The nature of nervous conditions in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous conditions

Abstract

Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions is, primarily, a novel about nervous conditions. It's about many other things, too. It's about power. It's about women. About men and poverty and riches. It's about education and missions and colonial Zimbabwe. It's about black and white. But at the end of all of these themes lies the nervous conditions of the novel's characters and how they formed, how they are rooted, and how they express themselves. In this paper, I will examine the nervous conditions of three characters in particular: Babamukuru, Nyasha, and Tambu. By identifying each of their conditions and examining them closely, I hope to identify the causes of their condition, both the stimuli and the character's reactions to them. By comparing the way that each character develops their condition, I will discuss the complexity that Dangarembga allows her characters and the actual humanity that they are meant to reflect.