Nervous Conditions: Themes and quotes Flashcards
Themes (5+1)
- Gender and racial inequality
- Effect of this inequality on the body
- Africa vs. the West (colonisation)
- The price paid for “progress”
- Self discovery: the novel of education and growth
Process of colonisation
- Educated people in such a way that they thought like the colonisers
- The process makes it seem natural that the whites are better than the blacks
Process of colonisation quotes and analysis
pg 14:
“trained to become useful to their people”
“they would have taken under their wings another promising young african”
1) wings - missionary - angelic wings
2) young - patronising
3) African - dominant whites
pg 63:
“the new crop of educated young Africans that had been sown…was now being abundantely reaped”
1) reaped - know what you’ll get
- can throw away bad crops
2) crops- sustenance to sustain power/ dominance
Gender inequality
- Nhamo’s attitude towards his sisters
- Babamukuru as the patriarch
- Burden of womanhood
Gender inequality quotes (Nhamo)
pg: 21
“you go nowhere…because you are a girl”
1) girl - dominant male
pg 49: “you’re going dark like one. Be careful…”
1) dark - blacks degrading themselves - associated with evil
pg: 49 “I was meant to be educated”
1) the right of man to be educated in the natural order of things
Gender inequality quotes (Babamukuru as patriarch)
pg 50:
“he had made himself plenty of power. Plenty of power. Plenty of money. A lot of education. Plenty of everything.”
1) “A lot of education” - not enough education
NOTE;
Babamukuru represents the colonisers because he runs the school so he has been given the power. However, he can’t make Nyahsa think the way he wants her to and regularly has to assert his power to mantain order (84-85). This is somewhat ironic as it is the exposure to English culuture that has made Nyasha so liberal. Even the godlike Babamukuru is not untouchable from the dangers of colonisation and seems to have formed a Faustian Pact with the whites; selling his integrity to the colonisers to gain power, and losing his family as a result.
Gender inequality (Burden of womenhood)
pg 16:
Mainini “the business of womanhood is a heavy burden”
NOTE
The paragraph in the middle of 16 has almost every theme in.
Effect of the Gender inequality on the body
The title of the novel is taken from the introduction to Franz Faron’s “Wretched of the Earth”
“the status of “native” is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler amoung colonized people with their consent” - John Paul Satre
“the status of “woman” is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by males amoung females with their consent”
Effect of the Gender inequality on the body quotes
pg 19:
Nyasha: “you’re trapped. They control everything you do.”
1) psychomosomatic reaction to this inequality and control is her annorexia/bulimia
pg 193:
“it’s all the things about boys and men and being decent and indecent and good and bad”
1) weight of expectations placed on women
2) “and” = anaphora or polysyndeton
pg 205: “There’s nearly a century of it”
Africa vs. the West
- Nyasha, who has seen firsthand the effect of being immersed in a foreign culture, grows suspicious of an unquestioning acceptance of colonialism’s benefits. She fears that the dominating culture may eventually stifle, limit, or eliminate the long-established native culture of Rhodesia—in other words, she fears that colonialism may force assimilation.
Africa vs. the West quotes
pg: 198
“And the Africans live here”
1) seperate from other girls
2) annexed like a disease
3) smaller room
Price paid for progress
- Conflicts between those characters who endorse traditional ways and those who look to Western or so-called “modern” answers
Dual Perspectives
When Babamukuru finds Lucia a job cooking at the mission:
Tambu = awe of her uncle’s power and generosity.
Nyasha = nothing heroic in her father’s gesture and he is merely fulfilling his duty as the head of the family.
characters share an unstable and conflicting sense of self.
1) Tambu, her two worlds, the homestead and the mission, are often opposed, forcing her to divide her loyalties and complicating her sense of who she is. When she wishes to avoid attending her parents’ wedding, however, these dual selves offer her safety, protection, and an escape from the rigors of reality.
