Portrayation Of Women In Nervous Conditions By Tsitsi Dangarembga

Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” is a distressing tale of human struggle as it relates to women. The story commences with a hardworking black washwoman named Delia contently and peacefully folds laundry in her quiet home. Her placidity doesn’t last long when her abusive husband, Sykes, emerges just in time to put her back in her ill-treated place. Delia has been taken by this abuse for some fifteen years. She has lived with relentless beatings, adultery, even six-foot long venomous snakes put in places she requires to get to. Her husband’s vindictive acts of torment and the way he has selfishly utilized her can only be defined as malignant. In the end of this leaves the hardworking woman no choice but to make the most arduous decision of her

Gender equality is an aspect of everyday life all societies in the world deals within their own way. It is the concept that men and women are equal to each other. In many places across the globe, women are seen as inferrer to men. Places in the Westerner world still have the ideology of how men are the superior and women are submissive to them. However, this is very untrue for the San society in Africa. It becomes evident that the ancient and long-lasting San society had gender equality when places in the world today are still struggling for the same results. The San society is the oldest and longest lasting hunter/gathering society in Africa. The book Nisa: The Life and Words of !Kung Women written by Marjorie Shostak is the life story of Nisa, women who grew up in the San society. Over the course of the book, her life story begins to unravel. Shostak goes into great detail about Nisa’s childhood, marriages and life thereafter. This gives the reader a clear insight into what it was like growing up and being apart of a gender-equal community that was the San society. Nisa is willing to share her story with the world so others could what it was truly like being apart of a community like the San.

The author shows a great example of the power these men had against these women in the village. In the time period this story took place, it was amazing to the author to witness that gender inequality was still a very big issue in some places. The author described how shocked she was when she found out that these women were not allowed to

We have all heard the saying, “it’s a man’s world”. It appears that our world is governed according to a man’s perspective and thoughts as to how the world should be run, and women gracefully bow down to this perspective and internalize those male supremacist notions of patriarchal dominance. Even with this seemingly innate belief that men have, it is still apparent at times that there is another view that is often glossed over and ignored in the pursuit of extreme power and superiority. In Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones and Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies, we are able to dissect society through the eyes of women who have had

“I do not wish for women to have power over men, but over themselves” Mary Wollstonecraft. In the vast majority of places around the world, men have the upper hand over women, whether it is in the household, workplace, or government. Even in America, the land of the free, women are still discriminated against to a slight extent. A man and woman could have the exact same job, but the man would bring home a greater salary than the woman. In spite of the fact that this is unfair, at least women in America are permitted to work. Khaled Hosseini brings awareness to the women of Afghanistan who are victims of the inhumane and unjust laws of the Taliban. In his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini uses agonizing scenes and imagery to analyze the ways Afghan women continue to subsist in an oppressive and discriminatory society from the 1950s to today.

Andrea Dworkin, a prominent radical feminist, tries to explain why women fail to put themselves out from where they are: “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.” Women are often conditioned by different factors in their life to stay in their position, especially from societal norms and expectations of them from the men in their lives. However, over time, this could be emotionally and mentally burdensome to a woman’s state of mind, leading them to nowhere. This theme of oppression is prevalent in the feminist short stories titled “A Jury of her Peers”, written by Susan Glaspell, and “Sweat”, written by Zora Neale Hurston. In these works, Glaspell and Hurston elaborate on how powerful female protagonists are able to decide for themselves, but explain their mentally-taxing processes and reasons in accomplishing such a feat. In these short stories, women are able to rise over oppression, but primarily to overcome a grief or insecurity that stems from within and after being pushed to their limits and accustomed to their roles by men.

“When Men are oppressed it’s a tragedy; when Women are oppressed, it’s a tradition” (Pogrebin). A tradition so universal that it has spawned a multitude of anthropological theories concerning its origin. Social anthropologist Gayle Rubin identifies “a systematic social apparatus which takes up females as raw materials and fashions domesticated women as products” and notes that “the exchange of women is a profound perception of a system in which women do not have full rights to themselves” (Rubin). This tradition represents such an ubiquitous phenomenon that the narrative women exists throughout the Western canon. Historically and in literature, the oppression of women, particularly the sexual repression, often results in symptoms viewed as

The oppression of women and girls in the developing world is this era’s most pervasive human rights violation. In the world today, being a girl means being sentenced to a life of poverty, abuse, exploitation and deprivation. Denied the most basic human rights, millions of girls and women are deprived of education, security, and most importantly, a voice. And yet, despite the cruel circumstances they endure, girls and women constantly strive to rise above their oppression. Marina Nemat, author of the memoir, Prisoner of Tehran and Meena Hasina from Nicholas D. Kristoff’s Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide are testaments of the bravery and willpower of women.

Women face two key forms of oppression in this world, powerlessness and exploitation. These two forms fall into Iris M. Young’s ideas of oppression in her article “Five Faces of Oppression”. The definition of cultural imperialism and exploitation used in this essay are taken from Young’s essay. Cultural imperialism is where the dominant customs and morals of a society are rendered as the norm and those who are not in the norm are considered others. Exploitation is a form of oppression where a class structure is present and this class structure includes a dominant group of people who are in power of a subordinate group. Two authors, John Stuart Mill and Simone de Beauvoir, talk about how the oppression of women is not due to nature. It is rather, in Mill’s view, due to a premodern law of force which divides men and women between the strong and the weak. Beauvoir sees this oppression of women as a result from socialization, which conformed women to become immanent. Both these authors have reasonable arguments and have a similar understanding that the inferiority of women is not from the simple nature of being women. Other factors come into play when understanding why women are oppressed, and both authors recognize the fact that society and old habits must change for the equality of women and men to become a reality.

While trying to move on with her life, Tambu tries to earn enough money to start going to school and leads to a fascinating encounter with an elderly couple. An elderly tells Tambu, “I know the Governor is doing a lot for the natives in the way of education” (pg. 29). This crucial moment highlights a critical issue facing Tambu, her race. She faces double imperialism by both being black and being a woman. The elderly couple also diminishes her as a human being by referring to her as a native, as if having been born in the country is something to be ashamed of. It is very similar to the way that Nhamo used language meant for a dog. Tambu cannot be treated just as a person who can do anything, so Tambu struggles with how to overcome the seemingly insurmountable biases that people have against her. She also struggles with the impossible task of facing imperialism. Her mother states, “They have been speaking nothing but English for so long that most of their Shona is gone” (pg.

The plague of male dominancy and female oppression has spread throughout time and cultures like a pandemic infection, targeting women. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Janice Mirikitani’s “Suicide Note,” show the struggle and pain that oppressive forces perpetrated on women. Although, both speakers are oppressed the way they end the oppression and the cause of it are very different. Patriarchy has always existed, and it affects women all over the world. For example, banned bride abductions in Central Asia have continued to occur, and the women who resist abduction, risk death, or becoming ostracized from their country (Werner 2).

His father visibly shows that he endorses the sexist opinion on a woman’s role in society, as seen when he tells Tambu to “Stay at home” and “Learn to cook and clean”. This is directly stereotyping the role of a woman in society, becoming an efficient and obedient housewife. Moreover, he confronts Tambu for trying to earn money for her school funds, “Can you cook books and feed them to your husband?”, further reinforcing the stereotype that a woman’s role is to become married to serve and obey her husband so the man can become more a dominant and providing figure for their family. Since Nhamo’s father is a likely figure he would look up to, he possibly played a part it forming Nhamo’s sexist attitude. In addition, his mother is seen putting in extra effort to enable Nhamo to attend school, “She began to boil eggs, which she carried and sold...”, this could make Nhamo feel as if he is extremely special, to be chosen to go to school, making him egotistical and providing him with evidence to tell himself, and others, how smart he

Gender roles govern the way that most of the world’s population interact with one another. Many African cultures uphold deeply patriarchal gender roles which dictate how women and men interact with one another. Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, a staunch feminist, gives readers a look into Nigerian gender roles in her short story Birdsong. Her writing in Birdsong and her TEDtalks explore and expose how these gender roles are harmful and how important it is for many stories of young women of color to be heard.

"Nervous Conditions" is a semi-autobiographical story about Tambu, a young girl growing up in rural Rhodesia in the 1960's, and her search for a way out - for both herself and her family - of the tremendous poverty of homestead life in a colonized African country. Narrated through the eyes of young Tambu, the story is told with child-like simplicity about her and her family fighting to survive in a complex world of Imperialism, racism, and class and gender inequality. In hindsight, Dangarembga allows the protagonist's narrative to slowly unravel the meaning of her and her family's struggle with their assimilation into the strange and powerful culture of their rulers.

Nervous Conditions draws much focus on the lives of women living the impacts of colonialism in a traditional African society in Zimbabwe. These women struggle to assert themselves in a patriarchal society while at the same time it speaks about the history of a country that has been under colonialization. The female characters in the stories struggle in their lives to find ways to deal with their own situation; however, this essay emphasizes African women’s situation in both the colonized and/or patriarchal societies as exemplified by the female characters: Tambu and Nyasha. Tambu leaves her country because of its inequality and male biases so she can seek freedom and gain liberation. Nyasha resisters and defies patriarchy, as manifested by