Nervous Conditions

“Thinking about it, feeling the injustice of it, this is how I came to dislike my brother, and not only my brother, my father, my mother—in fact everybody.”

Tambu resents her patriarchal culture, and, in the process, she grows to dislike most of the people in her life, including her immediate family members. She is jealous of Nhamo, whose education and desires are prioritized over hers because she is a woman, and she dislikes those who support the patriarchy, such as her mother and father.

“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 decide 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.”

Ma’Shingayi tries to prepare Tambu for life in a patriarchal culture. Her comments demonstrate that she does not have hope for an egalitarian life for either herself or her daughter. She resents her forced gender role and feels disappointed. Rather than hurting Tambu, Ma’Shingayi hopes to prevent her daughter from experiencing the disappointment of failed aspirations.

“Have you ever heard of a woman who remains in her father’s house? […] She will meet a young man and I will have lost everything.”

Jeremiah is characterized as selfish. He has no respect nor empathy for Tambu, and he does not care about her wants or happiness. The combination of his self-centeredness and his patriarchal culture result in him feeling entitled to Tambu’s money. Rather than feeling happy for his daughter’s success, he is angry because he can’t have her money. His remark also demonstrates Tambu’s expected future of getting married and obligatorily sharing the benefits of her money and education with her husband instead of her father.

“Whereas before I had believed with childish confidence that burdens were only burdens in so far as you chose to bear them, now I began to see that the disappointing events surrounding Babamukuru’s return were serious consequences of the same general laws that had almost brought my education to an abrupt, predictable end.”

Tambu realizes that she was not allowed to meet the Sigaukes because she is a girl. Her wants are not taken seriously, whereas her brother’s and father’s are. She connects this realization to her mother’s claim that womanhood is a burden. Unlike Ma’Shingayi, Tambu does not accept that womanhood must be a burden, and she sets her mind against succumbing to the concept.

“Exclusion whispered that my existence was not necessary, making me no more than an unfortunate by-product of some inexorable natural process.”

Tambu is insecure about her role in the family, and she is fearful of exclusion. During Babamukuru’s return, Nhamo intentionally excludes Tambu, and Nyasha and Chido are uncommunicative and distant. She combats her insecurity by performing housework and experiences relief and superiority when the other women praise her. She is entering a coming-of-age period and trying to develop her sense of identity.

“I was quite sure at the time that Nhamo knew as well as I did that the things he had said were not reasonable, but in the years that have passed since then I have met so many men who consider themselves responsible adults and therefore ought to know better, who still subscribe to the fundamental principles of my brother’s budding elitism, that to be fair to him I must conclude that he was sincere in his bigotry.”

Although Tambu wants to think Nhamo knew better than he acted, life experience has taught her that his behavior was likely sincere. He truly believes that he is superior because he is male and she is female. Nhamo’s attitude and Tambu’s interpretation of it develop the themes regarding Sisterhood and the Burden of Womanhood and The Pressures of Patriarchal Gender Roles.

“At Babamukuru’s I would have the leisure, be encouraged to consider questions that had to do with survival of the spirit, the creation of consciousness, rather than the sustenance of survival.”

Up to this point, Tambu has spent her life focused on survival. Hard work and poor nutrition have physically affected her, and she is excited to have her basic needs supplied so that she can focus on expanding her mind. Her narration reflects the concept that safety and security are important components in the learning process.

“We were all proud, except Nyasha, who had an egalitarian nature and had taken seriously the lessons about oppression and discrimination that she had learnt first-hand in England.”

Nyasha is characterized as a progressive outsider. She learns progressive ideas while in England, and these concepts impacted both her perspective and behavior, so when she arrives back in Rhodesia, she became an outsider. The dichotomy between Nyasha’s progressive identity and her patriarchal heritage form the inner conflict that drives her character arc.

“So this tea-strainer was another necessity I had managed without up until now. Maiguru seemed to think it was absolutely vital to have one. I would hardly have described it like that. Interesting, yes, but vital? And imagine spending money on a sieve so small it could only be used for sifting tea!”

The tea strainer symbolizes the concept that luxuries tend to become necessities. Tambu perceives the strainer as interesting and somewhat useful but not as necessary because she is used to subsisting with few luxuries. Maiguru is accustomed to affluence, so she views the tea strainer, which is a small and frequently used tool, as a necessity.

“You could say that my relationship with Nyasha was my first love-affair, the first time that I grew to be fond of someone of whom I did not wholeheartedly approve.”

Tambu does not approve of Nyasha because Nyasha has been strongly influenced by English culture, which is much different from Tambu’s culture in Rhodesia. Despite their ideological and cultural differences, the two cousins grow close. Their relationship develops the theme of sisterhood and the burden of womanhood, as they form a bond that is strengthened by their shared experience of living within the patriarchy.

“I was a bit masochistic at that age, wallowing in my imagined inadequacy until I was in real danger of feeling sorry for myself. Then I reprimanded myself for this self-indulgence by thinking of my mother, who suffered from being female and poor and uneducated so stoically that I was ashamed of my weakness in succumbing so flabbily to the strangeness of my new circumstances.”

The transition from the homestead to the Sigaukes’ home is jarring for Tambu. The cultural transition coincides with an emerging perspective shift, leaving Tambu feeling like an outsider—she does not fit in with the affluent Sigauke family, but she does not want to be part of the life on the homestead. When she remembers her mother’s hardness, Tambu feels ashamed of her emotional turmoil. She does not yet understand that, despite her mother’s stoic front, she also experiences emotional turmoil shaped by the patriarchal culture. Similarly, Tambu does not yet understand Maiguru’s nor Nyasha’s perspectives. Tambu’s lack of understanding demonstrates that her primary character flaw before her coming-of-age arc is her lack of empathy.

“When I was in England I glimpsed for a little while the things I could have been, the things I could have done if—if—if things were—different—But there was Babawa Chido and the children and the family. And does anyone realise, does anyone appreciate, what sacrifices were made? As for me, no one even thinks about the things I gave up.”

Maiguru reveals her internal conflict to Tambu; she feels oppressed but strives to overcome her personal desires and control her behaviors so that she fits into her culture. Her family takes her for granted, with Babamukuru using her income to support his own family and her children not understanding that she, too, has been influenced by their time in England. She is unhappy with her circumstances but works to appease her husband and assimilate into a culture she does not agree with.

“I was always aware of my surroundings. When the surroundings were new and unfamiliar, the awareness was painful and made me behave very strangely. At times like that I wanted so badly to disappear that for practical purposes I ceased to exist.”

Tambu’s dislike of unfamiliar situations suggests that she has an introverted personality. Her self-awareness also demonstrates that she is introspective and observant. The author uses simple sensory and emotive language when describing Tambu’s reactions, which helps the reader to understand and relate to her feelings.

“We cannot have two men in this house. Not even Chido, you hear that Nyasha? Not even your brother there dares to challenge my authority.”

Babamukuru demands complete obedience from his children, while Nyasha fights for autonomy. Their conflict is driven both by the patriarchy, in general, and the intense expectations placed on Babamukuru. Babamukuru represents both the patriarchy and authoritarian parenting methods, and he is Nyasha’s antagonist.

“The victimization, I saw, was universal. It didn’t depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn’t depend on any of the things I had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Even heroes like Babamukuru did it. And that was the problem.”

Tambu experiences a moment of enlightenment when Babamukuru verbally and physically attacks Nyasha. She better understands what her mother meant when she said that womanhood is a burden. Where before Tambu believed that money would make femaleness a non-issue, she now realizes that men oppress women despite their financial or social status.

“Glistening pale maggots burrowed fatly into the faeces; the walls had turned yellow. Large bottle-blue flies with nauseous orange heads buzzed irritatingly around my anus as I squatted.”

The author employs detailed imagery and sensory language to relate the dilapidated and unsanitary state of the latrine on the homestead. By doing so, she helps readers imagine Tambu’s experience of the latrine. The description also serves to illustrate the power of grief and loss. Since losing Nhamo and having Tambu taken away, Ma’Shingayi experiences depression, which leads to her indifference toward the state of the latrine.

“But the women had been taught to recognize these reflections as self and it was frightening now to even begin to think that, the very facts which set them apart as a group, as women, as a certain kind of person, were only myths; frightening to acknowledge that generations of threat and assault and neglect had battered these women myths into the extreme, dividing the reality they faced, of my Maigurus or the Lucias.”

Tambu realizes that the reasons women are oppressed are social constructs and that they encourage judgment and division between women. She and the other women are anxious about their oppression and fear the consequences of trying to stand up for themselves. Rather than bonding in sisterhood, the women in the kitchen recede from each other.

“Nyasha gave me the impression of moving, always moving and striving towards some state that she had seen and accepted a long time ago. Apprehensive as I was, vague as I was about the nature of her destination, I wanted to go with her.”

While Tambu originally disapproved of Nyasha’s seemingly disrespectful behavior, she has learned that Nyasha desires freedom. Tambu is inspired by Nyasha’s fight for autonomy, and she is anxious to lose Nyasha’s progressive influence. She relies on Nyasha to guide her through her own coming-of-age process, as Nyasha has seen more of the world and has stronger comprehension of freedom and feminism.

“I simply was not ready to accept that Babamukuru was a historical artefact; or that advantage and disadvantage were predetermined, so that Lucia could not really hope to achieve much as a result of Babamukuru’s generosity; and that the benefit would only really be a long-term one if people like Babamukuru kept on fulfilling their social obligations; and people like Lucia would pull themselves together.”

Narrating from a future point in time, Tambu reflects that, at the time of the events in the novel, she had not yet made the important revelations that have shaped her current worldview. She was beginning to question the way things were but, scared of those thoughts, had not explored them in depth. This narrative technique allows the author to develop Tambu both as a narrator who holds a deeper understanding and as a young and naive protagonist coming of age.

“With Nyasha’s various and exotic library to digest, with having to cope with her experimental disposition, her insistence on alternatives, her passion for transmuting the present into the possible; having to cope with all this, which I did at a purely intellectual level, not because I thought it was rational but because it was amusing and I loved my cousin and admired her, having coped with these intellectual challenges for close on two years, I was far ahead of my peers in both general knowledge and general ability.”

Tambu attributes her success to Nyasha’s influence, demonstrating the impact Nyasha has had on Tambu’s coming-of-age experience. Tambu does not take advantage of Nyasha; she loves and supports her cousin, and in the process, gleans advanced knowledge and that helps her secure a scholarship. Their relationship demonstrates the importance of critical thinking skills, which Tambu passively learns from her exposure to Nyasha.

“Marriage. I had nothing against it in principle. In an abstract way I thought it was a very good idea. But it was irritating the way it always cropped up in one form or another, stretching its tentacles back to bind me before I had even begun to think about it seriously, threatening to disrupt my life before I could even call it my own.”

The author uses personifying language to describe the concept of marriage. It becomes an antagonistic entity Tambu is forced to face. The threat of marriage challenges Tambu’s senses of individuality and autonomy. Even though she is not currently interested in marriage nor even attracted to a particular boy, she is expected to live her current life in a way that will benefit her potential future spouse. The recurrence of marriage develops the theme of patriarchal gender roles pressures.

“I was to take another step upwards in the direction of my freedom. Another step away from the flies, the smells, the fields and the rags; from the stomachs which were seldom full, from the dirt and disease, from my father’s abject obeisance to Babamukuru and my mother’s chronic lethargy. Also from the Nyamarira that I loved.”

Although Tambu has high hopes of escaping poverty through education, she also holds reservations. She scorns her parents, whose living conditions are driven by poverty, but her remark about the Nyamarira River reveals that she still feels connected to her heritage. Her comment about the Nyamarira foreshadows the ambiguous ending of the novel, which suggests that colonialism will have a lasting negative impact on Tambu’s life, despite her education.

“They think that I am a snob, that I think I am superior to them because I do not feel that I am inferior to men (if you can call the boys in my class men). And all because I beat the boys at maths!”

Nyasha’s primary conflict is derived from the pressures of patriarchal gender roles. She is pressured to conform to her expected gender role, but she refuses. At the same time, she is pressured to work hard and do her best. This creates a Catch-22 situation for Nyasha, as she cannot both focus on her education and conform to her expected gender role.