Tambu’s and Nyasha’s Reaction to the Patriarchy in Nervous Conditions

Nervous Conditions is concerned with women who live in a traditional African society in Zimbabwe (former Rhodesia), who struggle to find their place in the patriarchal system and who search for their independence. Each female protagonist in the novel finds her own way of dealing with her situation; however, this essay focuses on two characters-Tambu and Nyasha whose response to the male power is very different. While Tambu escapes from the environment of inequality in order to seek her liberation, Nyasha chooses to resist the patriarchy but her rebellion against her father ends up tragically as she suffers from the nervous conditions. The theme of female struggle against male dominancy is presented throughout the novel and the narrator, Tambu, categorizes the women right at the beginning: “[...] my story is not after all about death, but about my escape and Lucia’s; about my mother’s and Maiguru's entrapment; and about Nyasha’s rebellion ( Nyasha, far-minded and isolated, my uncle’s daughter, whose rebellion may not in the end have been successful” (1). The two cousins, Tambu and Nyasha, are almost the same age but they have been raised in very different environments. While Nyasha was getting her primary education in England effortlessly, Tambu fought against her father, brother and the whole system in order to study at school. The experiences they have from childhood have shaped their characters so even when they become best friends at the mission they choose to react to the patriarchal society in different ways and they never approve of each other’s decisions. Tambu has been raised in Africa and so the African tradition is rooted deeply inside her. She respects her father and brother in a way she was taught but she never understands the patriarchal hierarchy in the family. At the age of eight she starts to be aware of her marginal status and she asks her brother, Nhamo, why she cannot go to school. The answer she gets is clear but not satisfiable: “It’s the

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