The Trials of African Women in Patriarchal African Society: A Critical Study of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

This thesis engages with Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988), a novel that reflects how the organization and use of space mirrors the entanglement of hierarchies of class, race, and gender in colonial societies and the subordination of women. The novel captures the destructive impacts of colonization on the African people of then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and tension in postcolonial structures where family members struggle with their identity, between African tradition and modern culture. The thesis provides an in-depth analysis of the novel and gives attention to the various female characters and the struggles they encounter that stem from gender oppression in their community. In providing a feminist analysis the thesis examines the different ways in which African patriarchy manifests itself regarding the subaltern position of women. It demonstrates that the tension between modern and tradition accounts for the negative representation of women and oppression in Nervous Conditions.M.A