alienated and for a start, they no longer understand or speak their mother tongue, Shona pp.

Nyasha's problem is compounded by the fact that she is a girl whom her parents expect miraculously and automatically to conform to their traditional ways. It appears that the education that her parents have acquired is extremely alienating. Their traditional culture is conservative, sexist, patriarchal — regarding women as second class citizens and therefore as people who should work at home, tending their husbands and children with no opinion of their own to be vocally expressed.

Her mother tries to play that feminine role and succeeds to a certain extent. So that even if she is educated with an M. Her resentment shows in her sometimes sarcastic comments pp.

Nyasha on the other hand, is modern, carefree, unpretentious and feels she must be able to speak her mind. The main obstacle to her happiness is her father, Mr. Sigauke and Tambudzai's uncle or Babamukuru. There is a vagueness in the novel about the kind of education that this man acquired. He too came back from England different pp. He no longer interacts with his family freely and naturally.

He is always aloof and people should not talk or make noise in his presence. When greeted he merely 'grunts' p. The author here has not described enough reasons for this nor given enough background to Mr. Sigauke for us to understand why he has turned out this way. Whatever it is, it has to do with his education which has alienated him in a different way from the way it has affected his children.

Babamukuru, on the other hand, has become much more severe, intimidating, less flexible and visibly more sexist, patronizing, unfriendly and ready to perpetuate the patriarchal values in the homestead which he claims to be his own with such exaggerated firmness that the inmates of that homestead feel helpless, powerless and some even feel emasculated by his severe presence. So far as women are concerned, perhaps we can agree with Lemmer when she explains that we should not assume: Education is the only nor even the most important variable in gender equality.

Neither [should we] presume that society or the school is gender neutral; rather, [we should look] at schools as patriarchal institutions which have served to perpetuate women's position in society. Sigauke who does not consider women to be his equals, but second class citizens who should do what men like him say.

He always feels he must subdue Nyasha for instance; she must do as he says. When she tries to tell the truth about herself, he feels she is challenging him see p. She must not read certain books. She must sit down at table and eat all her food because he says so, but must wait till her mother has finished serving him or to use his expression, she must wait until her mother has finished waiting on him.

This home at the Mission, which should be pleasant and liberating physically and spiritually as imagined and visualized by Tambudzai, ends up being very stifling.

In the village, at least Tambudzai could talk to her father and even ask questions sometimes. At the Mission Nyasha can do nothing of the sort. Her mother is nervous, unsure of herself, scared of her husband, appears delicate and childish, even though she definitely does not like her lot.

Nyasha suffers more from these stifling, nervous conditions than her brother because being a boy, he can do what he wants. He is rarely at home, does not visit the village often and gets totally assimilated into the White people's culture as he associates more and more with the Bakers.

This leaves Nyasha at the crossroads, not knowing which way to turn: either to the inhibitive new home culture, or to the African culture which these same parents neglected to teach her, or to the freer Western culture for which she is reprimanded time and again.

The father does not approve of the words she speaks or the clothes she wears like mini-skirts, while the mother does not mind them and in fact buys the mini-dresses for her which could be her way of protesting against the father's values — see pp. Lemmer, 'Gender issues in education', in EMse I. Dekker and Eleanor M. Lemmer eds. See also Greene and Kahn, Making a Difference, The day she comes home late from a dance because she wanted to learn a few more dance steps from Andrew Baker, she is accused of being a whore because 'no decent girl would stay out alone, with a boy, at that time of n i g h t.

It is these kinds of accusations, assumptions and orders that Nyasha rebels against. She cannot simply take them sheepishly, obediently, placidly. For example, on the Andrew Baker dance problem, in anger and frustration she ends up shouting, 'What do you want me to say? You want me to admit I'm guilty, don't you. All right then. I've confessed. She returns the blow to her father's horror, who vows that he will kill her for challenging him that way pp. Ironically, because of her rural background and different cultural understanding of how children should talk to their parents, Tambudzai finds herself not approving of Nyasha's carefree nature either, particularly of the way she interacts with her parents.

There is also the pretence and hypocrisy in Mr. Sigauke, He worries more about 'what people would say' than what he is and what he should be or should do truthfully for his family regardless of outsiders' opinion. The author has not been explicit as to the source of this attitude in him, but it surfaces each time he 'disciplines' Nyasha pp. Apparently Nyasha should appearto be decent by not befriending or associating with boys, not for her own or her family's sake, but more to impress the people around the mission as he angrily pronounces, What will people say when they see Sigauke's daughter carrying on like that?

How can you go on disgracing me? Like that! No, you cannot do it. I am respected at this mission. I cannot have a daughter who behaves like a whore. She realizes that it is not a question of rural backwardness, urban advancement or even education that matters.

It is a problem of femaleness versus maleness and that they are all victims as long as they are female pp. Nyasha is no whore, as the reader and the other characters in the novel know She is an intelligent girl whose insight into social and political issues is very sharp. She analyses issues maturely and is the only other character besides Tambu's mother who seems to understand the crippling colonizing effect of Christianity. She gets quite annoyed with this and delivers a lecture on the dangers of assuming that Christian ways were progressive ways: 'It's bad enough That's the end, really, that's the end.

Baker's interest in having her brother, Chido, attend a multi-racial school in Salisbury on a full scholarship, 'to ease his conscience. She forbids Tambu to join Lucia and her mother in over-praising her father for offering Lucia a job: 'Don't you dare [ululate] Thank him, y e s.

Sadly, in the effort to assert this kind of human truth, to assert her rights and herself generally, she gets brutalized. She wastes away and finally succumbs to a mental and nervous breakdown which comes out through the food battle with her father.

He constantly forces her to eat all her food as evidence of his authority over her and believes that she challenges him if she does not eat even if she is full or not hungry p. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of pages and is available in Paperback format. The main characters of this fiction, cultural story are ,. Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator.

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