The bridging of native traditions with modern imperial ways has a direct effect on the minds of Zimbabwean girls and women. Dangarembga drew inspiration for her title from the quote “the condition of the nation is a nervous one”, from Frantz Franon’s book Wretched of the Earth. The reader sees this idea of nervousness displayed within the female main characters of this novel. “ Its bad enough, when a country gets colonised but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end. (Nervous Conditions,150). This quote stated by Nyasha addresses how colonialism and imperialism are not just cultural, political and economical, but psychological as well. It infiltrates the minds of the citizens and their very cultural existence. The women in this novel are faced with the choice of embracing the British ways or running back to their Shona roots. No matter the choice they make, the Imperial control of the British Empire over Zimbabwe affects the minds of these women. The title of Dangarembga's novel, Nervous Conditions, alludes to the influence imperialism has on the minds of Tambu, Nyasha and Maiguru as they struggle to re-define themselves in a white man’s world.
Tambu's nervous condition manifests itself when she refuses to attend her parents' wedding and the pulling between her Shona roots and her colonial schooling. As her mother prepares to marry she is left feeling anger towards Babamukur and embarrassed. Whenever the idea of her parent’s wedding came to mind she” suffered a horrible crawling over [her] skin, [her] chest contracted to a breathless tension and even [her] bowels threatened to let [her] know their opinion” (Nervous Conditions,151). This anxiety takes over her and "guilt, so many razor sharp edges of...
... middle of paper ...
...zens it takes over. Throughout Nervous Conditions the female characters in the novel struggle to find themselves in a western influenced world. Tambu, Nyasha and Maiguru are faced with the choice of embracing the colonial ways or returning to their Shona roots. Each one of these women experience this nervous condition in different forms and affects them in different ways. For Tambu it is through her parent’s wedding and the struggle between her colonial schooling and Shona culture. Nyasha’s nervous condition is expressed through the form of a typical western disease, Anorexia. In the case of Maiguru, her nervous condition deals with the blending of two different worlds. The title, Nervous Conditions alludes to the control imperialism has on the minds of Tambu,Nyasha and Maiguru.
Works Cited
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Los Angeles: Seal Press, 1996
Symbolism is a poetic and literary element that interacts with readers and engages their feelings and emotions. In Sold, thirteen-year-old Nepali girl, Lakshmi, is forced to take a job to help support her family. Involuntarily, she ends up in prostitution via the Happiness House; this sex trafficking battle forces Lakshmi to envision her future and possibility of never returning home. The very first vignette of the novel speaks of a tin roof that her family desperately needs, especially for monsoon season. At the brothel, Lakshmi works to pay off her debt to the head mistress, Mumtaz, but cannot seem to get any sort of financial gain in her time there. Both the tin roof and the debt symbolize unforeseen and improbable ambitions, yet she finds the power within herself to believe. How does Lakshmi believe in herself despite her unfathomable living conditions and occupation?
Images of whiteness in Zimbabwe projected in the media have been of white population as victims being disposed of land and exposed to violence. In the award-winning documentary, Mugabe and the White African, the film focuses on white Zimbabwean family who challenges the Fast Track land redistribution program. David McDermott Hughes’ interprets the perspectives of land and landscape and its origins. In Whiteness in Zimbabwe, David McDermott Hughes principal argument is that European settlers identified themselves with the African landscape rather than with the social characteristics of the native Africans. The importance of landscape to white identity led to the engineering and structural development of the landscape. Hughes contends that the white colonizers used the land, nature and ecology to escape the social problems, to avoid ‘the other’ which in this case was the black Zimbabweans that were sharing the same living space. Through such landscape engineering, the white Zimbabweans believed that they would belong to Zimbabwe and Africa. However, Hugh argues that “by writing themselves to single-mindedly into the landscape, many whites wrote themselves out of society (p. 25).” Furthermore, Hughes argues that this was not a form of racism, but rather escaping the social surrounding to avoid conflict. This concept has led to Hughes to wanting to stop romanticizing of land in order to avoid social issues.
Saikaku, Ihara. Life of a Sensuous Woman. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd Ed. Volume D. Ed. Martin Puchner. New York: Norton, 2013. 591-611. Print.
She is now fearful that everyone around her is wanting to understand the meaning of the wallpaper, predominantly Jennie. There is even an instance where the protagonist finds Jennie touching the wallpaper and becomes overwhelmed with anger and has to confine herself in order not to alarm Jennie, “She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper” (224). The symbolism here is that everyone was so quick to write off the protagonist’s mental wellbeing thinking that the rest cure would solve her hysteria, and now that they can see that there are more prominent issues, they are trying to examine her more closely, and it appears they are now too late and her ability to rationalize their intentions is
The blacks resort to magic in order to be free of colonial confines (20). The blacks feel that they are inferior to their white colonizers. As such, they begin searching for salvation form colonialism (24). Therefore, they use magic for the sake of peace and “psychological tranquility” that they long lost during the colonial attacks. The novel’s colonial atmosphere offers gloomy hints about colonialism and how it might negatively affect the colonized people psyches (24). As a sequence, colonialism imposes sever psychological complication that gradually destruct the colonized people’s psyches. In this sense, colonialism is depicted as the main source of psychic complication that should be amended by using “traditional” tools of resistance
The nervous system includes the brain and spinal cord of the central nervous system and the ganglia of the peripheral nervous system. The functional unit of the nervous system is a neuron. It is estimated 100 billion neurons reside in the brain with some neurons making anywhere between 10,000 to 100,000 connections with other cells! A distinctive class of neurons, mirror neurons discharge both when the individual executes a motor action and when he/she observes another individual performing that same or similar action. These mirror neurons were discovered by neurophysiologists in the 1990s at the University of Parma, Italy. Using macaque monkeys, these researchers found that neurons of the rostral part of the inferior premotor cortex were activated both when the monkey made goal-directed hand movements (grasping, holding, & tearing) and when the monkey observed specific hand movements done by the experimenters (Pellegrino, et al., 1992). In a monkey’s inferior frontal and inferior parietal cortex, it is estimated that about 10% of neurons have “mirror” properties.
Throughout the centuries, the roles of Nigerian women have continuously evolved. During the pre- colonial era, women in Nigerian tribes were not only child bearers and wives, but also free adults. They played critical roles in food preparation, weaving, pottery, and the economy. However, the impact of British rule in Nigeria made a significant shift from the pre-colonial to the post- colonial era. The influence of the Catholic Church, Western style education, patriarchal government and modern ways of making money took a major toll in a woman’s role in society. In Chimamanda Adichie’s novel, Purple Hibiscus, Mama Beatrice and Aunty Ifeoma are dynamic female foils who represent opposite sides of spectrum in post- colonial feminism. Mama epitomizes the product of colonialism, while Aunty Ifeoma challenges the British influence and growing power of men.
Chinua Achebe analyzes a culture he is not accustomed with. The Madwoman in the attic theory comes into play as a westerner writing about “savage Africa”. Things Fall Apart provides an important understanding of Africana identity and history for those in the West who may be unfamiliar with African culture. Achebe tackles female identity within this book with delicacy keeping with the Ibo view of female nature in the background of the story but the forefront of the reader’s mind. A discussion of womanhood must touch upon manhood because they operate as a complementary, opposing, and equal entity.
Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks (1952; trans. 1967) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961; trans. 1963) offer an account of colonialism in which the psychology of the ‘native’ is determined by the Manichean dichotomy of the colonial project and, prior to the emergence of the more recent wave of post-colonial theory that focuses on hybridity, several creative writers portrayed a similar mentality. Thus Derek Walcott’s play Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) dramatizes the split between a European and an African consciousness in its protagonist Makak’s vision of a White Goddess, who initiates him into an atavistic dream of African chieftainship. This Fanonian view of the double consciousness of the colonial psychology is underpinned by the epigraphs to the two parts of the play, which are taken from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Prologue to The Wretched of the Earth. In the second, Walcott quotes a passage from Sartre, in which he emphasizes the inescapability of such a double consciousness, with reference to the
In Chinua Achebe 's classic novel "Things Fall Apart," the development of European colonization 's lead to extreme cultural changes, leaving a lasting impact on the Igbo village of Umofia in West Africa. In the novel, Achebe displays the impacts of European colonization in both critical and sympathetic terms to provide the reader with both positive and negative factors of Imperialism to develop an unbiased understanding of what the Igbo culture and society went through. While addressing the hardship 's of life by showing the deterioration of Okonkwo 's character, the cultural and traditional changes of society, and the positive and negative impacts of imperialism, Achebe keeps touch on the overall theme of the novel, once a dramatic event
...s, so as to hone the contrast between Africa's creation, colonisation and post-colonialism periods. In stanza one, Tagore explores the creation of Africa and cleverly establishes a setting so primal and yet so admirable. This is followed by drastic tone changes in the following stanzas which disturbingly make Africa a victim of imperialism, thereby imparting to readers just a morsel of the hardship of African history. The poem also clearly illustrates the hypocrisy of Western imperialism in the final stanza, where Tagore's juxtaposition of images and words amplify this idea. Eventually, we recognise that the only form of redemption for such Western nations is through a plea for forgiveness that will come when they experience their own downfall.
In the novel “Things Fall Apart” by Achebe which was written in order to respond to the stereotype of Africa by Joseph Conrad in his text “Heart of Darkness” it viewed women as powerless, second-class citizens and were irrelevant to the
A feminist analysis on the other hand shows that Anowa is a woman who is struggling against the 1870’s African feminist identity (the identity of weakness). The drama surrounds the story of a young woman called Anowa who disobeys her parents by marrying Kofi Ako, a man who has a reputation for indolence and migrates with him to a far place. Childless after several years of marriage, Anowa realises that Kofi had sacrificed his manhood for wealth. Upon Anowa’s realisation, Kofi in disgrace shoots himself while Anowa too drowns herself. In a postcolonial analysis of “Anowa”, we can see some evidence of colonialism.
Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.
The widely known novel named Things Fall Apart was written by a man by the name of Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart represents the cultural roots of the Igbos in order to provide self-confidence, but at the same time refers them to universal principles which vitiate their destructive potential (Rhoads 61). As the reader continues through the narrative and learn more in depth about the characters a sense of pride, trust, and faith in history come into view. Seeing Achebe’s duty as a writer in a new nation as showing his people the dignity that they had lost during the colonial period, he sets out to illustrate that before the European colonial powers entered Africa, the Igbos had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity (Rhoads 61). Yet, with the introduction of colonialism the characters must learn to accept and get used to a new culture and set of beliefs or face termination from society. The novel focuses on the troubles of African cultures and their struggle to adjust to colonialism. As the novel progresses, one can also observe the influence of religion over time and how it has changed in many societies. Although many readers would describe the colonialism in Africa as something normal and something you can not prevent; a closer look of this novel would suggest that the needs of human nature to expand their values and beliefs upon others causes ancient cultures to evolve or fade out of existence. Things Fall Apart in part is a statement of what the future might be if Nigeria were to take advantage of the promising aspects of its past and to eliminate the unpromising ones (Rhoads 62).